tactix

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History

TacTix was invented by Piet Hein, a Danish poet who was also well known for dabbling in mathematics and science. According to Martin Gardner, the board size most commonly played at the time he authored his article is 6x6, because it "is small enough to keep the game from being long and tiresome, yet complex enough to make for an exciting, unpredictable game" (Gardner 160).

The Board

TacTix is played on an N-row, N-column grid. Most commonly, N=4.

The Pieces

There are N² pieces that cover all spaces of the grid at the start of the game, as shown in the following image:[img src="a.svg" alt="a" width="300" height="300"]

Rules

To move: On their turn, a player may remove as many pieces as they want as long as the pieces (1) either lie on the same row or lie on the same column and (2) are contiguous.

To win: In non-misere gameplay, a player wins if they remove the last piece(s) from the board, i.e., leave their opponent with no pieces left to remove.

An example sequence of removals is shown in the following animation:

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References

Gamescrafters