Table Of Content

Connection came Connection Games Variations on a Theme Cameron Browne AK Peters Wellesley, Massachusetts Editorial, Sales, and Customer Service Office A K Peters, Ltd. 888 Worcester Street, Suite 230 Wellesley, MA 02482 www.akpeters.com Copyright © 2005 by A K Peters, Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permis- sion from the copyright owner. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Browne, Cameron, 1966-. Connection games : variations on a theme / Cameron Browne. p.cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-56881-224-8 1. Connection games. I. Title GV1469.C66B76 2004 794-dc22 2004057137 Printed in the United States of America 10 09 08 07 06 05 10987654321 Dedicated to Merlin For always being there... even if he did keep dribbling on the manuscript. Table of Contents Preface ix Part One Defining Connection 13 Chapter 1 What Is a Connection Game? 15 Chapter 2 The Nature of Connection 19 Chapter 3 Games as Graphs 25 Chapter 4 Properties of Connection Games 37 Chapter 5 Common Plays 55 Chapter 6 Classification 71 Part Two The Games 77 Chapter 7 Pure Connection Games 79 Chapter 8 Connective Goal 263 Chapter 9 Connective Play 295 Chapter 10 Connection-Related Games 331 Part Three End Play 341 Chapter 11 Rolling Your Own 343 Chapter 12 The Psychology of Connection 353 vii viii Table of Contents Chapter13 Afterword 363 PartFour Appendices 365 Basic Graph Theory 367 DY Solving the Shannon Game 371 FB mNA Hex, Ties, and Trivalency 375 U Strategy-Stealing 379 O 7 Point-Pairing Strategies 381 Y Reduction 385 Sperner’sLemma 389 a T Tessellations 393 References 397 Listof Games 407 Index 411 Preface Connection games are a recent genre of board games that take the basic idea of connection in a number of interesting directions. This aim of this book is to impose some structure on this increasingly large family of games, and to define exactly what constitutes a connection game. This book contains many new and previously unpublished games; however, these have been screened for a reasonable level of quality. Those games catalogued in Part II have been found to play well or at least intro- duce some notable idea that may lead to greater things. While it is obvious that some inclusions succeed more as games than oth- ers, value judgments of games have been avoided beyond pointing out those of exceptional quality. The amount of time spent on a particular game does not necessarily imply anything about its quality, but is more a function of its relevance to the concept of connection. Special emphasis is placed on new or previously unpublished games. This is not an academic text. Although every effort has been made to en- sure that the material is correct and complete, discussions are deliberately kept light and readable. Nor is this book a tutorial on how to play any particular game. Many games are examined in detail, but the emphasis is on exploring their fundamental nature, what distinguishes them from other games, and their place in the connection game family.