Wishbone

About

Wishbone is a drawless connection game for two players: Black and White. It is played on the intersections (points) of an initially empty square grid (board). The top and bottom edges of the board are colored black; the left and right edges are colored white. Some definitions: Crosscut: 2×2 area with two diagonally adjacent black stones and two diagonally adjacent white stones. Naked diagonal: two like-colored, diagonally adjacent stones with no other like-colored stone adjacent to both. Wishbone: three like-colored stones adjacent to the same empty point, with two of those stones diagonally adjacent to each other and the third stone not adjacent to either. Black plays first, then turns alternate. On your turn, place a friendly stone on an empty point without forming a crosscut. You cannot create a naked diagonal unless there is a wishbone that includes both stones in the naked diagonal or you are placing a stone on the central empty point of a friendly wishbone. You cannot pass your turn unless you have no legal moves. You win if there is a chain of orthogonally or diagonally interconnected stones of your color touching the two opposite board edges of your color. To make the game fair, White will have the option, on their first turn only, to swap sides with Black instead of making a regular move. NotesWishbone seems to be the first subset of Crossway boasting hot cartwheels and a similar game length to Hex on boards of equivalent size. The fact that cartwheels are hot suggests that the game has no coldness. A cartwheel is an empty 2×2 area vertically adjacent to four black stones and horizontally adjacent to four white stones, or vice versa. For the purpose of identifying a cartwheel, the board is considered surrounded by stones of the same colors as the corresponding edges of the board. Thus, a 2×2 board is a cartwheel. Some subsets of Crossway with slow play but cold cartwheels are Nohane, Quix and Kopano. —description from the designer

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