Sprouts — the drawing that ends itself
Start with three dots. Each move joins two dots with a curve and adds a new dot on it. Lines may never cross, and no dot may have more than three lines. The drawing grows until nobody can move.
From Sprouts, a pencil-and-paper game by John Conway and Michael Paterson.
What it shows a designer
The board is drawn by the players, and the moves close the board in. It shows how a game can be made of its own map, and how a growing picture can carry the state of a game.
Credits
- Made by
- John Horton Conway and Michael S. Paterson, Cambridge, 1967
- Sources
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprouts_(game)
encyclopediaofmath.org/wiki/Sprouts
What you need
- paper
- a pen
How to play
- Start. Draw three dots, spread apart. Toss a coin to see who starts.
- A move. Draw a curve from one dot to another, or from a dot back to itself, then put a new dot somewhere on that curve.
- Limits. A curve may not cross itself, another curve or a dot. No dot may have more than three lines touching it; a loop counts as two, and a new dot starts with two.
- End. When a player has no legal move, the game is over. The last player to move wins.
- Again. Play a few games, and then try four starting dots.
After playing, talk about
- When could you tell how many moves were left?
- Did the shape of the drawing trap anyone?
- How did the game change with four dots?
Its blocks
How its blocks were checked against BoardGameGeek
- Sprouts: partly checkable, nothing against it. drawing the map: not checkable. indirect via board: not checkable. mostly skill: not checkable. full information: not checkable. abstract: not checkable. take turns: not checkable.
In boardgameBuilder, Open game puts its blocks on the canvas. Changed, the same file can come back here from Propose a game.