Solitaire Army

Watch the solution below! Click here to download my slides.

Credits

• Solitaire army was invented by John Conway in 1961, who proved that row 5 cannot be reached in finitely many moves.
• Simon Tatham first formulated the rules for reaching row 5 in infinitely many moves; see his webpage for details.
• Simon Tatham and Gareth Taylor together found a solution with infinitely many moves; the link above has the details, and their article has a more formal description.
• Alan Lee (as a student at Mathcamp 2022) invented the diagonal whoosh, creating the simplified solution you see in the animation above.