9 Dec
2019
9 Dec
'19
6:46 a.m.
On Dec 8, 2019, at 5:35 PM, Ken Thompson via TUHS
<tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org> wrote:
in the early 70s, noone had seen a computer.
i had a terminal at home and we were giving
a dinner party. i wrote several games for the
party from the back of an off-the-shelf puzzle
book.
the ones i remember:
moo (bulls + cows)
hunt the wumpus (move or shoot)
learning tic-tac-toe
i can guess your number (divide and conquer)
jealous husbands (similar to fox hen corn)
nim
i think there were more. they went over
pretty well at the party.
i think this was 1969 or 1970.
Clarification, please.
Was “Hunt the Wumpus” from the back of an off-the-shelf puzzle book? I thought it was by
Gregory Yob (per the Creative Computing BASIC Computer Games book—Wumpus may have been in
More BASIC Computer Games), and, well, it’s about dodecahedronal geometry, which seems as
if it would only have been found in a rather rarefied puzzle book, but does seem like the
sort of Platonic solid a computer-programming nerd in the early 1970s would have known
about.
Adam