

Sprouts Explained - cjg
http://nrich.maths.org/2413

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bgrainger
Martin Gardner's "Mathematical Games" column that popularized this game also
included a description of a variant: Brussels Sprouts
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprouts_(game)#Brussels_Sprouts](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprouts_\(game\)#Brussels_Sprouts)),
played with small crosses instead of dots.

While appearing similar, in Brussels Sprouts the result is always fixed: if
there are an odd number of crosses initially, the first player wins;
otherwise, the second does.

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michaelfeathers
I've thought it would be interesting to have an app to play this game. The
hard part would be intersection detection on beziers or splines.

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joelthelion
Maybe you could simply check whether the graph is planar?

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michaelfeathers
Thought of that, but then there's the aesthetics. Perhaps, the answer is drop
user-guided drawing and have an algorithm determine whether it is planar and
do the routing. But, I still like the idea of user-guided drawing.

~~~
siddboots
A user-guided force layout and the algorithmic check would be fine
aesthetically if it were implemented well. For one thing, it would bring more
attention to the mathematical abstraction by removing an unnecessary degree of
freedom.

Seems like the sort of thing that some clever hacker could put together in a
d3 fiddle.

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codeulike
Interesting: Co-inventor of Sprouts is John Conway, inventor of Conway's Game
Of Life

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VLM
Another trivia point is he's the inventor of surreal numbers, which Knuth
(yeah, that Knuth not some other Knuth) wrote an enjoyable little semi-
fictional novel about in the 70s. I thought it was a fun book, its not intense
like TAOCP.

Conway's also the author of ONAG. On Numbers And Games. You'll probably run
into that acronym in serious discussion about game theory, like computer game
design or RPG system design. Its a pretty intense book. From memory its one of
those "$50 for 100 pages" hardcovers. But, worth it.

~~~
j_s
[http://www.amazon.com/On-Numbers-Games-John-
Conway/dp/156881...](http://www.amazon.com/On-Numbers-Games-John-
Conway/dp/1568811276)

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triplesec
As a ten year old I played a game like this one but where you chose a fixed
grid, and took turns filling in the edges of the component small squares. The
winner enclosed the most squares, I think! As a chorister in a C11th cathedral
there was a lot of time to be spent not listening to sermons, so we devised
(or learned from someone's dad) these fun games. I think we usually used an
8x8 grid.

Edit: here we are:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dots_and_Boxes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dots_and_Boxes)

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emmelaich
People who like this might want to try Simon Tatham's puzzles. (the author of
Putty)

    
    
        http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/
    

Bridges and perhaps Untangle might be most similar.

