Replying to Avatar RedTailHawk

Interesting. Ever played Nim?

It's very mathematical. I used to teach it to my math and critical thinking students.

If you're playing me in Nim and you give me the option to go first or second, I will win 100% of the time.
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fiatjaf 2mo ago 💬 1

Yes, I did. I once said this was like a 2D version of Nim, but no one understood because no one else had ever heard of Nim.

Wait, now that I'm thinking, when I was a kid my grandfather once played a game with matches with me, he put a bunch of matches on the table then we took turns removing either 1, 2 or 3 matches until one couldn't.

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RedTailHawk 2mo ago

Yep. That's the Nim I'm most familiar with. Simple game. You can use any tokens that are readily available like matches, sugar packets, coins, toothpicks, pebbles, etc.

I found that leveraging children's desire to be victorious was a good way to interest them in math. Go was another great game for teaching them math.