Skip to content
EntityQ3135048· pop 6· linked from 14 articles

Hexapawn is a deterministic two-player game invented by Martin Gardner. It is played on a rectangular board of variable size, for example on a 3×3 board or on a regular chessboard. On a board of size n×m, each player begins with m pawns, one for each square in the row closest to them. The goal of each player is to either advance a pawn to the opposite end of the board or leave the other player with no legal moves (akin to stalemate), including by capturing all of their pawns.

In the Vinony graph

Within Vinony's link graph, hexapawn is referenced by 14 other articles, and connects out to chess, Artificial intelligence and game.

Vinony files it under 1962 in chess, Board games introduced in 1962 and Chess variants.

Its subject is documented across 6 Wikipedia language editions.

Wikidata facts

Instance of
solved game
Sport
chess
Sources (1)

via Wikidata · CC0

~3 min read

Encyclopedic overview

5 sections
Contents
  • Rules
  • Dawson's chess
  • References
  • Sources
  • External links

Hexapawn is a deterministic two-player game invented by Martin Gardner. It is played on a rectangular board of variable size, for example on a 3×3 board or on a regular chessboard. On a board of size n×m, each player begins with m pawns, one for each square in the row closest to them. The goal of each player is to either advance a pawn to the opposite end of the board or leave the other player with no legal moves (akin to stalemate), including by capturing all of their pawns.

Hexapawn on the 3×3 board is a solved game; with perfect play, White will always lose in 3 moves (1.b2 axb2 2.cxb2 c2 3.a2 c1#). Indeed, Gardner specifically constructed it as a game with a small game tree in order to demonstrate how it could be played by a heuristic AI implemented by a mechanical computer based on Donald Michie's Matchbox Educable Noughts and Crosses Engine (MENACE).

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “hexapawn” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

Available in 6 languages

via Wikidata sitelinks · CC0

Connections

Categories