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Horseshoe

While bored in Numerical Computing class today, I was lamenting the sad state of pencil and paper games.

I mean, it is sad. Tic-Tac-Toe? You can either win or draw every time if you know what you're doing. And there aren't many permutations of the game to play. Tic-Tac-Toe is fun when you're 3 or really, really bored.

There's also Nim. I don't have cool graphics to describe it, but you can visit this page for more information. I mean, it's okay, but it has the same triviality problem as Tic-Tac-Toe.

For a while during high school, I was pretty enthralled with 3x3x3 3D Tic-Tac-Toe, until pointed out that the game is, in fact, usually over after 3 or 4 turns, and is rather devoid of strategy due to so many possible ways to win. It appears that most prefer the 4x4x4 version, but by this point I had already made two 3D 3x3x3 Tic-Tac-Toe boards (one out of plexiglass and cardboard, and one out of ceramic material). Yeah, so that game let me down. All the same, it's perfectly playable on paper with a pencil.

Lastly, there's that game where you have a grid of dots and you try to make more boxes than your opponent by adding one line at a time, but that game takes a while to set up, and has a significant ramp up time before it is fun (usually when the board is close to full is the game actually fun).

So, I have these 3D Tic-Tac-Toe boards collecting dust, and on top of that I'm bored, and can't think of any fun pencil and paper games. This completely ignores the need for someone to play them with, but all the same. I sat there and thought of possible new games that could solve both of my prior problems.

I thought of one that due to naming cleverness I'm calling horseshoe, and I can't tell if it's trivial in the same way as Tic-Tac-Toe or not, so I thought I'd post it here and request feedback.

Horseshoe

The game is essentially 3D 3x3x3 Tic-Tac-Toe, but you aren't trying to get 3 in a row. Instead, you're trying to get a horseshoe shape. I've gone completely out of my way with this entry and made tons of graphics (graphics all made by me with the GIMP) that will come in a sec, probably prematurely, as I haven't even played it with someone more than once. This was the same problem that I had with the 3D Tic-Tac-Toe. I ran off and made boards before I played it much. But so anyway.

You play it on paper, or whatever, but you have 3 layers of a cube. Each player alternates placing their symbol ('X' or 'O', for example. I use blue and red dots) until the board is full or one player gets a horseshoe. The horseshoe shape looks like the following:

XXX
X X

It could be 'O's instead of 'X's but you get the idea. Diagonal anything isn't allowed.

I have 4 game samples (each column of squares is one board):

In the first and third games (first and third columns), blue wins, and in the second and fourth, red wins.

To help visualize the winning organizations/layouts/positions, I've also made 3D representations of the winning layouts of each of the four sample games above. I can't think of any winning layouts that aren't just 3D rotations of these four.

1st game:	2nd game:
3rd game:	4th game:

Anyway, it's not too complicated once you figure out what's going on. The 8 or so times I played against myself it was far less trivial than Tic-Tac-Toe, but maybe that was simply a product of me playing an unfamiliar game against myself :).

I took a picture of the configuration of the first time (to my knowledge) this game has been played with two people (how it's supposed to be played):



'O's won.

Yeah, I don't know what to make of it, as no one actually seems interested in playing me, so I don't know how effective of a pencil and paper game it is.

Let me know what you think.