Puzzling Adventures: Jump Snatch; May 2004; Scientific American Magazine; by Dennis E. Shasha; 1 Page(s)

Let's imagine a game involving a tic-tac-toe board and several circular counters that can be placed in the grid's squares. Assume the following simple rules: a counter can be jumped if it lies between another counter and an empty square (along any vertical, horizontal or diagonal line). When a player uses one counter to jump another, the latter is removed from the board, as in the game of checkers.

In the solitaire version of this game, your goal is to have only one counter left on the grid after some number of jumps. Consider the starting configuration shown in illustration A. Is there any way to ensure that only one counter will be left at the end of the game? Illustrations B, C and D show a solution.