My grandpa was a fan of Nim, and at restaurants we’d play with sugar packets while waiting for food. It’s a great game to entertain kids. He also invented Dr. Nim which some gray beards may be familiar with. Turing Tumble is an evolution of Dr. Nim/DigiComp II.
It's worth mentioning that Dr NIM[0] did not play the NIM[1] studied by Combinatorial Game Theorists ... there are two things called "NIM".
One is as played by Dr NIM, where you have a single heap, and on each turn you can take 1, 2, or 3 tokens. Then the person taking the last token wins (in normal play), or loses in Misère play. This is now known as "The Subtraction Game".
The version of NIM that Game Theorists study has multiple heaps, and on each turn you choose a heap and take one or more from that heap, including possibly taking all of them. Again, as before, the winner is the person taking the last token (in normal play).
But Dr NIM is awesome.
Did he also have something to do with DigiComp II [2] ??
(Edit: Checking Wikipedia, I'm guessing he did. I played with an early version at Cliff Stoll's house last year ... so much fun.)
Yes, we would play the multiple heaps version at restaurants - Make a triangle out of sugar packets. I still play it with my kids.
And yes - he invented the DigiComp II first, and Dr. Nim afterwards to convey the same concept more simply. There's a version with billiard balls at MIT Stata Center (https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=1902) and my uncle spoke there when they installed it. My mom and I are both constantly trying to get people to credit him, mostly successful, but there is at least one successful project that extended the idea and does not give him credit at all.
(Side note, I was curious if they weren't giving credit due to not wanting to imply infringing on patents, but a) looks like they're not close to infringing on the patent, and b) the patent is now owned by Crayola... https://patents.google.com/patent/US3390471A/en)
He also founded the first major startup in Pittsburgh, On-Line Systems, and I believe the second company ever selling mainframe compute (he phrased it as "second ever software business" but I'm pretty sure he meant second business selling compute, since I believe some unis sold compute before him), basically the OG AWS. And flew multiple bombing runs over Germany in WW2. I'll stop now, I think he's awesome but I'm biased.
