Elwyn Berlekamp, John Conway, and Richard Guy wrote 'Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays' and turned a recreational mathematics topic into a full mathematical fi eld. They combined set theory, combinatorics, codes, algorithms, and a smattering of other fi elds, leavened with a liberal dose of humor and wit. Their legacy is a lively fi eld of study that still produces many surprises. Despite being experts in other areas of mathematics, in the...