L – Game

L – Game starting position

Description: The L game is a simple abstract strategy board game invented by Edward de Bono. It was presented in his book The Five-Day Course in Thinking (1967). L- Game has an interesting origin. Once Edward de Bono was sitting next to the mathematician, professor Littlewood at a dinner table. The talk got around to games and both agreed that chess achieved difficulty through complexity. As a challenge, de Bono set out to design a simple game which is known as L game and that could still be played with skill.

Material: To play this game we need a board of 4×4 squares, two 3×2 L-shaped piece (different color), and there are two 1×1 neutral pieces (same color).

Instruction:

The board is marked with 16 small squares (4×4). Place your L shapes and neutral pieces as shown in the figure above. Two players can play alternatively. Each player on his/her turn pick up his/her L shape and replace it on empty squares anywhere on the board. It may be rotated or even flipped over in doing so, the only rule is that it must end in a different position from the position it started—thus covering at least one different square, which is not covered previously. A player may optionally move a neutral piece by simply picks it up, then places it in an empty square anywhere on the board. The objective of the game is to leave your opponent without a legal move for his/her L shape.

Area to improve: Lateral thinking, Strategy making, Strategic thinking, Spatial reasoning.

Example: These are the all position where blue will win.