Hex

The game was invented by the Danish mathematician Piet Hein, who introduced it in 1942 at the Niels Bohr Institute.

introduced it in 1942 at the Niels Bohr Institute

Hex (also called Nash) is a two-player abstract strategy board game in which players attempt to connect opposite sides of a rhombus-shaped board made of hexagonal cells.

The game was rediscovered in 1948 or 1949 by the mathematician John Nash at Princeton University.

Since the game can never end in a draw, Hex is also a determined game.

Hex was invented by mathematician and poet Piet Hein in 1942 and later rediscovered and popularized by John Nash.

Draws are impossible in Hex due to the topology of the game board.

Hex is played on a rhombic grid of hexagons, typically of size 11×11, although other sizes are also possible.

Nash insisted that he discovered the game independently of Hein, but there is some doubt about this, as it is known that there were Danish people, including Aage Bohr, who played Hex at Princeton in the 1940s, so that Nash may have subconsciously picked up the idea.

The game was first published by Hein under the name Polygon in the Danish newspaper Politiken on 26 December 1942.

In 1952, Parker Brothers marketed a version of the game under the name "Hex", and the name stuck.

Each player's goal is to form a connected path of their own stones linking their two board edges.

It was also known to Hein that the first player has a theoretical winning strategy.

Hex is a two-player abstract strategy connection game played on a rhombus-shaped board of hexagonal cells, in which each player tries to form an unbroken chain of their own colored pieces connecting their two opposite sides of the board while blocking the opponent from doing the same. The game cannot end in a draw, since one player connecting their sides necessarily blocks the other. It