32
votes
Accepted
Alice and Bob invent a game
So building on kristinalustig's answer they are indeed playing
The cards are assigned as follows
Alice's first turn
Bob's first turn
In particular
Alice's next move produces
Bob's next move ...
- 133k
30
votes
Shortest game of Monopoly
If you are trying to lose the game as quickly as possible then you can do it in 1 turn and 2 rolls of the dice. This is using the UK version as I'm not sure about the US one.
Roll 1:
Roll 2 (Because ...
- 2,580
28
votes
Accepted
Magic Maze Puzzle
Okay. THAT. WAS. INCREDIBLE!
It took me two solid hours of work to solve and even longer to write and draw it all up here - hopefully it'll be worth it! To start us off, here is the final maze layout ...
- 133k
28
votes
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27
votes
Accepted
24
votes
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What's the maximum number of pegs you can leave on a 15-hole triangular peg solitaire?
It can be done in
jumps.
Here is the solution:
If you start with the hole elsewhere, you need more moves to reach an end position. Here are all the optimal end positions for each case, but without ...
- 50.8k
22
votes
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Scrabble Impossibilities
The word was...
And the reason you couldn't play the more common variant was...
- 145k
22
votes
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21
votes
Riley Riddle in the game
The Riley Riddle resolves to clue the board game:
My first can hold flags.
My second lasts three months.
My last is your attention.
My whole is the game you're playing.
We're not done yet. ...
- 133k
20
votes
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19
votes
19
votes
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8-queen puzzle on its head
On my puzzle website there is an old puzzle called Hoo-Doo which is essentially this same puzzle.
Some other board sizes:
- 50.8k
19
votes
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Four free rooks for checkmate
First rook is placed at any of
Second rook is placed
The third rook is placed
And then the fourth rook
A crappy example game below:
- 19.7k
19
votes
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Unfinished Snakes and Ladders
The other guys already got the answer. (Maybe not with completely airtight arguments, but nevertheless.) The explanations would be a lot easier to follow if they had pictures, so here's one:
Legend:
...
- 75.8k
17
votes
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But She Don't Care
These board-gamers are playing:
The board at the end of the game looks like this:
Who wins the game?
A final few Easter Eggs:
- 133k
16
votes
Alice and Bob invent a game
I spent quite a while working on this yesterday and today. I only have a partial answer.
I started with the assumption that
I chose this assumption because:
Given this assumption, I tried:
However:...
- 3,422
16
votes
Accepted
Chain Puzzle: Tabletop Games #10 – Risky Finale
The clue answers:
Sorted by group (and given in text form):
And when you take the given pair of letters, and read those pairs of letters in clue order, it spells out the message:
The full journey ...
- 145k
15
votes
Clear board in Othello (Generalisation)
Here is one way you could begin to prove that the board can be cleared for all values of $m$ and $n$.
Proof by induction. [incomplete]
Case 1: $k = 1$
Here we take k = 1 to mean the smallest ...
- 1,018
15
votes
Accepted
Chain Puzzle: Tabletop Games #08 - Targui, or not Targui
From the facts about the first grid
My first guess of the genre was
Naturally, the next step would be
It is not very hard, if we focus on the number 5:
Therefore,
Now to the second grid. With ...
- 11.6k
13
votes
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Capturing The Shadow King
OK, I barely made it with 10 moves, but it seems pretty hard to prove this is optimal (and I suspect the answer may be lower). The last move you make is Rh8, which will be the mate.
- 6,954
13
votes
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Clear board in Othello
Yes, I found this video on YouTube that has this "perfect game". Terrible music by the way
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prWG1OFgVqg
- 11.2k
13
votes
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Least amount of moves is required
Using a computer to attempt to beat my original solution I found some
Here is one:
I reduced the search space by not allowing stones to moves to (although they can jump via) the spots marked with an ...
- 21.1k
13
votes
13
votes
What is the minimum-sized Blokus board which can contain all pieces?
Wow, that sure is tight.
And yes, even though it doesn't look like it at the first glance, the I and T pentominoes are legally connected to each other :-)
This took surprisingly long to find and (...
- 75.8k
13
votes
12
votes
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Othello - Most number of legal moves in a given turn
The upper bound limit is likely to be quite a bit lower than 60.
For the purposes of this I will assume that you are WHITE.
In order for you to have a valid move in Othello, you need a line formed ...
- 10.6k
12
votes
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Color Configuration 3x3 board
This kind of puzzle is commonly referred to as "lights out", after a board game by that name. I googled that phrase and came upon a solver at http://www.ueda.info.waseda.ac.jp/~n-kato/lightsout/. So ...
- 3,040
12
votes
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Monte Carlo Chess
I initially gave a slightly rambling stream-of-consciousness answer, which I have preserved below in case anyone prefers that. Here is a slightly slicker one. (It is the same argument, just possibly ...
- 117k
12
votes
Accepted
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible