Tuesday, September 10, 2002
The Game of Sprouts
Uh-oh, another game of the week. That's two in two days. Dast I contemplate a "game of the day"? Nay, I dasn't. 'twould be too dastardly.
Dasting along, I found this page of Paper and Pencil games which happened to include not only the game of Sprouts but also this lovely animated illustration:
The rules follow:
The players take turns moving.
A move has two parts: drawing a line and making a new dot.
The line must go from a dot to a dot so that it does not cross another line and so that once the line is draw, no dot has more then three lines coming out of it. The animated game marks these used-up dots with red X's. You might want to circle used-up dots.
The new dot goes on the line the player just drew (this means it starts with two lines coming out of it).
The winner is the last player to move. Notice in the animated game that there are two dots that are not used-up at the end. They get marked with light blue X's because, even though they are not used-up, you can't use them as the ends of a line without crossing another line.
As the animated game shows a line can go from a dot to itself as long as you don't break the "three lines" rule.
Developed by the mathematicion Conway (inventor of the Game of Life), Sprouts is one of the few paper-and-pencil games with the simplicity of Tic Tac Toe and the elegance of a true strategy game.
There are two other games on this page, each with animated directions. Of the two, Pipelayer is especially attentionworthy as a game that is: a) strategically interesting, and 2) not widely known.
While you're at it, you might as well check out all the other playworthy links on this quite amazing Math Night Resource Page. It is very heartening to discover an educational project manifesting such a fine sense of appreciation for fun.
Dasting along, I found this page of Paper and Pencil games which happened to include not only the game of Sprouts but also this lovely animated illustration:
The rules follow:
The players take turns moving.
A move has two parts: drawing a line and making a new dot.
The line must go from a dot to a dot so that it does not cross another line and so that once the line is draw, no dot has more then three lines coming out of it. The animated game marks these used-up dots with red X's. You might want to circle used-up dots.
The new dot goes on the line the player just drew (this means it starts with two lines coming out of it).
The winner is the last player to move. Notice in the animated game that there are two dots that are not used-up at the end. They get marked with light blue X's because, even though they are not used-up, you can't use them as the ends of a line without crossing another line.
As the animated game shows a line can go from a dot to itself as long as you don't break the "three lines" rule.
Developed by the mathematicion Conway (inventor of the Game of Life), Sprouts is one of the few paper-and-pencil games with the simplicity of Tic Tac Toe and the elegance of a true strategy game.
There are two other games on this page, each with animated directions. Of the two, Pipelayer is especially attentionworthy as a game that is: a) strategically interesting, and 2) not widely known.
While you're at it, you might as well check out all the other playworthy links on this quite amazing Math Night Resource Page. It is very heartening to discover an educational project manifesting such a fine sense of appreciation for fun.
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