Dots and Boxes
A widely known Paper-And-Pencil game, playable on the web.
A very simple game to start with, which however may develop sophisticated and mathematically involved strategies.
Draw a box side from one dot to one of its neighbours: the player who draws the 4th side of a box claims it and draws another side. The player who claimed more boxes wins.
Pie rule: some board sizes have the variant with the so called pie rule; with it, player 1 may play up to a certain number of moves (currently 5) alternating the colour;
when he runs out of moves (or decides to stop), the other player chooses between swapping the player colours or keeping them as they are; this also decides who is going to play right after;
after this, play goes on normally alternating player moves.
Number of players: 2
Game duration: 5 mn
Complexity: 2 / 5
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Play Dots and Boxes and 834 other games online.
No download necessary - play directly from your web browser.
With your friends and thousands of players from the whole world.
Free.
Rules summary
Goal of the game
To claims the majority of the boxes.
Setup
A rectangular grid of dots, arranged in rows and columns, defines a grid of boxes, the dots being their corners. The grid starts empty.
Player turn
At each turn, a player draws (fills) one of the box sides, connecting one dot to another one adjacent to it vertically or horizontally. The player may choose whatever side and the sides themselves belong to nobody.
Only when a box is completed (its fourth side is drawn), the player completing the box claims it and fills it with their own colour. Once the box claimed, the player has to fill another empty box side (and so on, as long as each action completes another box).
Game end
When all the box sides are drawn, the player who claimed the most boxes wins.
Pie rule
With some sizes, a variant may played which uses a kind of pie rule to compensate for the advantage of the first player. The first player plays up to a certain number n of turns drawing sides; the first player may decide to stop anytime after drawing the first side and the colours are (implicitly) assumed to alternate as during regular gameplay.
At this point, the second player chooses between keeping the same colours or swapping them between the two players and the player with the next playing colour plays next.
From this point on, players alternate as during regular gameplay.
At the time of writing this page, only the 5 boxes × 5 boxes size may use the pie rule and the first player may draw up to 5 sides during the setup phase.
