Fun and games with matches

Matches have other uses than simply lighting fires; you will get hours of entertainment from this selection of simple tricks and games, all performed with matches. Take care; however, that you use safety matches, as playing with vestas could be dangerous.

1 How do you make two squares out of four by removing only two matches? The answer is to take away two of the inside matches — the top upright and the left horizontal — you will be left with a small box inside a large box.

2 How can you get the "wasp" out of the "glass" without touching the wasp and by moving only two matches? The answer is to slide the match that forms the bottom of the glass to the right about half a match-stick length so that it now forms the bottom of an inverted glass. Now, you are faced with a match in the top left-hand corner that is not connected to anything else — move this over and down to make the right side of the new inverted glass.

Treasure chest
The puzzle is how to get the treasure out of the chest without touching the coin or the chest. The solution is to set up your treasure and chest on a table-cloth. Lay top and bottom matches first, and the two sides on top of these, with the coin in the centre as in our drawing. If you scratch the cloth on one side of the coin, it will shortly slide under the match of its own accord.

Telegraph
Set up a chain of interlocking matches as illustrated below. You will find that when you tap the match at the right end of the chain, it transmits a message to the match at the other end, seemingly without affecting the matches in between!

Loading the donkey
The donkey is an empty match box, standing on its end on the table. Divide the matches evenly between the players. Everyone takes it in turns to load the donkey, one stick at a time. Who-ever's match causes the load to tumble drops out. The game begins again with one fewer players and all the matches redistributed. So it continues, until you are left with one "master builder".

Nim (1)
This game is actually older than matches! When it was thought up, people played it with small sticks. It is for two players.

Lay 10 matches side by side in a line. Each player takes it in turn to remove either one, two or three matches. The object of the game is to force your opponent into picking up the last match, which makes you the winner.

It seems to be a mathematical fact that whoever picks up the fifth match is the winner — until your friends discover this for themselves, this could be a useful piece of knowledge!

Nim (2)

Lay out any number of groups, each containing three matches, side by side as shown below. Both players, in turn, can remove one to three matches but they must take them from the same group. The winner could be either the person who picks up the last match, or — as in Nim (1) — the person who forces their opponent into picking up the last match.

Nimbi
This game is a development of Mm and, again, is for two players. Decide before you begin whether the person who picks up the last match is the winner or loser. The matches are laid out in lines of at least eight matches side by side. You can have as many lines as you like, but certainly not less than three.

Each player, in turn, can remove any number of matches they like working in either a horizontal line or a vertical line. The next player must remove his matches either from left or right, or from above or below the gaps which have occurred — but he may not take from both sides of the gaps. For example, if one player were to remove all the matches in the third vertical line from the set of matches illustrated below, the next player could only remove from either the first and second rows, or the fourth to eighth rows.

Christians and Turks
With this, our last match game, we are going to do as we did with our first two match games and leave you to work out the answer. Imagine that there are fifteen Christians and fifteen Turks who are the crew of a sailing boat that is sinking at sea. Their captain decides that in order to save the ship, half of them must be thrown overboard. He orders them to line up, saying that he will walk along counting, and throw every ninth man in the sea. Among the Turks was a particularly clever man, who started to count straightaway and worked out how to arrange the line so that only Christians would be thrown overboard. What was his arrangement? Lay out your crew using matches head upwards for the Christians, head downwards for the Turks.