Talk:Sprouts (game)

confusing claim

Doesn't look like this talk page is very active, but I don't have enough info to make an informed change. The section Importance in real games doesn't mean anything as written (What is k?) and the web reference doesn't shed any light on the matter. Delete?100.2.207.34 (talk) 15:00, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Incorrect claim?

The "Other Variants" sections says:

One can also make the addition of a point (for Sprouts) or a stroke (for Brussels Sprouts) on a newly drawn line optional. Doing so seems to make sprouts very complicated and nearly impossible to analyze.

However, the analysis at [1] claims to have completely solved that game, with a very simple algorithm.

Which of those two claims is correct? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.32.16.101 (talk) 22:07, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

The Real Battle

According to the article: "Real games seem to turn into a battle over whether the number of moves will be m or m+1 with other possibilities being quite unlikely", where m is defined to be the number of moves. Obviously, by definition, the number of moves can't be m+1, so this line of the article is nonsense. From the context of the article, I sort of guess that 2n was intended instead of m; that would at least make sense, but I don't know if it's actually correct. Someone who knows should fix this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.193.88.39 (talk) 21:09, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Agreed that this makes no sense. Likewise the line above it,

m = 2n + p/4 So a game lasts for at least 2n moves, and the number of pharisees is divisible by 4.

doesn't make sense, because in the sample game shown, the number of pharisees is 2, which isn't evenly divisible by four. Unfortunately, the comment above was added two years ago, and no one has changed it, and the rest of us don't know enough about the topic... — Sam 63.138.152.135 (talk) 15:20, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I figured it out, the article was actually right, but badly worded. The notion of "neighbor of a survivor" is not the ordinary graph theory notion of adjacency, but a special notion just for this game; the diagram to the right of the text tries to illustrate that. So the sample game at the top of the page in fact has zero pharisees, which is a multiple of 4. I can't think of any better way to explain it. 82.139.80.236 (talk) 23:35, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Brussels sprouts

Therefore you can think of Brussel Sprouts as the same game as Sprouts but with points "dead" after there are 4 lines on them.

I removed this because Sprouts-with-valency-4 is plainly not equivalent. Brussels Sprouts enforces which component of the playing surface (i.e. which side of the existing lines) each free end is in, and this appears to be crucial in the proof that the game is trivial (and quite possibly in the proof that the game ends after finitely many moves). —Blotwell 20:53, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely correct. Sprouts-with-valency-4 is clearly infinite, since after any move there is at least one more: loop from the new point to itself. --Henrygb 23:40, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

The rules are not understandable by one that comes here without previous knowledge, like me. You can figure everything out, probably, but why not say it clearly to start with? First of all, 1) should say that the players take turns drawing a line AND adding a point on this line (or did I misunderstand this?). Then, there should be a clear statement, why the game in picture number 5 is ended. Can't one simply draw a loop from one of the green spots to itself? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.174.56.23 (talk) 12:42, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

The second rule explains why. You can only have three lines coming into a spot. To exist at all, a spot has to be a point of a line - ie, two lines into it already. If you loop, it creates two more, for four, larger than the allowed 3.--WPaulB (talk) 17:02, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Sprouts Tournaments?

Have there been any sprouts tournaments or championships? Where can I find a list of the participants in those kinds of matches? 216.99.219.11 (talk) 06:42, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

World Game Of Sprouts Association seems to arrange tournaments. There is a champion list and a magazine. It looks like a tiny community, though, and the last tournament was 2010... --Ørjan (talk) 09:49, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

In Popular culture

The game sprouts was important to the plot of the Piers Anthoney book Macroscope see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macroscope_%28novel_by_Piers_Anthony%29 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.65.169.82 (talk) 01:28, 18 July 2014 (UTC)