How to Play

The object of Loopy is to form a loop with your chips. The rules are simple:

  1. Players alternate turns placing chips on the game board. Red moves first. As in Tic-tac-toe, once a chip is placed, it cannot be moved.
  2. To counter the advantage of going first, the second move by red cannot be on the same color-shaded square as the first.
  3. Loops are formed by imaginary connections between adjacent and diagonally-adjacent chips of the same color. To count as a loop, the connections must fully enclose at least one square on the game board, regardless of whether or not that that square is occupied by a chip of either color.

Additional Information

Technical Notes:

  • If you don’t see a graphical representation of a game board above, or if the graphics appear mangled in some way, it probably means your web browser doesn’t support some feature of the JavaScript language that I used to implement Loopy. Try upgrading to the latest version of your browser software.
  • The computer play speed depends on the Computer move strength setting in the menu, as well as on the speed of your computer and browser software. If you have a slow computer or are using a slow browser, the Stronger menu setting may not be practical.
  • Please feel free to email me (at the address given elsewhere on this web site) if you notice any bugs or problems with this implementation.

About the Game:

  • I came up with the idea for Loopy at about the age of 12 or 13, though I didn’t add rule #2 until many years later. (The concept for the game is so simple that I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that others may have independently had the same idea first, however.)

This page copyright © 2016-2018 Edward A. Morris.  Created June 16, 2016.  Last updated February 8, 2018.