Dishpan Hands

Rules

Dishpan Hands is a take-away game with the twist of allowing you skip reducing the number of remaining spaces through applying earned flip credits.

and take turns claiming one or two open slices anywhere around the ring. If you claim two, they must be next to each other. The first move by player 1 must claim just one slice.

The player who claims the very last slice loses. Your goal is to leave that unfortunate final move to your opponent.

Earn a flip

Whenever your move creates a new pair of your own coin colors next to each other, you earn a flip.

On a later turn, you can spend a flip instead of claiming a new slice. If your opponent has two adjacent coins, you can flip one of them to your color—but a coin can only be flipped once during the entire game.

Therefore, you're constantly balancing two things: how quickly you fill the ring and how many flips you can save for later.

Who moves first alternates from game to game.

New here? Medium is a good starting point. It searches three moves ahead, while Hard searches five.

Controls

Slices are numbered 1 through however many the ring has, clockwise from the top.

With a mouse or touchscreen: tap an open slice to claim it, or tap the small "2" badge between two open slices to claim both. Once you've earned a flip, tap the glowing ring around an eligible pair to flip one of those coins to your color.

With a keyboard: type a slice number to claim it, like "5". Type two slice numbers to claim both at once, like "5 6" (a space, comma, or hyphen between them all work). Type "flip" or "f" followed by a slice number to spend a banked flip on that coin, like "flip 5." The word "claim" is also accepted as an explicit prefix, like "claim 5 6," but isn't required. Press Enter or Play to confirm.

Type status (or just the start of it, like "sta") and press Enter or Play at any time -- even when it isn't your turn -- to have the board's current state read back to you.

Roots

Dishpan Hands owes its basic idea to Nim, the classic take-away game where players remove objects from a shared pile and try not to be the one stuck with the last one.

It’s closer Trunk Book cousin is Last Slice, which uses the same "don't take the last one" idea. Dishpan Hands takes that simple premise and adds something new: coins can form pairs that give you the power to flip one of your opponent's coins back to your side.

Under the hood

Dishpan Hands has the simple premise of being a take-away game with an added way to steal one of your opponent's pieces back.

Why a coin can only be flipped once

The flip credit process exists to encourage each player to claim pairs of spots on the board so that the game is more than a strict coin counting variant of Nim. Additionally, testing confirmed that credits need to be earned, as a non-zero starting flip budget produced an 80–90%+ second-player win rate among medium-skilled AI players, regardless of board size.

The combination of zero starting flips plus the opening move restriction of not being able to claim a pair of spots is what brings the game closer to even among medium skilled players. And it is the rule of preventing coins from being “re-flipped” that guarantees games do end.

How the computer thinks

Dishpan Hands has an interesting AI problem because the ring is highly symmetrical.

The computer doesn't need to treat every untouched slice as completely unique. Instead, its search concentrates on the frontier—open slices next to something already claimed— plus representative untouched choices.

Easy mostly plays randomly, while Medium and Hard use a real search engine, looking three and five moves ahead respectively.

The more advanced levels pay attention to flip economy: how many flips each player has banked and how many potential flip targets are currently available.