Fox and geese

Three games on the fox and geese board

The board is a cross of thirty-three holes. Three different games are played on it; choose one under «New game».

Fox and geese

• One player has the fox, the other seventeen geese. The geese fill the top arm of the cross and the row below it, with one more at each end of the next row. The fox starts in the middle.
• The fox moves first. He steps one hole in any direction: forwards, backwards, sideways or diagonally.
• The fox kills a goose by jumping over it to an empty hole just beyond, and the goose leaves the board. He may jump again and again in the same move, turning as he likes, as long as each jump is over a goose to an empty hole. He never has to capture.
• A goose steps one hole forwards (down the board) or sideways. Geese never move backwards or diagonally, and they cannot jump. Their weapon is the wall they build round the fox.
• The fox wins when he has killed twelve geese, or when the geese have no move left. The geese win when the fox cannot move.

Wildebeest

• A game for two, devised for this board by León Vié. Each player has twelve marbles in their own colour.
• First the marbles are placed, one a turn, on any free hole — but never on a hole right next to one of your own along a line, across or up and down. That rule can leave some marbles that never get onto the board.
• When all are placed, a turn is moving one of your marbles one hole across or up and down to an empty hole.
• Three of your marbles in a straight line across or up and down is a wildebeest. When your move makes one, you eat one of your opponent's marbles, any one you choose.
• The first to eat all the other's marbles wins.

The moving problem

• Two players with eight marbles each, starting in the two side arms of the cross. The aim is to move all your marbles over to the holes where your opponent's stood.
• A marble steps one hole straight ahead — across or up and down — to an empty hole, or jumps straight over any marble, its own or the other's, to the empty hole beyond. Jumps may be chained in one move.
• Play either until one player has filled the other's holes, which wins, or with a fifteen-minute clock: when time is up, whoever has the most marbles in the opponent's holes wins.

In this version

• You choose who plays the fox; the fox always moves first.
• Fox and geese ends in a draw after fifty moves in which no goose is killed and no goose moves forward. The geese that can move are marked, and the fox shows every hole he can reach, with the jumps along the way.
• Wildebeest: a player who cannot place a marble, or cannot move, passes. A line counts only when the marble just moved completes it.
• The moving problem: the fifteen-minute clock is switched on under «New game».
• The machine looks a few moves ahead in all three.

New game