Hackenbush Unrestrained
This game is taken from the book On Numbers and Games by John Conway (Academic Press, 1976). This is the most basic form of Hackenbush. More complicated versions of the game are Hackenbush Restrained, Hackenbush Hotchpotch, and Technicolor Hackenbush.
What you need
- A Hackenbush Picture (see below). It works well to draw it on a chalkboard. It is okay to use a picture that has been drawn with paper and pencil, but the erasing will be a bit more difficult.
Hackenbush Pictures
A Hackenbush Picture looks a little bit like a connect-the-dots picture that is inside a frame. Here is an example:
Notice that:
- The picture is drawn with jointed lines.
- Lines can be straight or curved.
- Every at each joint, there is a dot.
- Every part of the picture is connected to the frame.
- There is no dot where the lines touch the frame.
- Every line has a dot at both ends, unless the end touches the frame.
- A line can begin and end on the same dot.
How to play
- At each turn, a player begins by removing (erasing) one line.
- If, after that one line is removed a part of the picture has become disconnected from the frame, that section of the picture must be removed, also.
- Notice how, in the example below, if the line shown in green is removed, all the red lines must also be removed.
- In the next example, no additional lines will need to be removed when the green line is erased.
- The player who removes the last bit of the picture, leaving only the frame, is the winner.