Quoridor®
Opening Position
No. of Players
Two or Four
Equipment
A 9x9 square grid, one pawn each for the two or four players (of different colors), and twenty walls.
History
Quoridor is published by Gigamic Games. It as developed from a labyrinth-like game called Pinko Pallino invented by an Italian, Mirko Marchesi. Quoridor received the Mensa Mind Game award in 1997 and the Game Of The Year in the USA, France, Canada and Belgium.
Objective
Each player's objective is to move their pawn to any of the nine cells on the opposite side of the board from which it starts. The first player to do so wins the game.
Play
The game starts with two or four pawns positioned as shown above. (For two players, the pawns are on opposite sides of the board). In addition, each player has a stock of walls off the board. In a two player game, each player starts with ten walls. In a four player game, each player starts with five walls.
Alternate turns entail one of two options for a player: moving their pawn or placing a wall on the board. Pawns move to an orthogonally adjacent square cell in any of four directions. If, on a player’s turn, their pawn is adjacent to another pawn, they may make a short jump over that pawn to a vacant square just beyond without capture. If this adjacent pawn has a third pawn or a wall on the other side of it, the player may move diagonally (this is the only time diagonal moves are allowed) to a vacant cell beside the pawn being jumped. You could call this an L-shaped jump or a diagonal move, but the results are the same.
Diagonal moves (L-Shaped jumps) are allowed in Quoridor when a pawn is otherwise blocked from moving forward. The yellow pawn shown above can move in any of the directions shown. Note also the proper placement of the walls in the diagram. The endpoints of a placed wall are always at a vertex (or node) and occupy the edges of four adjacent square cells in a larger square formation on the board.
Walls are linear two-space-wide pieces which can be placed along the edges of any group of four adjacent cells in a square formation on the board. Walls can never cross or overlap another wall already placed. Once placed they cannot be moved or removed by either player. Walls block the path of all pawns, which must go around them. A pawn cannot move through a wall placed by any player, including themselves. Walls cannot be positioned to imprison any pawn on the board, which would make it impossible for that player to win. In other words, there must always be an exit.
Strategy
Variations
Sources