New game suggestion: Crossway

Crossway was invented by Mark Steere. It is essentially Hex on a square grid. Black moves first with border rows at top and bottom; white borders are left and right. The following patterns of stones are forbidden in any 2x2 region of the board.

The pie rule is included. Technically it might be possible for the player to move to have no legal move, in which case the other player moves again. I doubt this could happen in a real game unless the players cooperate.

Defense is generally more difficult. Two stones of the same color on the same line with one vacant space between them can connect in three ways, not just two. Whereas a winning path in Hex might meander all over the place, a winning Crossway path rarely bends much. It reminds me more of Twixt than Hex. This can be played in real time on Game Center.

It's just a thought. You all have a nice day.

The link to imgur is https://imgur.com/a/HP628rs
The patterns are two white stones at opposite diagonals with two black stones at the other opposite diagonals of any 2x2 region of the board.

BTW what am I doing wrong? why won't the imgur image show up?

Testing a link here!

Assuming this worked, the trick is to select the text you like to have be the anchor.

bill

Well thank you, but I know how to add a link to text. I did that in my first post. What I don't know is why my first post doesn't have an image embedded.

David, how much do you feel your Twixt expertise transfers to Crossway? Are the tactics different enough to reward studying both?

The tactics are very different but there's something about both games I find appealing in a similar way. Defense is mysterious. They are not easy for newcomers to fathom. Maybe it's my contrary nature. In Hex, ladders are common and usually have a "flat" glide path, meaning that continuing an offensive ladder by itself does not get you closer to your border. In Twixt, a standard ladder has a 2:1 glide path. Sometimes the slope is 3:1 but that ladder usually ends after a couple of steps. Looking at Crossway edge templates, it appears a ladder has a 3:1 overall glide path. Of course this all depends on how nearby stones might affect the ladder. IMO the emergent complexity could appeal to both Hex and Twixt players.

Looks interesting! I've long dreamt of an elegant connection game on square grid: Slither and Chain Lightning are great, but still raise some questions from beginners. Surprising to hear that simply forbidding the cross-cut can actually work on its own!

The angled glide path is also something I really like in Twixt, curious to hear it's present in Crossway. Playing Hex with two moves per turn (like Connect6) is also a bit similar, with 2:1 glide paths and tactics that sometimes resemble Catchup.

There's also Quax, but that's not really on a square grid, but two square grids superimposed on each other. You could play using a Go board, but you would need tiny stones in addition to the standard stones.

I would also like to mention Pex which is Hex on a grid of congruent (non-regular) pentagons which tile the plane. You might like to peruse some recent images which display the board as a combination of regular pentagons and (almost) regular heptagons. There is an alternate way to choose the perimeter of the board which is arguably more natural than the perimeter I chose.

In 2022, another group of games appeared on the checkered board: Quabble, Qualos, Fast Quabble, Conquare, Fast Conquare.

I’ll just echo that Crossway is amazing. It’s very deep and it’s full of surprises. Tactics are hard, but not dissimilar to Twixt in the sense that beginners get demolished until they learn a bit of “defence”.

There’s also another set of games called Halfcut and Clearcut from the same creator. They’re basically just Crossway, but instead of making crosscuts illegal, you may place at those positions to capture your opponent’s stones under certain conditions. There’s a lot of forking opportunities, and thus a lot of tension. Definitely worth trying them out too.