Black Box (game)

Black Box is an abstract board game for one or two players, which simulates shooting rays into a black box to deduce the locations of "atoms" hidden inside. It was created by Eric Solomon. The board game was published by Waddingtons from the mid-1970s and by Parker Brothers in the late 1970s. The game can also be played with pen and paper, and there are numerous computer implementations for many different platforms, including one which can be run from the Emacs text editor.

Black Box was inspired by the work of Godfrey Hounsfield who was awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his invention of the CAT scanner.

Black Box is played on a two-dimensional grid. The object of the game is to discover the location of objects ("atoms", represented by metal balls in the Waddingtons game and by yellow balls in the Parker Brothers version) hidden within the grid, by the use of the minimum number of probes ("rays"). The atoms are hidden by a person in a two-player game. In a solitaire game, they are either hidden by a computer or they are pre-hidden; in this case, the results of various probes are resolved by looking them up in a book. The seeker designates where the ray enters the black box and the hider (or computer or book) announces the result (a "hit", "reflection", or "detour"/"miss"). This result is marked by the seeker, who uses these to deduce the position of the atoms in the black box.

The most common configuration for novice players is four atoms in an 8×8 grid. At left is a sample black box in this configuration.

There are 32 input positions in an 8×8 grid, eight each at the top, bottom, right, and left. A beam is "fired" into one of these positions and the result is used to help deduce the location of a known number of hidden atoms.

Atoms interact with rays in three ways. A direct impact on an atom by a ray is a "hit". Thus, ray 1 fired into the box configuration at left strikes an atom directly, generating a "hit", designated by an "H". A ray which hits an atom does not emerge from the box.

The interaction resulting from a ray which does not actually hit an atom, but which passes directly to one side of the ball is called a "deflection". The angle of deflection for this ray/atom interaction is 90 degrees. Ray 2 is deflected by the atom at left, exiting the box as shown.

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