The game is played on a piece of paper, initially with a number of points drawn on it, and is a two player turn-taking game.
competition/games/sprouts New, unsolved
New entry, edited from material collected for the archive and not yet in a released version.
Problem
The game is played on a piece of paper, initially with a number of points drawn on it, and is a two player turn-taking game. At each turn, a player must connect two existing points with a line, and add a new point on that line. The only restriction on the endpoints used for a line is that no point may have more than 3 lines extending from it. Also, no line drawn may cross any other line. A player loses when he cannot draw a "legal" line. Can anybody suggest any good strategies for playing this game with varying numbers of initial points? Clearly things become increasingly complicated as the number of points rises. -- Mathew Hendry <scampi@dial.pipex.com> (May 1996)
Show solution
No solution was found in the collected postings. This game reminds me of one I remember reading about in a book by Piers Anthony (I forget the name of the book; it may have been _Macroscope_). In the book this game was called "Sprouts". -- Mathew Hendry <scampi@dial.pipex.com>