Boredom Chasers?

yuggler asks: "Ever found yourself in a boring meeting, class or lecture? Sure! Does anyone know of something to do to make time fly? I feel that somekind of simple game, at the most requiring paper and pen would be the ultimate soultion. So, my question to you is: Does anoyone know of a game with childishly easy rules, yet with a depth that can keep the player(s) spellbound for a small eternity? An excellent example of what I'm trying to describe is the game Sprouts which only takes 30 seconds to learn, but will take a good portion of your meetings to fully understand. I am currently being tormented in a Swedish highschool, and feel in desperate need of something to get me through classes like Swedish, and Chemistry, while waiting for the programming and technology-classes."

Comments

ti calculators!

[Radnimax]

Get a ti calculator like a ti86 or ti89. I got the link cable for the computer and downloaded tons of games for my ti86. Tetris was the most played game. nd it was really easy to play games in math class ;) You can get games such as tetris, mario bros, galazian, othello, defender, boulder dash, and so many others all clones of course. Try to get the ones written in assembly (not ti basic) because they run fast.

3 Steps To Success

[redhotchil]

Step 1. Buy Handspring Visor or Palm Pilot

Step 2. Download and sync Chessgenius

Step 3. Enjoy

Sprouts info

[martyb]

The link to sprouts mentioned in the original query seems to have an error in attribution.

"Sprouts is an interesting paper and pencil game for two players. It was invented in Cambridge in the 1970's."

Take a look at: http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc97/4_5_97/mathlan d.htm where it states "Sprouts was invented in 1967 by Princeton mathematician John H. Conway and by Michael S. Paterson, when both were at the University of Cambridge in England."

There's a bunch more info on game play, theory, and mathematical background on the game at that link, as well as this link: http://www.forum.swarthmore.edu/news.archives/geom etry.research/article399.html to a strategy by John Conway on a strategy for game play.

As an aside, I knew a guy at RPI who in 1981 or so wrote a program to play the game and graphically display the results... if you wanted it to, it would show all the possibilities as it tried different moves, too! Pretty amazing feat considering the capabilities of the computers we had available at the time.

Pente

[Lish]

My friends play Pente in class all the time. It is a bit like Go. The rules are simple but strategy can get very complex. Here is a simple explanation.

My solution is to get a Palm and play Patience, but that's beside the point.