Trimorp?
19/01/2020
The trimorp is a tic-tac-toe game for three (hence its name).
The Box
The very first version of this game is hidden in a small enigmatic box, numerunique's first with a magnetic closure.
The Game Board
The game board resembles a ventilation grille, but upon closer inspection, it has precisely 81 holes, and that's not by chance. Indeed, this number must meet the following conditions:
- be a multiple of 3 since there are 3 players and each must have the same number of pieces,
- be the square of an integer (n) to be distributed into n rows of n columns,
- be large enough for the game to be interesting,
- be small enough to fit in the box so the game is easily portable.
All these conditions imply the number 81.
The Pieces
There are thus 81 pieces of 3 different types, or 27 pieces per player. They are distinguished by different colors for easy identification and by different shapes for colorblind players.
The Rules
They are simple.
Each player chooses a different type of piece according to a strategy to be agreed upon among the 3 players. In fact, the trimorp game starts from this preliminary step.
The player who chose the white squares plays first, followed by the one who chose the gray circles, and finally the one who had to take the black hexagons.
Each player in turn places one of their pieces in a (free) hole of their choice.
The first player to align 5 of their pieces in one of the 4 directions (horizontal, vertical, diagonal, or the other diagonal) wins.
It is of course perfectly allowed to talk during the game; it's even necessary (and recommended) especially to negotiate (ephemeral) alliances between players, especially against the one who might win otherwise.
If all holes are filled without any player aligning 5 pieces, the winner is, in order of preference, the one who has:
- the most series of 4 aligned pieces,
- (if the 3 players are tied according to rule 1) the most series of 3 aligned pieces,
- (if the 3 players are tied according to rules 1 and 2) the most series of 2 aligned pieces,
- (if the 3 players are tied according to rules 1, 2, and 3) the one who opened the game box first.
It is reasonably expected that resorting to the last rule is exceptional, especially since the precise count of series of 4, 3, or 2 aligned pieces must be particularly tedious!
An Example
In the following end-of-game photo, it's the black player who won.
