Loom

A four-by-four cloth apiece, and a shuttle that throws two dyed threads — numbered one to six — to the middle each round. The active weaver drafts one and weaves it into their cloth; the rival weaves the leftover in theirs, wherever they choose. Sixteen rounds, the draft alternates. Every row and column scores the sum of its DISTINCT dyes — duplicates count once — and a line that finishes with four different dyes pays eight more. And no two threads of the same dye may lie edge to edge, so a thread does not go just anywhere and a cloth can run out of room for a dye it already has too much of. The draft is a double move: the thread you leave is the thread they weave, and it has to go somewhere.

How it feels

• A throw of exactly what you needed
• Leaving them the dye their cloth has nowhere to put
• A row finishing clean for the bounty

What the design is for

• 01

  The draft is a double move

  You take one thread and your rival weaves the other, in their own cloth, wherever they like. Every draft is both a gain for you and a gift to them — the thread you leave is chosen by what their lines already hold.

• 02

  Distinct dyes count once, and clean lines pay eight

  A line — row or column — scores the sum of its distinct dyes: 3, 3, 5, 2 is worth ten, not thirteen. A line that FINISHES with four different dyes pays eight more, and those bounties are most of what a cloth is won by: eight points that one wrong thread takes away for good.

• 03

  The touching law

  No two threads of the same dye may lie edge to edge. A cloth can therefore run out of room for a dye it has too much of, and the leftover thread you hand your rival lands where it was never wanted. (If a dye has nowhere clean left, it may go in any empty cell — the cloth has to fill.) Both of these rules are new, and they are new because the probe could not tell the ladder apart without them: every rung wove the same 99-point cloth and read the same 54 per cent, because a four-cell line out of six dyes duplicates whatever you do and a leftover thread could always be hidden somewhere harmless.

• 04

  The shuttle alternates

  The draft passes every round — eight each over sixteen rounds — so neither weaver is the permanent picker. The first draft of this game belonged to Ivory for every round of its first draft; the probe caught it as a perfect 100–100 mirror and the shuttle was rehung.

• 05

  The rings price the weave

  The board shows what a weave would gain before you make it: cells answer as scored rings the moment a thread is held, so the distinct-sum arithmetic is something you can SEE on the cloth rather than do in your head.

• 06

  Taught thread by thread

  Seven steps: the draft, the distinct line, the duplicate, the touching law, the denial, the forced weave — and then the whole loom to yourself.