English

Eternal Picaria

Combinatorics 2016-07-19 v2

Abstract

Picaria is a traditional board game, played by the Zuni tribe of the American Southwest and other parts of the world, such as a rural Southwest region in Sweden. It is related to the popular children's game of Tic-tac-toe, but the 2 players have only 3 stones each, and in the second phase of the game, pieces are slided, along specified move edges, in attempts to create the three-in-a-row. We provide a rigorous solution, and prove that the game is a draw; moreover our solution gives insights to strategies that players can use.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1607.04236,
  title  = {Eternal Picaria},
  author = {Urban Larsson and Israel Rocha},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1607.04236},
  year   = {2016}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T14:54:58.915Z