Talk:Nim
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Nim is now used as a simple illustration of the Sprague-Grundy theorem.
A version of this game is played in Alain Resnais' movie L'année dernière à Marienbad.
A typical normal game starts with heaps of 3, 4 and 5:
A B C (Heaps A, B, and C) 3 4 5 I take 2 from A 1 4 5 You take 3 from C 1 4 2 I take 1 from B 1 3 2 You take 1 from B 1 2 2 I take entire C heap 2 2 0 You take 1 from A 1 2 0 I take 1 from B (In the misere game I would take the entire 2 heap) 1 1 0 You take 1 from B 1 0 0 I take the last 1 and win.
Error in heap A. why is there a 2? Should be 1.
quote: " Now here, C was the one we artificially subtracted from, so we have to pick another one. You can think of it as that we pretend you took one from another stack, say A.
1 2 0 011 I take one from B 1 1 0 000 You take one from B 1 0 0 001 I take one from A, and I win.
But you see, since A was our artificial stack, it still looks like 1,0,0, and they have to make the last move "
But, if in the 1 1 0 situation, which is actually a 2 1 0 situation, You can take the two from A, and leaving a -1 1 0 situation, which is a 0 1 0, and I loose.
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[edit] Cleanup
I have rewritten the mathematical part of the article, and deleted most of the material on strategy, because it was (IMO, anyway) disorganized, confusing, didn't contain any information (all the painfully constructed "winning patterns" there are simply special cases of the general Bouton's characterization), and sometimes incorrect (why the hell was Ling Kah Jai credited for a well-known 100 years old result?). Nevertheless, in case somebody decides to reintroduced bits of the text, here it is. -- EJ 9 July 2005 17:12 (UTC)
I've put the text from the old version of the article that was once here on the subpage /Deleted text. 4pq1injbok 19:33, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
I've rewritten much of the explanatory material to be more explanatory and correct, especially the relation to combinatorial game theory. The mathematical part got minor edits, mostly to make the stuff consistent.--Dan Hoey 19:33, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
Dan, while most of your edits here are certainly valuable, please don't attempt to link every word in the article. It clutters the text, distracts the readers, and serves no useful purpose. As a general rule, it usually suffices to link to a particular page only once. Thanks. -- EJ 03:49, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Last move game
Does the name last move game for normal Nim actually have any currency? 4pq1injbok 06:30, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
I don't know if last move game or last stone game is really used, so I deleted it. Anyone who wants it back should say something more specific than asserting that it is used in some regions.--Dan Hoey 19:28, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Linking blindly to a binary
It is extremely unsafe to link toa binary from an untrusted source the way you are doing it. The program isn't that great, so I don't see why we are linking to it in the first place.
[edit] Yet another variation...
For those who have the latest version of Enigma, take a look in Enigma level pack 2, level 16 (Enignimm). The thing is, you'll have to play and win two games to access the Oxyd stones locked away but there is only one heap! The first heap has 13 blocks and the second has 16. I don't think I can calculate the Nim-sum because it now has four binary digits. The only way I ever won this game is nearly by chance. In the first heap, the computer starts first, but in the second, you get to start first. What's the process of calculation?
[Later after examining code of level...]
I just found the solution. Basically, you have to use the correct subtractand so that you can get 13, 9 and 5 blocks remaining(These numbers are what makes the computer take away (random number between 1 to 3) blocks). By using the correct subtractand to get the numbers I explained, you can win both games and unlock the door to the Oxyd stones and complete the level. Again I ask, what's the process of "calculating" this? --Bruin_rrss23 (talk) 11:29, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Appearance in popular culture
Uh, I'm not sure what the "standard" title for a section about cultural references to stuff is, so I'm not going to add it to the article, but I thought it might be of interest that this game appears in the GBA version (and possibly the PSX version, though probably not the Super Nintendo version) of Tales of Phantasia. It is the "subtraction game" variant. If you need a reference, you could probably use one of the entries at Gamefaqs.
[edit] which player will win
"there is an easily-calculated way to determine which player will win " -- assuming this player doesn't screw up. jnestorius(talk) 22:05, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Rules
Talking about this version: [1]. Someone should insert a "rules" section before the "illustration" section.
Also, this sentence in the illustration section makes no sense: "In order to win always leave an even number of 1's, 2's, and 4's." It doesn't make sense as a win condition, because the player who did that didn't win. It also doesn't work as a winning strategy, because the player who did it lost. --68.161.152.145 04:36, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
[edit] New external link: nim developed in AJAX
After i read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:External_links i don't know if i can add the following external link [[2]] where, using AJAX techniques, I developed a program to free play at "nim" in the variant "who is getting the last element loses". There are 8 schemas, at growing difficult level. The solver server-side algorithm, was developed in PHP and it is of kind recursive reduction with sorted cached. Sorry for my bad english, my natural language is Italian. Thanks, MacApp.--MacApp (talk) 12:09, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
