TY - GEN
T1 - Jenga
AU - Zwick, Uri
PY - 2002
Y1 - 2002
N2 - Jenga is a popular block game played by two players. Each player in her turn has to remove a block from a stack, without toppling the stack, and then add it the top of the stack. We analyze the game mathematically and describe the optimal strategies of both players. We show that 'physics', that seems to play a dominant role in this game, does not really add much to the complexity of the (idealized) game, and that Jenga is, in fact, a Nim-like game. In particular, we show that a game that starts with n full layers of blocks is a win for the first player if and only if n = 2, or n = 1,2 (mod 3) and n ≥ 4. We also suggest some several natural extensions of the game.
AB - Jenga is a popular block game played by two players. Each player in her turn has to remove a block from a stack, without toppling the stack, and then add it the top of the stack. We analyze the game mathematically and describe the optimal strategies of both players. We show that 'physics', that seems to play a dominant role in this game, does not really add much to the complexity of the (idealized) game, and that Jenga is, in fact, a Nim-like game. In particular, we show that a game that starts with n full layers of blocks is a win for the first player if and only if n = 2, or n = 1,2 (mod 3) and n ≥ 4. We also suggest some several natural extensions of the game.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84968779685&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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AN - SCOPUS:84968779685
T3 - Proceedings of the Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms
SP - 243
EP - 246
BT - Proceedings of the 13th Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, SODA 2002
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
T2 - 13th Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, SODA 2002
Y2 - 6 January 2002 through 8 January 2002
ER -