What is a solved game?

Have you ever played a game of noughts and crosses (or tic-tac-toe!) and ended up in a tie every single time? You weren't playing it wrong—you were actually playing it perfectly! Join Mira and Finn as they uncover the mind-bending math behind solved games! A solved game is a game where the perfect outcome is one hundred percent known from the very first move. Discover the amazing true story from 1952, when a Cambridge student named Sandy Douglas taught a giant, room-sized computer called EDSAC to play noughts and crosses using a chunky rotary telephone dial! The crazy part? The computer never lost a single game! Learn why checkers is also a solved game (after computers spent 18 years checking 500 billion billion possibilities!), and why chess has more possible games than atoms in the entire universe! Plus, find out how the brilliant math used to master these games helps plan real-world traffic lights and huge auctions. Tune in to find out why a perfect brain sometimes just leads to a massive tie!