Embedding processes in combinatorial game theory

Berlekamp asked the question “What is the habitat of ∗2∗2?” (See Guy, 1996 [6].) It is possible to generalize the question and ask “For a game GG, what is the largest nn such that ∗n∗n is a position of GG?” This leads to the concept of the nim dimension. In Santos and Silva (2008) [8] a fractal process was proposed for analyzing the previous questions. For the same purpose, in Santos and Silva (2008) [9], an algebraic process was proposed. In this paper we implement a third idea related to embedding processes. With Alan Parr’s traffic lights, we exemplify the idea of estimating the “difficulty” of the game and proving that its nim dimension is infinite.