This is a two-player game. Each player at its turn has to choose one of the following actions:
- remove a black piece,
- replace two consecutive white pieces with a black one,
- remove one of the two extremal pieces (black or white).
The player who plays when the number of pieces is odd is called Black, The player who plays when the number of pieces is even is called White.
The aim of the game is to end up with a single piece of its own color.
Strag is equivalent to a special case of a game designed by Steve Kalikow (University of Memphis), in which the players alternatively choose numbers in a given domain which is a subset of the real line. The game ends after a given number of turns, and the aim of the players is to control the parity of the number of transpositions necessary to put the final sequence in order.
A complete study of the game is given in a paper by Élise Janvresse, Steve Kalikow and Thierry de la Rue.
How to play:
- To remove a piece, click on it.
- To replace two consecutive white pieces with a black one, click between them.
Your color and the color of the computer are indicated by the pictures on the top. You can exchange the colors during the game.
The arrows indicate the color of the player whose turn it is.