Holly posted a cool set of Flickr photos called found board games, of which I think #3a is the most promising. Kevan suggested in the comments on that picture that it’s a bridge-building game, provide your own planks. Neat! But what’s the goal of a bridge-building game?

• Maybe it’s a race–try to get from the far yellow corner to the near blue corner first, but you can never have more than two planks on any given post, so your opponent can block or redirect your path. This seems like a recipe for mutual frustration, though.

• Maybe it’s a game of closing off loops to capture them for your own. You can try snag large cycles for big points, but your opponent might be quicker and cut your cycle in half before you’re done. You can play it safe with little squares, but your opponent might be roping in a lot of board while you do that. This seems awfully deterministic without some element of randomization to it.

The obvious answer is that this is just a grid, and there are a jillion games about edges on grids and I don’t think many of them are interesting. What interests me here is the color-coding and the specific way some of those blocks are shaped. It looks like it’s harder to reach the red blocks from the yellow ones; do those connections require special planks that could otherwise be used to make a diagonal connection?