Hexagonal Y 2023

Hexagonal Y is a two-player game played on a regular hexagonal board (all sides of equal length) of any size, initially empty. The two players, Red and Blue, take turns placing their own stones onto unoccupied cells of the board, starting with Red.

If you begin your turn with a placement on a perimeter cell, you must immediately also place a stone on the opposite perimeter cell (opposite about the board’s center point), concluding your turn. For non-perimeter placements, you only place one stone per turn.

To win, you must form a group of your stones such that:

At least two of the group's stones occupy perimeter cells. The shortest perimeter path that includes all of the perimeter cells occupied by the group's stones comprises more than half of the perimeter.

Design notesI tranced continuously for five days on the problem of adapting Y to a regular hexagon. This extraordinary discovery surfaced like a message in a magic 8 ball. Not like a flash. More like dawnlight. A glimpse. An attraction. A narrowing.

I think of Hexagonal Y as, if not my magnum opus, at least one of my top two or possibly three designs. It's the proximity to Hex and Y. The simplicity. The rarity. The magnificence.