Here's my John Conway story: I went to Canada/USA Mathcamp in 2009, which fell in the period when he would come for about a week, giving talks and just hanging

Here's my John Conway story: I went to Canada/USA Mathcamp in 2009, which fell in the period when he would come for about a week, giving talks and just hanging out with all us kids. You might have lunch with him and he'd talk about his "Free Will Theorem", or the Doomsday Algorithm[1]. He would often play games with us in the afternoon. I remember seeing him play Phutball[2], a game of his own design, taking heavy handicaps. One afternoon, he challenged us to 3x3 Dots and Boxes. Each challenger "won" if they could win a single game against him in a match of 10. You got to choose each game whether you went first. We played for an hour or so, a crowd gathered around the piece of paper he was using, everyone offering suggestions and trying to figure it out. I think the 5th or 6th challenger finally managed to win. [1] http://rudy.ca/doomsday.html http://rudy.ca/doomsday.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phutball https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phutball