From: Creede Lambard (a-creela@microsoft.com)
Subject: Teeko
Date: Thu, 5 Feb 1998 15:03:41 -0800
Dear Sirs:
I hope it's not too late to shed a bit of light on the game of Teeko, which Debbie Oxberry asked about. When I was a youngster I was fortunate enough to latch onto a copy of Scarne's Scarne on Teeko, which the local library was remaindering. I haven't seen the book in many years, I'm afraid, so this is all from memory.
Teeko is played on a 5x5 board by two players, White and Black, each having four pieces of his/her color. In the "simple" version of the game, White starts by dropping one of his pieces onto one of the squares of the board. Black then drops a piece, White drops another, and so on until all eight pieces are on the board. The players then alternate moving one of their pieces one space in any direction (orthagonally or diagonally), trying to form their pieces into either a straight line in any direction or a 2x2 square.
Here's an illustration:
. . . . . . X O . X . . O . . . O O . . . X . X .
This is a winning position for O because X cannot block both of O's threats, to make a straight line of 4 by moving b2-c1 or to make a square by moving c4-b3.
The "tournament" game adds 3x3, 4x4 and 5x5 orthagonal squares as winning positions. So, in the example above X wins by moving d1-e1, making a 4x4 square.
I don't know of any computerized versions of the game but it's certainly simple enough that it wouldn't be hard to create one. Hope this helps!
-- Creede
Date: Monday, December 29, 1997 9:15 AM
From: Gus Grosch (grosch@bcinet.net)
Subject: Teeko
Allan,
Scarne wrote a book called "Scarne on Teeko" printed by Crown Publishing here in the states. I've seen a number of copies of the book in used book stores here in the states. Maybe a note to one of the card newsgroups could rouse up a copy. My copy is copyrighted 1955. It explains the complete rules and strategies and goes into why Scarne thought it was the most complete strategy game.
Gus Grosch
October 14, 2001
Many moons passed then Edan Lev-Ari sent in this link to a Washington Post article (A World of Games - Blake Eskin for the Washington Post) on the subject of Scarne and Teeko. Well spotted! - ken