The Beans Game

This game below is a variant of Nim. There are three piles of beans in the rows. To play, take any number of beans from a row by hitting them with the mouse button and then press the move button for the computer to move. The player who takes the last bean looses. An article on the theory of this game appeared in 1902 in the Annals of Mathematics.

By default, the game starts up with piles of 3, 5 and 7 beans. If you want to change the configuration hit the setup button. Then remove beans until you have the configuration you want to start with.

There are several other versions of this game at Alexander Bogomolny's Cut-the-Knot . To my mind, the most fascinating is Northcott's game .