33-Solitaire New Limits, Small and Large

Extract

No field of endeavour, trivial or non-trivial, escapes man’s quest for the superlatives—always the smallest or the largest, the fewest or the most is his goal. Whether this drive stems from a thirst for knowledge or a desire for leisure in which to pursue other work is a good question. In this massive and perpetual search for the ultimate a trivial game is no exception. No doubt a fantastic amount of time has been spent seeking to determine how many little counters could be arranged in a certain pattern, then this pattern re-arranged by jumping one unit over the other, removing the counter jumped, until the greatest number is lined up to be taken in a single move, or the pattern is reduced to a single unit with the fewest moves. Erom available published accounts, the single move limit has been 8 and the fewest moves have been 16 since this particular pattern called a 33-Solitaire board was conceived, the 33 referring to the number of spaces in this pattern.