I'm voting for some combination of "honestly oblivious", "ha ha only serious", and "actually this isn't as bad as it sounds" over "satire". My 11-year-old daughter was recently introduced in a school mathematics lesson to a game in this family, which she enjoyed and eagerly asked me to play with her.

It wasn't described in those terms, though. Their class has been looking at factors and multiples, so the game was presented like this: you have the numbers from 1 to 100 written down; one player picks a number (constrained to be no bigger than 50 for reasons as an exercise for the reader) to start with; then each player picks a still-unused number that's either a factor or a multiple of the one before. So a game might go like this: 25, 5; 15, 3; 99, 33; 11, 22; 44, 4; 8, 16; 32, 96; 48, 24; 12, 6; 18, 9; 27, 81; 1, 97 and now the first player has no legal move and loses. (I do not claim that either player played well in that game; I just picked random legal moves.)

If this game sounds like fun to you or your child, you can find an implementation here: https://nrich.maths.org/5468 and you may also see how long a chain of factors-and/or-multiples you can construct (imagine both players are now cooperating to make the game last as long as possible).

Interesting game, thanks for sharing.

It's a math post on math website. The discussion is for mathematical adults, but the games described are fun for kids -- kids have been playing pencil and paper graph games for many decades

I think it might be a bit tongue-in-cheek, but when I look at the game as written, it actually sounds fun.

-I think the real game there might be inventing such graph for your oponent, so that you have a chance for a draw? :)-

Wow, finally finished reading the comment. This looks quite interesting and deep.

I don't think it feels like satire since it sounds like a fun game? I'm actually astonished that I never played a game in this family before.

> Printing, or playing by means of some graphics software, seems safe.

emphasis mine