Cram (game)

This article is about the impartial game of Cram. For the partisan version of the game, see Domineering.
Example of a Cram game. In the normal version, the blue player wins.

Cram is a mathematical game played on a sheet of graph paper (or any type of grid). It is the impartial version of Domineering and the only difference in the rules is that players may place their dominoes in either orientation, but it results in a very different game. It has been called by many names, including "plugg" by Geoffrey Mott-Smith, and "dots-and-pairs". Cram was popularized by Martin Gardner in Scientific American.[1]

  1. ^ Gardner, Martin (1974). "Mathematical Games: Cram, crosscram and quadraphage: new games having elusive winning strategies". Scientific American. 230 (2): 106–108. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0374-102.