Khet is a chess-like abstract strategy board game using lasers that was formerly known as Deflexion. Players take turns moving Egyptian-themed pieces...
Khet is a chess-like abstract strategy board game using lasers that was formerly known as Deflexion. Players take turns moving Egyptian-themed pieces around the playing field, firing their low-powered laser diode after each move. Most of the pieces are mirrored on one or more sides, allowing the players to alter the path of the laser through the playing field. When a piece is struck by a laser on a non-mirrored side, it is eliminated from the game.
Under its original name, the game was a Mensa Select Award winner. Its name was changed on September 15, 2006. The new game retains the same rules of gameplay, but has a different design, including a new color scheme and a new box design. Under the new name, the game was one of five finalists for the 2007 Toy of the Year award.
Professor Michael Larson and two students, Del Segura and Luke Hooper, designed the game as a class project at Tulane University. (Professor Larson is now at the University of Colorado.) The game was introduced to the public in the spring of 2005, and was first brought to prominence at the New York Toy Fair of that year. The game was first shipped in October 2005. The first Deflexion World Championship was held December 10, 2005 under the dome at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Registration was free, and the participants competed for cash and other prizes. The winner was an MIT student.
Under the new name, Khet, the first Regional Championship took place in April 2006 at the famous Café du Monde in the New Orleans French Quarter. Twenty-four participants competed for a number of prizes. As a special bonus, the Eye of Horus beam splitter was unveiled at the very end, and used by each player in the championship game. Khet was also featured on a recent episode of the HGTV show "I Want That: Tech Toys". Footage from the New Orleans tournament was included in the broadcast.
In 2017 a company called "Thinkfun" acquired the license for the now out of print Khet 2.0 and rebranded the game "Laser Chess". Now with a new, modernized scifi look, it brings the exact same rules and feel of Khet 2.0 back to the table.
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RITHMOMACHY
Rithmomachy (or Rithmomachia, also Arithmomachia, Rythmomachy, Rhythmomachy, or several other variants; sometimes known as The Philosophers' Game) is...
Rithmomachy (or Rithmomachia, also Arithmomachia, Rythmomachy, Rhythmomachy, or several other variants; sometimes known as The Philosophers' Game) is a highly complex, early European mathematical board game. The earliest known description of it dates from the eleventh century. A literal translation of the name is "The Battle of the Numbers". The game is much like chess, except most methods of capture depend on the numbers inscribed on each piece.
It has been argued that between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, "rithmomachia served as a practical exemplar for teaching the contemplative values of Boethian mathematical philosophy, which emphasized the natural harmony and perfection of number and proportion. The game, Moyer argues, was used both as a mnemonic drill for the study of Boethian number theory and, more importantly, as a vehicle for moral education, by reminding players of the mathematical harmony of creation."
Very little, if anything, is known about the origin of the game. Medieval writers attributed it to Pythagoras, but no trace of it has been discovered in Greek literature, and the earliest mention of it is from the time of Hermannus Contractus (1013–1054).
The name, which appears in a variety of forms, points to a Greek origin, the more so because Greek was little known at the time when the game first appeared in literature. Based upon the Greek theory of numbers, and having a Greek name, it is still speculated by some that the game originated in Greek civilization, perhaps in the later schools of Byzantium or Alexandria.
The first written evidence of Rithmomachia dates to around 1030, when a monk named Asilo created a game that illustrated the number theory of Boëthius' De institutione arithmetica, for the students of monastery schools. The rules of the game were improved shortly thereafter by another monk, Hermannus Contractus from Reichenau, and in the school of Liège. In the following centuries, Rithmomachia spread quickly through schools and monasteries in the southern parts of Germany and France. It was used mainly as a teaching aid, but gradually intellectuals started to play it for pleasure. In the 13th century Rithmomachia came to England, where famous mathematician Thomas Bradwardine wrote a text about it. Even Roger Bacon recommended Rithmomachia to his students, while Sir Thomas More let the inhabitants of the fictitious Utopia play it for recreation.
The game was well enough known as to justify printed treatises in Latin, French, Italian, and German, in the sixteenth century, and to have public advertisements of the sale of the board and pieces under the shadow of the old Sorbonne.
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