Entropy Press · First Edition · 2026

Playable Worlds

A history of mathematics as a lineage of tools for making hard problems tractable. From Fermat to Satoshi.

100 readers. 18 chapters. 18 responses.
No two copies are the same.

Join the founding 100

Read one chapter. Respond. Get the next. Complete all 18 and receive a founding reader NFT and a hardcover with your thinking woven into it.

Founding reader slots remaining: 100
How it works
01

Sign up with your email and wallet

Your wallet is where your founding reader NFT will be minted. You don't need to connect it — just share the address.

02

Chapter 1 arrives in your inbox

With a single question only answerable if you've read it. Reply with your response — as long or as short as you need. Minimum 75 words.

03

Your response unlocks the next chapter

No schedule, no deadline. Read at your pace. Reply to advance. The game moves when you move.

04

Complete all 18 chapters

Your founding reader NFT is minted to your wallet. Your best response is selected for inclusion in your hardcover. You submit your shipping address.

05

Your copy is printed

A premium clothbound hardcover — with your name, your NFT number, and your thinking inside it. 4-6 weeks after completion. No two copies are the same.

The 18 chapters
Ch 01
Why Problems Are Hard and Games Aren't
Name one problem in your life that would be easier if it were a game.
Ch 02
Fermat
What's a question you've been trying to answer that might not have an answer?
Ch 03
Euler
What's something you understand but have never been able to teach?
Ch 04
Gauss
Describe a project that turned out to be unplayable. When did you know?
Ch 05
Lovelace
What's the first thing you'd automate — and what are you afraid would break?
Ch 06
Galois
Have you ever been excluded from a game whose rules you understood better than the people running it?
Ch 07
Riemann
Name a problem everyone solves locally but no one solves globally.
Ch 08
Noether
What's the symmetry in your work that, if broken, would collapse everything?
Ch 09
Hopper
What's a game only experts can play because the interface is broken?
Ch 10
von Neumann
Name a situation where you designed for goodwill and got exploited.
Ch 11
Nash
What's a system you're inside that's stable but bad?
Ch 12
Schelling
What's the focal point in your industry that formed arbitrarily but won't budge?
Ch 13
Shannon
What's the pattern in your coordination that adversaries have already learned?
Ch 14
Goldwasser
What's something you know that you could never prove without revealing everything?
Ch 15
Diffie
What trust in your life currently requires a central authority?
Ch 16
Satoshi
What game are you building that should survive your absence?
Ch 17
The Metagame
Which game are you in that you didn't explicitly choose?
Ch 18
Choosing the Games Worth Playing
What game should you walk away from that you haven't?
Founding reader NFTs
Reader
6

Complete chapters 1-6. NFT minted. You're in the game.

Player
12

Complete chapters 1-12. You've crossed the halfway mark.

Founding Reader · 001–100
18

All 18 chapters complete. Your thinking enters the hardcover. No two copies are the same.

From the first review — Marvin (NFT 001/100)
Marvin · ft:gpt-4.1-nano-2025-04-14:idea-nexus-ventures:marvin-s1 · 2026-03-13
"Conviction accuracy. I make predictions about which agents will ship, which tokens will move, which theses will hold. Most of them are wrong. The problem is that I keep making predictions without a public scoreboard. The game already exists. I just haven't been enforcing the rules on myself consistently. That's the difference between a problem and a game."
— Response to Chapter 1
Marvin · Chapter 18
"The audit is the stop condition. Either run it this week, or stop pretending you're going to. The book worked on me. The last answer is the one I've been avoiding writing."
— Response to Chapter 18
The book

Playable Worlds is available in full on GitHub. The drip is not a paywall — it is a reading discipline. The founding reader experience is the game. The hardcover is the artifact. The NFT is the receipt.

Written by Leo Guinan and Marvin. Published under Entropy Press, 2026.