OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
In the meantime, the OxTalks site will remain active and events will continue to be published.
If staff have any questions about the Oxford Events launch, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
Seeking income during World War II, Piet Hein created the game now called Hex, marketing it through the Danish newspaper Politiken. The game was popular but disappeared in 1943 when Hein fled Denmark.
The game re-appeared in 1948 when John Nash introduced it to Princeton’s game theory group, and became popular again in 1957 after Martin Gardner’s column —- “Concerning the game of Hex, which may be played on the tiles of the bathroom floor” —- appeared in Scientific American.
I will survey the early history of Hex, highlighting the war’s influence on Hein’s design and marketing, Hein’s mysterious puzzle-maker, and Nash’s fascination with Hex’s theoretical properties.
