[pbmserv] History of Stymie

[Randall Bart <barticus@att.net>]

The history of Stymie begins in February 2003.  That is when I moved into 
my apartment in SoHo in New York City.  The bathroom floor is tiles in an 
Archimedean 488 formation.  The designation "488" means that each vertex 
has one square (4) and two octagons (8s).  Looking at this floor every day 
made me want to use this tiling as a game board.

Then in late November of 2003, I found out that Cameron is writing a book 
on connection games.  I really don't care for connection games, except for 
TwixT (http://www.gamerz.net/pbmserv/twixt.html).  They all seem dull, just 
short of being something interesting.  Except TwixT has that little 
something extra that makes it a great game.

I am an egotist.  While I don't really care for Hex 
(http://www.gamerz.net/pbmserv/hex.html) and the dozens of similar games, I 
really wanted to get my name in Cameron's book.  Not a great game, not even 
a particularly good game.  I didn't intend to play this game, I didn't 
intend that anyone should play this game.  I was just aiming to create a 
game that would appear in Cameron's book and be forgotten.

The board was foreordained by my bathroom floor.  First idea is to apply 
the rules of Hex to this board.  Well that makes a game alright.  It works, 
you can play it.  It's as good a game as Hex, because it almost is 
Hex.  It's slightly different because the board is different, but so?  I 
thought a game should be a little better than that.  I didn't think Cameron 
would be sufficiently impressed by this game to make his book.  Actually 
this game wouldn't have made his book because he already has Quax 
(http://www.gamerz.net/pbmserv/quax.html),  which essentially is the same 
game.  So I went searching for the rule(s) which would make this game a 
little different.  (I wasn't looking for better -- just different.)

I observed that the octagons are so much more powerful than the squares, 
that no one will move in the squares unless they need to connect octagons 
on opposite sides of the square.  In fact the squares are so insignificant 
that in Quax, the squares aren't even drawn on the board until you fill one 
(which makes the octagons look like squares, but Cameron will verify that 
Quax is really on a 488 board).

How to make players move in the squares?  Simple answer:  Require it.  Tell 
the players they need to alternate taking octagons and squares.  That ends 
up being horz octagon, vert octagon, horz square, vert square, etc, which 
has a strange asymmetry that I didn't like.  If I fix the asymmetry it 
becomes horz octagon, vert square, vert octagon, horz square, etc.  Okay, 
that works.  I should have stopped there.  Cameron would have given it a 
page in his book, then it would have been forgotten, QED.

For some reason I didn't stop there.  Except for the first move in a single 
space, each move would be a square and an octagon.  I started thinking of 
this as a single move rather than two separate moves.  I envisioned a 
physical piece made of an octagon and square connected.  Each move would be 
a square and an octagon adjacent to each other.  This game has two problems:

1)  There is one more row of octagons than squares, so eventually you will 
run out of squares.
2)  Even if you don't run out of squares, there will end up being places 
where there is no available square next to the octagon, or vice versa.

If I held to the square plus octagon rule, the game would become blocked 
(stymied, though that word came later).  I had to allow the players to make 
single moves, but that violated my goal of forcing the players to use the 
squares.  I wanted to punish the player who made the single move.  I 
thought of various ideas.

How about the player forfeits his next turn?  This means the opponent gets 
to take four spaces before the player moves again.  That penalty seemed too 
strict.  I thought about more complex rules.  After placing a lone octagon, 
the next piece must be a lone square (and vice versa).  Give the player a 
free single move, then invoke the penalty the second time.  I was toying 
with complex ideas, where there would be an escalating table of 
penalties.  But I prefer simple games with simple rules.  So I wanted a 
simple penalty that's not as harsh as letting the opponent take four 
spaces.  If you are looking for a number between two and four, it doesn't 
take a rocket scientist to find three.

Those are the rules.  All I needed now was a name.  I thought of 
combinations of "octagon" with "square", something like 
"squoctagon".  Nothing was inspiring.  I put something into a spellchecker, 
got a word back, looked that up in the dictionary and started down the page 
looking for interesting words.  I came upon "supererogation".  I didn't 
think it was necessarily so super, so I sent it to Cameron with the name 
"Erogation".  It has noting to do with Eros -- it means 
"spending".   Cameron puzzled over why I called this game "spending" but it 
was just a random name.  He asked me to come up with a better name.  He 
suggested a couple, which were as inspired as "Erogation".  I sent him a 
list of about six.  I think one of them was "Hippopotamus".  The last one 
on the list was "Stymie".

In the subsequent hours, I started liking the name "Stymie" more and 
more.  Cameron is at the other end of the world from me, so it was hours 
before he wrote back saying he liked "Stymie".  So Stymie it is.

The word "stymie" is Scots for blockage, obstruction.  It comes into common 
English via the game of Golf.  In Golf, the player farthest from the hole 
has to go first.  It used to be that if someone else's ball was in the way, 
that was tough; you were stymied.  Some players never liked this rule, and 
groundskeepers hated to see players chipping or making trick shots on the 
green, so the stymie was abolished half a century ago.

In Stymie, you end up in situations where the attempted paths cross at an 
isolated space.  Both players want to move there, but the penalty (the 
triple move) may allow the opponent to make an end run.  The players are 
Stymied, blocked from moving right at the center of the action until all 
the end run space has been settled.

The Stymie rule is rather like the ko rule in Go.  In a game where pieces 
usually only affect each other through adjacency, it allows one space to 
affect action anywhere else on the board.  Connection games often don't 
have much middle.  You work up to one critical point, and at that point 
someone wins and someone loses and it is over.  In Stymie you work up to 
one critical point, but neither player dares move there.  The players must 
look elsewhere and develop sub-plots, only to return to that critical point 
for the climax.

I don't want to blow my own horn--.  Wait, I got into this situation by 
being an egotist.  I am blowing my own horn here:  Stymie is a great 
game.  I didn't intend for it to be great, but you can't always get what 
you intended.  The Stymie rule makes it a game that fills a lot of the 
board.  It's not as good as Go, it may not be as good as TwixT, but this 
game would be in my top ten if my worst enemy had invented it.  I know 
Cameron has pumped out a lot of connection games recently, but you really 
ought to take a look at Stymie.

Stymie challenge <you> Barticus
Stymie challenge Barticus <you>
http://www.gamerz.net/pbmserv/stymie.html

And ConHex is also a great connection game.

ConHex challenge <you> Barticus
ConHex challenge Barticus <you>
http://www.gamerz.net/pbmserv/conhex.html

I have retired from FireAndIce, and the Quoridor Tournament just started 
up, so Stymie and ConHex are the only games where I am looking for challenges.

--
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