4/21/04

A while ago, I was showing a young student how to play sticks, a simple paper and pencil game that uses a grid of dots. The object is to take turns connecting the dots with the goal of creating a box that connects four dots. The player who achieves this, puts his initials in the box and gets to take another turn. I made a sheet of dots spaced an inch apart and another sheet of dots spaced a half inch apart. I was getting a bit tired of having to always draw the grids by hand.

When I saw the sheets, it occured to me that this could be another puzzle. David (a teacher I work with) took a look at what I had and came up with some challenges that could be solved in a variety of ways. This was the result.