Also, one year I tried following up Nim with some variations: Hackenbush (my personal favorite), Northcott's game, and cornering the rook. Each of those starts out essentially equivalent to Nim and has a fun visual docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Hmm not exactly. The last few times I did NIM in class, I launched it like a 3 Act task, starting with this grainy footage from survivor that @bowenkerins.bsky.social showed in some PD a while back: www.youtube.com/watch?v=aonC...

Variations: What if you tried it with a triangle? Or fold the paper three times?

Why it matters: this problem demands justification. Are you sure that is the most possible amount of sides? Convince me! I've only sort of convinced myself that I found the most sides.

Where it comes from: I saw this TikTok from Marc Odower and could immediately picture the poster. I love that the comments are all over the place and don't appear to contain spoilers. www.tiktok.com/t/ZT28SUkoy/

Tasting notes: while I'm most curious about finding the most possible sides, it's interesting to be thorough and systematic, trying to find all the different ways to fold

How to play: I recommend using Post-its. They encourage trying it out several times with very low stakes.

This is also a fun way to explore star polygons

We only intended forward steps, but back steps might be interesting! I wonder what that would change …

Cool. Keep playing! Try “or 170 or …”

I’m here, reading a lot and posting a bit. And CiCi just set up @playwyourmath.bsky.social

Would love to hear what you think of this one! I had a lot of fun with it and will blog my thoughts at some point