Clearcut 2023

Clearcut is a two-player game played on a square board of any size, initially empty. The two players, Red and Blue, take turns placing their own checkers onto unoccupied squares, one checker per turn, starting with Red. Passing is not allowed, but if you don't have an available placement, your turn is skipped.

You win by forming a path of checkers of your color (interconnected via horizontal or vertical adjacencies, or both) connecting the two board edges of your color.

Groups and crosscutsA group is a monocolored group of checkers interconnected horizontally or vertically, or both. Diagonal adjacencies are irrelevant in Clearcut.

A crosscut is a 2×2 area with two diagonally adjacent red checkers and two diagonally adjacent blue checkers.

A crosscut group is a group that contains a crosscut checker.

Crosscut ruleYou can only form a crosscut if by doing so you create a new crosscut group which is larger than each of the enemy crosscut groups of the crosscut.

Having formed a crosscut, immediately remove the two enemy checkers of the crosscut, concluding your turn.

In order to make a placement which would form two crosscuts simultaneously, you would have to satisfy the crosscut rule for both of the crosscuts, each considered separately.