Some Cinderella Ruckle Type Games

Abstract

Nearly 30 years have elapsed since Ruckle’s pioneering book (Ruckle WH (1983) Geometric games and their applications. Pitman, Boston) on geometric games was published; it was pioneering in the sense that it did not seek to detail a theory but dealt with a host of two-person zero-sum games which were easy to state and understandable to an intelligent layperson. Attractive features were the “toy” examples giving very idealized applications of the games and the list of open problems at the end of most chapters. Although many of the games had quite a lot in common, the professed aim was to provide “usable solutions” rather than a unified treatment. In fact Gal’s book (Gal S (1980) Search games. Academic Press, New York) which developed a theory of search games had already appeared when Ruckle’s book was published but, in the main, Ruckle’s games fell outside its scope. Although there has been considerable activity in the theory of search games since then (see [2] and Chap. 9 of the book), the main emphasis has been on the development of the aspects covered in Gal’s book. The aim of this chapter is to draw attention to some Ruckle games which the writer feels have not received the attention they deserve; hence the Cinderella in the title.