Othello, hello! We have the beginnings of a new ruleset, Othello, which takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master (this was their slogan). Turns out it takes a minute and many lifetimes to design and set on the shores of eternity alongside epic games like go and chinese checkers. Othello turns over pieces “between” the pieces you play so it needs the concept of path in that there must be a straight line of enemy pieces between two of your pieces oplayed. On a grid this is common sense, diagonals, horizontals and verticals are all we need. On retessed boards we need the pinch. The shortest path produces bugs where the computer turns corners and that cannot be allowed, instead otherloo is about having two sides to a line of turnover pieces and that I call the pinch because it has two fingers located where each of your pieces propose a line flip. I think it is probably time to open a grid board and play Olthello in its original form a few times before we code the new ruleset to see what a pinch implies. I thought the triangle would be the only problem since it splits a line in two directions, but I found a bug that turns a corner at a hex and a square.

This project has only one result, a database of rulesets and tessellation boards that is inclusive of all possible retessellatable board games. There really isn’t a race to achieve this it only needs to be done once and we can begin coining new games and moving to irregular polygons. Othello I thought would be a low hanging fruit, glad it is up, just a little more attention to detail for it to start out. I look forward to getting ai that can record games and marshal evidence in arguments for specific moves.