Naming of templates

Interior templates

There are relatively few interior templates (particularly those containing 4 or fewer stones). Many of these templates have been given proper names, such as the "bridge", the "box", etc. Some templates have more than one name; for example, the "mouth" is also called the "trapezoid".

Some of the less common interior templates, particularly those with 5 or more stones, are unnamed.

There is no central authority for assigning names to templates. Some names have been used in books. Cameron Browne's book names no templates except the bridge. Matthew Seymour's book names the bridge, wheel, trapezoid, crescent, span, parallelogram, box, and diamond. Other names seem to arise from common usage.

Edge templates

There are too many edge templates to give proper names to all of them. The only edge template with a proper name is the ziggurat. Instead, edge templates are referred to by one of several systematic numbering schemes.

Roman numeral scheme

Up to now, people on this wiki (at least) have followed the following rules for naming edge templates:

• a roman numeral specifies the row of the connecting player's uppermost stone in the template.
• an arabic numeral specifies the number of the connecting player's stones in the template.
• a lower-case letter is arbitrarily assigned to distinguish templates that have the same roman and arabic numeral.

For example, the ziggurat is named edge template III-1-a, because it is a 3rd row template containing one stone and was assigned the letter "a".

Seymour's scheme

In his book Hex: a strategy guide, Matthew Seymour introduces a different naming convention for templates. He organizes templates into "series" that share a common feature. He uses the following naming scheme:

• a capital letter specifies the series the template belongs to.
• an arabic numeral specifies the row of the connecting player's uppermost stone in the template.
• an optional lower-case letter is used to distinguish between templates belonging to the same series and row.

For example, the ziggurat is named edge template A3, because it is the unique 3rd row template in series A.

The series are arranged so that all the templates in a series have the same number and arrangement of stones. They typically differ by how far away the stones are from the edge. For example, the A-series consists of single-stone templates; the B-series consists of single stone templates with a "hole"; the C-series consists of templates with 2 adjacent stones parallel to the edge; and so on.

An advantage of Seymour's naming scheme is that it is easier to memorize a series than to remember arbitrary letters assigned to individual templates.

A disadvantage of Seymour's naming scheme is that not all edge templates can be organized into series. For example, 3-stone templates are so numerous that it is not feasible to have series for all of them.