Have you ever heard of Japanese ladder games? I hadn't until I read an article in June's MAA Focus magazine. Here's a piece of the article:



The MAA Focus article gives a link to a page with a couple of very interesting papers.

The second paper, "Ladders, Codes, and Actions," has this as a first paragraph.

Combinatorial games often generate interesting mathematics and can help students understand difficult concepts. In this paper, we shall describe three games which are very visual and can be played by anyone regardless of their level of mathematical sophistication. When you are done playing these highly addictive games you will have a deeper understanding of permutations and group actions and you will learn a very interesting connection to coding theory. We have found that the games are very enjoyable to play and that players end up understanding complex mathematical ideas without realizing they have done so.

These games are truly a great find, very simple yet very deep. I'll use these games in my Math gatherings.