Hex (board game)

Hex

11×11 Hex gameboard showing a winning configuration for Blue
Years active	1942–present
Genre(s)	Board game Abstract strategy game Connection game
Players	2
Age range	8+ to adult
Setup time	None
Playing time	30 minutes – 2 hours (11×11 board)
Random chance	None
Skill(s) required	Strategy, tactics

Hex is a strategy board game for two players played on a hexagonal grid, theoretically of any size and several possible shapes, but traditionally as an 11×11 rhombus. Players alternate placing markers or stones (Go stones make ideal playing pieces) on unoccupied spaces in an attempt to link their opposite sides of the board in an unbroken chain. One player must win; there are no draws. The game has deep strategy, sharp tactics and a profound mathematical underpinning related to the Brouwer fixed point theorem. It was invented in the 1940s independently by two mathematicians. The game was first marketed as a board game in Denmark under the name Con-tac-tix, and Parker Brothers marketed a version of it in 1952 called Hex; they are no longer in production. Hex can also be played with paper and pencil on hexagonally ruled graph paper.

Hex-related research is current in the areas of topology, graph and matroid theory, combinatorics, game theory and computer heuristics.

Hex is a connection game, and can be classified as a Maker-Breaker game, a particular type of positional game. The game can never end in a draw (tie), in other words, Hex is also a "determined game".

Hex is a finite, perfect information game, and an abstract strategy game that belongs to the general category of connection games. When played on a generalized graph, it is equivalent to the Shannon switching game.

As a product, Hex is a board game; it may also be played with paper and pencil.