The God-Einstein-Oppenheimer Dice Puzzle

From Tierney Lab:

"God does not throw dice," Albert Einstein famously declared, but suppose he was wrong. Suppose God decided to demonstrate otherwise by showing up one day at the Institute for Advanced Study. God announces that dice games are in fact wildly popular in heaven, and that the purpose of this visit it to teach a new game to Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer. God explains the rules:

There are three blank dice. First, Oppenheimer will take each of the six-sided dice and write the numbers from 1 to 18, in any order he likes, on the 18 faces of the three dice. Einstein will then examine the dice and select one of them as his own. Oppenheimer will then examine the remaining two dice and select one of them. (The third die will be discarded.) Oppenheimer and Einstein will then play repeated rounds of “Dice War” in which they roll the dice simultaneously, with a point being awarded each round to the player who rolls the higher number. The player with the most points wins.

Assume that Oppenheimer and Einstein employ the smartest possible strategies, and that the outcome will be determined by the laws of probability (meaning that God doesn’t skew the dice or the influence the rolls). Which player, if either, is favored to win?

For extra credit, imagine the conversation before, during or after the game.

If you want to test out your theory on who will win and how, here's a handy Dice War simulator.

Bloxor!

Peg Solitaire

I cannot stop playing this game!


A "European" Peg Solitaire board
Peg Solitaire is like one-player checkers: you jump pegs (or -- in the case of our board at Making Waves -- marbles) to take them off the board, with the objective of having a single peg/marble remaining.

Sounds fairly easy right? You'd be surprised. And once you've got the game beaten, you can try all different kinds of starting positions.

(I grew up playing a simplified version of Peg Solitaire at a restaurant called Cracker Barrel where they used to leave the game board out at the tables to play while you wait for your food.)

And for those of you feeling particularly Math-y, there are a couple pages out there detailing strategies and analysis of the board.