'Nic-Nac-Noe' - a germ of an idea.

[Ferris]

Would anyone be keen to take this two-player game idea further? I’m interested to know whether it’s workable in its present form, and also whether it’s original or not.

Take a 6x6 grid as the board, and each player receives 18 tiles (like Scrabble®) with the numbers 0-9 on ten of them, and the following operators on the rest: + + + - - * * /

Each player takes it in turn to place a tile somewhere on the grid until all tiles have been placed. The object is for each player to make the largest score possible in each of their allocated rows or columns. One player scores the columns (viewed from top to bottom) and the other scores the rows (from left to right).

Hence the name, as it's tic tac toe with numbers.

I can see a few potential situations needing rules:

1. The four corner squares cannot have operators in them. If a player has only operators left and the only available squares are corner squares, then that player loses any further turns. Equally, operators cannot be placed next to each other horizontally or vertically (diagonally is acceptable). It might be necessary to increase the board to a 7x7 grid in order to help overcome these restrictions (play-testing will determine this).
   
   
2. Operators placed on squares along the other outer sixteen squares will count only if they make ‘sense’, so 6+2/53 along the top row would be read as: 6+(2/53) for that row, but the player scoring columns would ignore the leading ‘/’ in the fourth column.
   
   
3. As dividing by zero is undefined, the game should either treat it as ‘ignored’ or as zero - I haven’t decided which.
   
   
4. I think each player should play a number as their first tile.
   
   
5. Adding up each row/column gives each player a total. The highest total wins.

There’s probably lots of other things I haven’t covered, but play-testing will bring them to light. At this stage, I'm happy for people to sign up in this thread for a game, or play it off-line and just report back to explain any problems or suggestions, etc.

[dethwing]

I'll give it a whirl.

[Courk]

I'll play the first chance I get.

[kevinatilusa]

Why not extend the board to part of an 8 by 8 board by coloring the original 6x6 board like a checkerboard, then inserting a black square next to all white squares on the edge?

By only placing numbers on black, and operations on white, you avoid the problem of operations next to each other.

[This message has been edited by kevinatilusa (edited 03-09-2003 11:59 PM).]

[Ferris]

Good idea, although it then might eliminate some of the possibilities for tactics that incorporate bigger numbers.

E.g. A row with: 26_758 already completed would make a profound difference to one player's score depending on whether he or she got to it first and inserted a '*', or whether their opponent put a '/' there instead. If the board is set up so that you can only place: 0_0_0_0 (where '_' = operator) then the scope seems more restricted (to me anyway).

Fiddling around on paper earlier, I think a 7x7 or 8x8 board might be better, with the same number of tiles and restrictions. On a 6-sided board, it's much harder to get to place all your tiles. That might not necessarily be a bad thing though - strategies that prevent your opponent from using their '0' or '*' for example might be an essential part of the game.

But I'm not suggesting you have to follow my rules; try your 'checkerboard' out for a few games and let us know how it works. The more ideas and play-testing, the better we'll know if it's a good game or not. Thanks for the input so far!

[referee]

If I wanted a high score on that 26_758 row I'd place a 9 in the empty space. score: 269758 (wow!)