Long Tau

Long Tau is a  1943 game by M.J.G.Thomassen.

Below you'll find the rules and some comments by Fred Horn.

LONG TAU      The Chinese DRAGON-game

                                         ©  M.J.G.Thomassen  Illustrator  29 May 1943

Introduction by Fred Horn:

In the late Seventies of the last Century I was asked to make an inventory  of all games stored in the Attick of the Jumbo-headquarters in Amsterdam. One of my finds there was this game which mr. Thomassen had send to Jumbo in 1943 to get an ordeal about the possibilities of publishing it. That never did materialize and Jumbo also did not returned the Prototype. 

When I tried to find more about the Game and its Author, privacy-rules made it (for me) impossible to get access to the Files: you have to be Family or you must have a declaration of a University that you are doing scientific research.

The prototype is now in the Amsterdamsch Historisch Museum. The Speelgoed-Museum in Deventer also owns a version of the game, which could indicate that (probably in small numbers) the game has been published elsewhere.

The Game-Rules I present here in English are an exact translation of the original typed rules from mr.Thomassen. He then (1943) lived in Amsterdam; Leonardostraat 3 (1 hoog);   tel: 22234

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LONG TAU, the Chinese dragongame

LONG TAU is an old Chinese game, in which the dragon who has to be sitting in the middle of the game-board on his golden chair, presses his mark.

Within Chinese thoughts a dragon cannot be killed, only tied, so the aim of the game is not to “capture” opponents’ pawns, but to “besiege” these pawns and make them harmless.

Around the Golden Chair are 4 play-areas, connected by straight lines, each with 22 squares. When LONG TAU is played with TWO , only  2 opposite areas are used and both players place 22 pawns on the squares.

(N.B. handwritten is added: ‘color!’  à so each player has his own color.  F.H.)

Players draw lots who starts.

The pawns can only move along the straight black lines, as far as possible, which means:

till the end of the line or when meeting an own pawn or an opponents pawn. This strange way of movement of the pawns is one of the ‘enchanting things’ of LONG TAU.

Jumping over pawns during a move is not allowed.

Players turns are alternately.

When a player succeeds in completely surrounding an opponents pawn, he removes this pawn in his next turn and also moves one of his own pawns.

A pawn is besieged when he is completely surrounded by enemy-pawns and cannot move. Sometimes a player needs 3, sometimes 4 pawns for this enclosure. This depends on its place on the board. If a pawn is surrounded by 3 opponents pawns and one own, and this own pawn can still move, then de besiege is not complete and the pawn cannot removed.

It is also possible to besiege a whole group of pawns. The one condition is that the surrounding is really complete. In that case the complete group may be removed from the board.

If a player can occupy during his turn the 4 squares of the Golden Chair then he can remove in his next turn the 4 opponent pawns which are situated the farthest from the Golden Chair.

If a player want to do this agsin he first has to move one of his pawns from the squares around the Golden Chair, to return in his next move. This gives the opponent the opportunity  to occupy this empty square and thus save his game.

The first player without pawns on the board, looses the game.

Is LONG TAU played with FOUR, then each player starts in his area with 12 pawns, situated on the 12 squares the nearest to the players edge of the board. The 2 opposite players play against the other 2.

(N.B. it is clear that the “partners” play with the same color.  F.H.)

Necessaries:   48 pawns, in 2 sete of 24 pieces, in 2 colors.

  

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On 29 May 1943 –the date I did use for the copyright date- mr. Thomassen send a Letter to Hausemann & Hötte in which he gives a further explication of the rules.

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Dear Sirs,

As a result of our conversation on the telephone, I summarize below in short the rules!

The game may be played by 2 or 4 persons, respectivily with 22 or 12 pawns ( the line-up with 12 pawns is upon the squares at the back part of the board).

The game is based on the principle of removing pawns of the opposite party by:

1) enclosure /besiege

2) ‘making’ the Golden Chair (the inner Square)

A pawn is besieged when it is completely surrounded by enemy pawns and is unable to move.

Also more pawns (grouped together F.H.) may be besieged as a whole,

When the Golden Chair has been ‘made’, 4 opponents pawns may be removed from the outside squares.

The movement of the pawns is along a straight line. A pawn must move up to the end of the line where this line changes direction, or up to the point where another pawn ‘blocks’ further movement.

If you require further verbal explication, I will be with pleasure at your diposal.

I do hope to hear from in the near future, yours faithfully,

                                                                                                                    M.J.G.Thomassen

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N.B. Unluckely for mr. Thomassen, Jumbo never answered!

STRAAT

Another game sent by Fred Horn. This Game for two players was exhibited 1984 in Amsterdam.

The rules translation from Dutch:

STRAAT is a Puzzle-game for 2 Persons.

Equipment:

16 Square Pieces, each on 1 side half-Black/half-White and on the other side 8 total-Black and 8 total-White.

Play-frame of 4 x 4 Squares from transparent material (glass/perspex/etc.) .

Transparent lid to cover the Pieces after filling the frame.

Rules:

One Player takes the 8 all-White- the other the 8 all-Black-Pieces.

White starts. In his Turn a Player lay down one of his Pieces to his wish anywhere on the Board, according to the grid. The orientation is up to the Player.

When all Pieces have been placed, each Player counts his Straten (Streets) –a connection of opposite edges with his color- , place the lid and turns the Board over and also counts his Straten on the back.

Player with highest sum WINS.

Roadblock

This is a 1976 Hasbro game that I recently found the rules. Here they are:

Matoca

Matoca is a 1973 game from publisher Alabe Products. Bruce Whitehill kndly sent me following scans of the game:

SAUCE

Played in a 5 hexhex board. 12 for the first turn. After that a turn is to place two stones, or three if the opponent's biggest group is bigger than the player's (recursively).   Passes are always legal instead of placements.

When the board is full, the recursively-largest connected group wins.

Sample game:

      ___OOO________XXX___
  1.  ..  i5      k3  f4
  2.  o3 l4 f6    h2 h6 k5
  3.  i3 o5 k7    h4 j4 g5
  4.  g7 i7 n6    d2  m7
  5.  n4 e5 l6    c5 l2 d2
  6.  b6  d6      n2 a5 l6
  7.  j6  j8      o7 f8 k9
  8.  h8  g9      b4 m3 m5
  9.  e7  d8      i9 p6 q5
 10.  j2  g3      f2 g1 i1
 11.  k1  e3      c3 m1 e1
 12.  c7 e9 p4    n8 m9

Final Position:

|    abcdefghijklmnopq    
|        x x x o x         1
|       x x x o x x        2
|      x o o o x x o       3
|     x x x x x o o o      4
|    x x o x o x x o x     5
|     o o o x o o o x      6
|      o o o o o x x       7
|       o x o o x x        8
|        o o x x x         9
|    abcdefghijklmnopq
 
Groups sizes:
Os: size 23, 5
Xs: size 23, 9  X wins

Notice the recursive aspect of the goal. This is a quite interesting idea to apply in games where it's not difficult to draw (and we like to avoid draws, of course).

Peg Show & Telka

Peg Chow is a board game fom 1938 published by Parker Bros and is a Halma-Chinese Checkers variant.

The board:

There is also a variant to be played in the same board called Telka:

Bruce Whitehill kindly sent me these rule sets and related information. Also check his website, The Big Game Hunter.

Wit Begint en Wint

Feed Horn sent me information about a 1986 game compendium written in Dutch, called "Wit Begint en Wint" (White moves and wins). Here's a pdf with photos of its pages. Most of the games are well-known but some are inventions of the author Marius van Leeuwen.

Here are the pages of his original games and a brief description for each:

Hexagon -- Every connection between 2 opposing (corners belong to both) edges generates a Win.

There is also a more difficult variant: 3 edges must be connected and the corners are neutral (fig.3).

This Game has more to do with HAVANNAH from Freeling than with HEX.

Capture -- Similar to Hasami SHogi but with no fixed start-position. First the Players put the stones to their wish on the Board and then the Players in their turn make an orthogonal move with 1 stone going to an adjacent square. Capture as in the figures.

Eieren Rapen -- This is a NIM-game. All eggs are covered with a Chip. Loser is the Player who, in his last turn, must take the Chip from the broken egg. In a Turn a Player takes, to his wish, as much Chips from an egg as he wants out of a Row or Column (not necessarily adjacent).

Langste Adem -- Start on the indicated ring. In a Turn place your next Chip adjacent to your last played Chip . Player who cannot play in his turn loses. This is like POINT-BLANK  or as a reverse (take away) like ISOLA.

Connection -- This is the Connection game, but with different board size and probably previous to the commercial McNamara's game from 1991. Of course 1960's Bridg-It predates both

Carre -- The goal is to make as much squares as possible out of 4 or 8 own pieces on the board. Squares cannot be orientated diagonally. This is a little bit similar to the game Pagode.

SABOTAGE MALTHUS

Initial setup:

  abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxy   
        . . . . . . .         1
       . . . . . . x .        2
      . . o . . . x . .       3
     . . . . . . . . . .      4
    . . . . . . . . . . .     5
   . . . . . . . . . . . .    6
  . x x . . . . . . . o o .   7
   . . . . . . . . . . . .    8
    . . . . . . . . . . .     9
     . . . . . . . . . .     10
      . . o . . . x . .      11
       . o . . . . x .       12
        . . . . . . .        13
  abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxy

The mover places stones of either colour on empty spaces; as many (unrestricted) per turn as he has groups size 2 or more.

The game ends when the board is full or both consecutively pass; the player with the largest connected group (recursively), wins.

Recursive scoring means that if both largest groups are equal, then it's the 2nd largest groups that decide the match (and so on, if they are also equal...)

Game Sample:

  abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxy     
       x x . . o x x         1.  j4  p12  (O started)
      . . o o o x x x        2.  f12 g13 q13
     . . o x x x x o o       3.  o11 c9  e9
    . . o o x o x o . .      4.  g1  i1  y7  x8
   . . o x x x o x o x x     5.  r4 s3 d6 t10 u11
  o o o o x x o o x o . o    6.  m7 o7 l6 l8  k5 k9
 . x x . o x x x o x o o x   7.  n5 o5 f6 i7 q7 h8 p8
  . . o o x x x o o x o x    8.  t2 m3 o3 l4 g11 h10 j10
   o o x x x o o . o o .     9.  lm2 s5 px6 m9 lpq10 k11 o13
    x x x x o x o o o .      10. i5 J2 H6  F8 O9
     x x o o x o x . o       11. o1 h4 g5 i14 u3
      x o . o . o x X        12. (more moves not recorded)
       x o . o o x .         13.
  abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz#:-

O: 2 groups     largest is 34
X: 7 groups     largest is 37


O resigned in this position, since he can only play two stones per turn (against 7 stones from X), but he would have needed three stones so that his largest group would also consist of 37 stones. If that happenend, O would win because he has the 2nd largest group.

Pontoons

Pontoons is a 1870 game published by John Jaques. Fred Horn was able to found the ruleset:

POLYOPTOMY

This game is from the same company, THINK Games, that published The Game. Notice how the playing cubes have the same structure. The game is a #D Tic Tac Toe variant.

The next pictures are zoom ins of the previous one, showing the ruleset:

Fred Horn photos and information.

Transet

Transet is a game invented by the dutch author Harm van Veen. A game sample was found by Fred Horn in a second hand shop, it after some searches, Fred was able to found the author which was still alive.

 

 

 

The author invented the game as a pedagogical tools for its students when he was a younger professor, and developed it during the years. An older version was called Kwinta (here's a commercial ad about it):

TRANSET is played with only Five Rules as Harm explains:

Number 1 and 5 are, in his opinion, kind of ‘Agreements’ and 2, 3 and 4 are ‘Rules how to Move’.

1)  START

      The light-colored Pawns are placed on the North-side, the dark-colored on the South-side, with the PIAS in the middle, the PINETS at the edges and the PIOKERS in-between (see picture on page 10).

      The dark-Player (South) starts and then Moves go alternately

2)  MOVE

      a) PINET         One square straight ahead

      b) PIOKER      One square diagonal, left or right, ahead

      c)  PIAS            One square straight, or diagonal left or right ahead (combination of a and b)

      A Pawn can only be moved to an empty square

3)  CAPTURE

       When the square to move to is occupied by an Opponents’ Pawn, this Pawn is captured.

       The Player ends his Turn by replacing the captured Pawn on the Board upon an empty square of the Opponents’ starting Line

4)  MOVE with “SWOPPING”

       a) straight ahead and back

       Move TWO own Pawns, no matter which. One moves one square straigt ahead, the 

       other one square straight backwarts, both only if the squares to move to are empty

       b) sideways left and right

       Move TWO own Pawns, no matter which. One moves one square sideways to the left,

       the other one square sideways to the right, only if the squares to move to are empty

5)  END

       a) by making an “end-move”: When a Player reaches in his Turn the other side of the Board with one of his Pawns, play ends immediately and this Player wins the Game

       b) by resignation: When one Player resigns, play ends and the Opponent wins the Game

       c) by draw: When both Players agree to a Draw there is no Winner.

BGS 2013: David Singmaster about Vanishing Puzzles

Metagrobologist David Singmaster made a nice presentation about an old subject: Vanishing Puzzles.

Here's a simple one where we move a piece of the puzzle and the original egg disappears:

David Singmaster brought lots of puzzles and old book references.

Here is a part of a page from Sebastiano Serlio - The First Booke of Architecture from 1611 (!) where it says that we can cut a table in a way to increase its area:

Another old reference is Davis Hooper's Rational Recreations, volume 4, from 1782:

And a 19th century French puzzle with the same theme:

Sam Loyd also made some famous vanishing puzzles:

I remember this next one from my youth, here in Portugal:

Other ones:

update: here's a Geogebra application of Loyd's Get off the Earth

Parallelogram

Rules of play

A strategy game for 2 players from 8 years and up.

Parts

1 game board with 6 x 6 spots

36 playing pieces in 6 different colours

Object of the game

The first player capturing 3 times 4 playing pieces of 1 colour wins this game.

Start of the game

1.      Put the game board on the table between the players.

2.      Each player receives 3 playing pieces of each colour.

3.      Draw lots to decide which player may start. Turns are taking clockwise.

Course of the game

1.      In turn a player puts one of his playing pieces (he may choose any colour he has) on a random empty spot on the game board. There are only two exceptions:

·         It is not allowed to put more than two playing pieces of the same colour beside each other.

·         It is not allowed to put more than three playing pieces in one line.

2.      When a player puts a fourth playing piece of the same colour on the game board to make a parallelogram he captures these 4 playing pieces by taking them off the game board.

Some examples of winning patterns:

© January 29 – June 21, 2012, Fred Horn & Sjaak Griffioen

Queen Bee

A Keith Budden 1980 game for Clipper's publisher.

The rules are the following (from BoardGameGeek)


CONTENTS

1 playing board
4 sets of 8 bees (playing pieces)

This game may be played by 2, 3 or 4 people.

If played by two people they should set their bees up on opposite sides of the board. If three people play they should use alternate bees marked on the board as starting positions for their Queen Bees. If 4 people
play then two players should start opposite the other two players, ie. each player has a blank space on one side and another player on the other side.

THE AIM OF THE GAME

The aim of the game is to get your Queen Bee into the hive on the centre of the board. The first player to do this wins the game.

TO SET UP THE BOARD

Each player has eight bees. One Queen Bee (value 1) four worker bees (value 2) and three warrior bees (value 3). To begin the game, the bees are placed on the board as in the diagram below. The Queen is placed on the marked position on the board. Note that the bees are located only on the intersections.

   +---+
  /     \
 /       \
2         +
 \       /
  \     /
   2---3
  /     \
 /       \
1         3
 \       /
  \     /
   2---3
  /     \
 /       \
2         +
 \       /
  \     /
   +---+

HOW TO MOVE

Players take turns, on each turn moving one bee. The value of the bee determines the number of intersections it may move, ie. a warrior may move 3 intersections, worker bees 2 intersections and the queen one
intersection. Each bee has to move the exact number of intersections indicated by its value. It may never move forward and then back to the same intersection in one move, ie. no repetition of movement is allowed
in a turn. A bee may never move through another bee.

CAPTURING

Players may capture their opponents' bees. To capture a bee you have to land exactly on the bee you wish to capture and then it is removed from the board. A captured bee is eliminated from the game and may not be returned to the board. You may never capture your own bees - only your opponents' bees. IMPORTANT: players may begin to capture their opponents' bees only from their second move onwards; they cannot capture on their first move of the game.

If your Queen Bee is captured, you are out of the game and your remaining bees are left on the board. These bees cannot be moved but they may be captured by any of the remaining players. It is, therefore, important to guard your Queen Bee as carefully as possible.

WINNING

The player who first gets his Queen Bee into the hive wins OR if all the other players are out of the game because their Queen Bee has been captured, the remaining player wins.

(C) Seven Town
Originated by Keith Budden