Comment by asibahi
10 hours ago
This is really nice.
Incidentally, there is an actual 1D game that is one of the most popular games on the planet: Backgammon.
10 hours ago
This is really nice.
Incidentally, there is an actual 1D game that is one of the most popular games on the planet: Backgammon.
Good observation. Considering stacking of pieces maybe 1.5D though.
Chess has different pieces, which has higher entropy than a true 1d backgammon or 1d checkers with only one piece a field.
You could play with pieces that have a value of 1..N instead. Starting with 2,3, and 5 value pieces, and splitting them as needed. Making it one-dimensional again, while keeping 100% of the rules.
Final verdict, therefore: backgammon is 1D, not 1.5.
We could pretend that the second dimension was not playing a role in tactics back then, since it was very recently invented, like the brothers Wright invented the third dimension a hundred years ago. Or some hot air balloon at a world faire did it.
The "dimensions" in these board games isn't a mathematical/topology thing, is it? Normally one dimension = one real number space. Every board game ever would fit in 1D then, "2D" chess included.
I'm fine calling Backgammon 1.5-D. Physically you focus on a single dimension, and the second one matters too but it's not the same.
2 replies →
Mancala is roughly 1D too!
Backgammon, the game everyone's seen and at the same time nobody knows how to play :P
My brother and I once took a train trip from L.A. to Omaha and back for a friend’s wedding and played backgammon for most of the trip. For weeks afterwards, I saw backgammon everywhere (most notably when reading dialogue-heavy books with lots of 1-line paragraphs).
Solitaire and Hearts too. Well I actually know and love Hearts, but most people seem to know it as "that game in Windows where you play random cards"
I learned to play backgammon because it was one of the three games on my Nokia phone circa 2001 :P
There are tons of 1D games. Somebody else mentioned Mancala, and I'd also mention the venerable Game of Goose, which can become anything from Candyland to sophisticated things like Kramer and Kiesling's That's Life or Parlett's Hare & Tortoise. Hell, Monopoly is also 1D if we're willing to allow circuits like Mancala.