My favorite (other than Nuke the Smileys) was written at the UofT by Hugh Redelmeier. It was a version of tic-tac-toe that played only a single line, and would always win. If it didn't like your move, it changed it. If your move was a good one, it would change its previous move. And it did this with lovely little messages. It was fun watching people get upset at it. I don't know where the source is nowadays. I may have it somewhere, or it might be ferric dust long since swept up from a cupboard of failed 9-track tapes. -rob On Mon, Dec 9, 2019 at 11:47 AM Adam Thornton wrote: > > > > On Dec 8, 2019, at 5:35 PM, Ken Thompson via TUHS > wrote: > > > > in the early 70s, noone had seen a computer. > > i had a terminal at home and we were giving > > a dinner party. i wrote several games for the > > party from the back of an off-the-shelf puzzle > > book. > > > > the ones i remember: > > > > moo (bulls + cows) > > hunt the wumpus (move or shoot) > > learning tic-tac-toe > > i can guess your number (divide and conquer) > > jealous husbands (similar to fox hen corn) > > nim > > > > i think there were more. they went over > > pretty well at the party. > > > > i think this was 1969 or 1970. > > > Clarification, please. > > Was “Hunt the Wumpus” from the back of an off-the-shelf puzzle book? I > thought it was by Gregory Yob (per the Creative Computing BASIC Computer > Games book—Wumpus may have been in More BASIC Computer Games), and, well, > it’s about dodecahedronal geometry, which seems as if it would only have > been found in a rather rarefied puzzle book, but does seem like the sort of > Platonic solid a computer-programming nerd in the early 1970s would have > known about. > > Adam