Black Path Game

The Black Path Game (also known by various other names, such as Brick) is a two-player board game described and analysed in Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays. It was invented by Larry Black in 1960. It has also been reported that a game known as "Black" or "Black's Game" was invented in 1960 by William L. Black. This "William L. Black" (possibly known as "Larry") was at that time an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, investigating Hex and Bridg-It, two games based on the challenge to create a connected "chain" of counters that link opposite sides of a game board. The creative outcome of Black's research was a new topological game that his friends (perhaps unimaginatively) called Black. The game was introduced to the public by Martin Gardner in his October 1963 "Mathematical Games column" in Scientific American.