Hex 7...

Instructions

Hex is a two-player board game, played on a diamond-shaped board made of hexagons. The size of the board may vary, but there are always an equal number of hexes along each edge.

The players, White and Black, each own two opposite edges of the board. The players take turns placing their pieces on any open hex. White plays first, but cannot make its opening move on the center hex. Play continues until one side or the other has won; the game cannot end in a draw.

The object of the game is for each player to create an unbroken chain of their own pieces, which connects their two edges of the board. The first player to create such a chain is the winner. It does not matter what path the chain takes across the board in order to connect the two edges. For White, the chain of white pieces would run from the lower left to upper right edge. For Black, from the lower right to upper left. The chain may twist and turn freely on its way from one edge to the other.

Hex was created in 1942 by the Danish inventor Piet Hein, and independently by the American mathematician John Nash in 1948. The game was known as Polygon in Denmark, where it was very popular in the 1940's, and as Nash in the United States, where it was played in university mathematics departments.

In 1952 it was marketed in the U.S. by Parker Brothers, who gave it the name Hex. The commercial game is no longer available, but Hex has retained its popularity over the years among game players, mathematicians, and computer scientists.