Partisan misere games

Since I'm going to this math event in Halifax in less than a month, I thought I should spend some time thinking about the topic of misere partisan games, since that's the only thing mentioned as a definite topic. I worked on it today at the loft, as the kids played Katamari Damacy on the PS/2.

As usual, I can't be bothered to do any heavy lifting and I don't have any particularly good ideas except a healthy suspicion that the whatever I first think about the subject will turn out to be wrong, as well as the second, third and fourth thing I think about it. But I'm always willing to do some computer programming, or fiddle around with other calculations.

Here are the results of a Mathematica search I did today for pairwise mutually distinguishable partisan misere games at birthday two. At birthday 0 and 1, there are 1 and 4 mutually distinguishable normal and misere games (ie, 0, 1, -1 and star, ie *1). But at birthday two, there are only 22 normal play games (I think), but at least 123 misere ones, if this program is correct. There are probably more distinguishable types. There are at most 256.

I'm getting a headache trying to figure out the correct canonical form reduction rule in the monoid of all partisan misere games, so I think I'll forget about that for now. Also, even thinking about order relations is giving me pain.

It's a start at least.

Opal Nicholas

Twenty years ago (30 July 1986) in Kearney, Nebraska, my father was about to cut up an onion for a salad in the kitchen when the doorbell rang. He came to the door carrying the onion, and saw Bob Anderson, a neighborhood kid grown up to be a police officer.

He told my father that my grandmother (Beatrice) Opal Nicholas had driven her car off Highway 30 and crashed into a tree near Wood River, only a few miles from Kearney. She was wearing a seat belt, but it was a bad enough accident to kill her, anyway. She had just started on a drive back to her home in Crofton, Nebraska.

It wasn't hard for my father to explain to me where the accident took place—there was one big tree fairly close to the road just outside Wood River. I remembered it easily, having ridden by it many times growing up. I don't think the tree is there anymore, though.

Here's the obituary that was published in the Kearney Daily Hub

***
KEARNEY — Services for Opal Nicholas, 77, of Crofton, who died as a result of a one-car accident two miles west of Wood River on Highway 30, will be at 9:30am Saturday. The Rev. Helen Handley will officiate at First Presbyterian Church in Kearney. Burial will be in the Kearney Cemetary.

The family plans memorials to First Presbyterian Church or the Congregational Church in Crofton. Horner-Lieske-Horner Mortuary is handling arrangements.

She was born April 26, 1909, in Wisner to Frank and Matilda Laase. She had lived in Crofton for 15 years, moving there from Valentine. She was a clerk for the Selective Service office in Cherry county for many years before retirement. She was a member of the Congregational Church in Crofton, Eastern Star, Daughters of the Nile and Shrine Auxiliary.

Survivors are daughter, Marlene Plambeck of Kearney, and two grandchildren. She was preceded in death by her husband Earl, who died in 1981, and a brother.