A winning strategy for hold that line (Q2663637)

The author describes a winning strategy for the first mover in Hold That Line, a two-player zero-sum game introduced in [\textit{S. Sackson}, A Gamut of Games. New York, NY: Dover Publications (1992)] and partially analyzed in [\textit{J. Henle}, Math. Intell. 41, No. 1, 71--77 (2019; Zbl 1407.00010)]. The game is played on a 4X4 grid of dots. The first player draws a line segment that connects two dots. Then the players take turns, and at each turn the active player extends the path by connecting an endpoint of the path to an unconnected dot, without crossing the path. If no such connection is possible, then then player whose turn it is wins. The paper extends the results to MXN grids for $M<=3$, and shows that when $M=3$, then the ``game corresponds to the game nim played with two heaps of equal size''.