History of Hex

Early History

The game was first invented by the Danish mathematician Piet Hein. The first article describing the game, which Piet Hein called Polygon, appeared in the Danish newspaper Politiken on 26 December 1942 but the game was introduced to an association of math students at The University of Copenhagen called The Parenthesis during a lecture on conditions for good games.

In 1948 the game was discovered independently by the mathematican John Nash. Nash's fellow players at first called the game Nash. According to Martin Gardner, some of the Princeton University students also referred to the game as John, because it was often played on the hexagonal tiles of bathroom floors. However, this story is, according to Jack van Rijswijck, unfortunately apocryphal. In 1952 Parker Brothers marketed a version. They called their version "Hex" and the name stuck.

Recent History

Here we could add something about the development of the different online communities.

Hex has many similarities to the game Go. One similarity is that both have a wiki dedicated to them, and each wiki has a page pointing to the opposite wiki: Go and Sensei's library: Hex.

Sensei's library: other games considered unprogrammable lists other games similar to Go and Hex.