Whoever has a greater sum of numbers left over – that is, whoever loses a smaller sum to the black hole – is the winner. The black hole destroys all its neighboring circles. When you have each written your 10, there will be one circle left blank: the black hole. (You must write your numbers in order no skipping ahead.) Then, take turns writing a 1 in a circle of your choice.Īfter that, take turns writing 2, 3, and so on, in order. Draw six on the bottom row, five on top of that, four on top of that, and so on. You begin by drawing a pyramid of 21 circles. This has more the flavor of a puzzle than a game. Here, purple wins! (Green fly made some bad life choices.) (You may have less territory left than you think!) Also, whereas most pencil-and-paper games leave the paper coated with crisscrossing gibberish, this one ends up like a page from a coloring book. The strategy seems straightforward, but the grapes can trick the eye, lending an element of suspense. Whoever winds up unable to move, because there are no adjacent grapes available, is the loser. On each move, your fly consumes the grape it’s on (shown by fully coloring in the grape), then moves to an adjacent grape. (Whoever placed their fly second should begin.) Then, by turns, each player picks a grape on which their “fly” begins, and marks it with a colored dot. Make it clear which grapes share a border. It’s something about those juicy grapes, the silly theme, and the lovely drawings that result.įirst, draw a bunch of grapes. It’s like dozens of others I’ve encountered. This is, in one sense, a standard game of territory control. What happens if you start with identical numbers in your corners (e.g., 7, 7, 7, 7)? What if you pick radically different numbers (1, 10, 100, 1 million)? Is there a best strategy? If so, is it deterministic or probabilistic? The field is open for exploration! The goal: have as many rows, columns, and diagonals as possible sharing the same sum.Ī pair with the same sum scores 1 point a trio scores 2 points a quartet scores 3 points and so on. Now, whatever numbers your opponent put in her corners, you must put in your edges (in whatever order you like).įinally, you can choose whatever number you like for the center. Then, you reveal your squares to each other. You may use whatever numbers you like (including repeats). In Walter’s game, you won’t achieve that, but the goal is to get as close as possible.Įach player begins with a blank square, then secretly places numbers in the four corners. In an actual magic square, every row, column, and diagonal has the same sum. ( See the bottom of the post for an interview with Walter.) May the wondrous light of Joris Radiation shine upon you in these strange times! Each is for two players each requires only pens and paper and each has surprising strategic depths to plumb. “Nearly all the games have been invented by me,” he writes in the introduction, and it’s true: his fingerprints are on every page.įrom those hundred, I picked out half a dozen to share here. His book 100 Strategic Games for Pen and Paper is the most bizarre and marvelous thing I’ve read this year. Is it a goatee? I do not know, and I approve fully. Walter sees… well, to be honest, I don’t know what Walter sees, but I can’t help wanting to see it too. A fun quarantine activity for the whole family? NO! BEWARE, LEST YOUR CHILDREN GROW TO LOVE PAPERMAN MORE THAN THEY LOVE HUMAN How many TENTURN doodles are possible? I haven’t calculated yet – it’s a tough combinatorics problem! Walter generates games, puzzles, and pencil-and-paper experiments with such intensity and regularity that he must be a kind of pulsar: some heretofore unknown astronomical object, emitting what I admiringly call Joris Radiation. Is this a game? A puzzle? A piece of art? Whatever it is: classic Joris.

Nowhere in all my research have I come across a mind quite like that of Walter Joris. For my research, I’ve been reading old collections, scrounging Board Game Geek, hosting play-test parties, attending game design conventions, and conscripting students as guinea pigs (which works much better than the reverse: conscripting guinea pigs as students). This year, I’m writing a book about mathematical games.

Pen and paper 3