Chasing the Lights in Lights Out
C. David Leach · Mathematics Magazine · 2017
SummaryLights Out is a game played on a grid of light-up buttons. At the start of the game, the lights are lit in a seemingly random configuration. A button changes states whenever it or one of its neighbors is pressed. The goal is to turn all of the lights out. Light chasing is a simple strategy for winning Lights Out by using a lookup table. In this article we examine how to construct these lookup tables for several variations of the game.