From Sylvester's coins in 1884 to machine-checked certificates in 2026: how one simple game became a famous open problem, and how far the opening 16 has been pushed.
With the film or the page focused, Space plays and pauses and the arrow keys skip five seconds.
Sources: Berlekamp, Conway and Guy, Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays (1982), chapter 18; G. Sicherman, Theory and Practice of Sylver Coinage, Integers 2 (2002), and sicherman.net/sylver; T. Blok's reports (2021–2026); OEIS A248380; the campaign records at github.com/rudi-cilibrasi/sylver-coinage.
Download the film: MP4, 1920×1080, 5:41, 13.9 MB
(a release asset of the repository, rendered frame for frame from this page by render-story.mjs
on October 10, 2026, and again after each update).
Learn the ideas by playing them in The Sylver Mint, or play the exact solver in the solver demo.