# Sprouts — the drawing that ends itself

- From: Sprouts, a pencil-and-paper game by John Conway and Michael Paterson
- Players: 2 players
- Time: 5 min a game
- Made by: John Horton Conway and Michael S. Paterson, Cambridge, 1967

Made with boardgameBuilder 0.14.4. To design from it, open boardgameBuilder and choose Open game: its blocks go on the canvas, and the feelings are left for you to pick.

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.

## 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.

## What you need

- paper
- a pen

## How to play

1. **Start.** Draw three dots, spread apart. Toss a coin to see who starts.
2. **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.
3. **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.
4. **End.** When a player has no legal move, the game is over. The last player to move wins.
5. **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?

## Where the rules are written down

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprouts_(game)
- https://encyclopediaofmath.org/wiki/Sprouts

## Its blocks

- Core mechanic: drawing the map
- Player interaction: indirect via board
- Chance or skill: mostly skill
- Theme: abstract
- Information visibility: full information
- Timing: take turns

## Saved state

boardgameBuilder reads this part back when the file is opened.

```json
{"mechanics": {"core-mechanic": ["drawing-the-map"], "player-interaction": "indirect-via-board", "chance-skill": "mostly-skill", "information": "full-information", "theme": "abstract", "timing": ["take-turns"]}, "chosenFeelings": [], "previousMechanics": {}, "previousFeelings": [], "turnNumber": 0, "locked": false, "turnHistory": [], "answers": {}, "tests": {}}
```