Arrows

(Eggleton & Fraenkel, 1975)

Categorize 9 games based on the answer to two questions:

1) Will Emperor Jiaqing win / tie / lose if he goes the first.

2) Will the Pirate, Ching Shih, win / tie / lose if she goes the first.

The games are all variants of the game “arrows.” This is a great logic puzzle and the combination with the overarching sorting question makes this activity a big winner.

Get the 9 printable game-sheets here.

Steve Heller has created a beautiful Jamboard version here.

* These games are based on the 1975 game Arrows. That game was played on a grid with 25 spaces – seven pieces per player. These simpler games are meant to be “solved” by young students. What do I mean by “solving” a pure strategy game? I mean that if two good thinkers play one of these games, the outcome of the game is a forgone conclusion. Tic Tac Toe is solved. The first player always wins. If chess was solved it may turn out that the game is always a tie between sufficiently godly players. The other options would be that chess is always won by the first godly player (white) – or is always won by the second godly player (black). We are not gods – that’s the only reason that chess is still interesting. We have not solved it. Intelligent gods would find chess boring.