Four Squares A Day

After work, Liz was in the mood for a messy burger. This could only mean Stanich's. I picked out a game that could handle a little mess.

Quarto! 2 players
Imagine an advanced form of Tic-Tac-Toe. The first thing I would come up with is some 3D variant. Not much of a stretch of the imagination. Quarto is Tic-Tac-Toe figuratively taken to the 4th dimension, but still, in a more literal sense, in 2 dimensions. Although, depending on your definition of dimension, it could be argued that it is in four dimensions.

You start with an empty 4×4 board. The 16 pieces lay off to the side, each one slightly unique from any other piece. Each piece has one of each of the four characteristics: circle or square, tall or short, hollow or filled, and black or white. No one piece is exactly the same. At the start of a turn, one player selects a piece. The other player places that piece anywhere they want on the board. If after placing the piece they have made 4 pieces in a row (horz, vert, or diag) that each have one common characteristic, they win. Well... they win if the notice it and say "Quarto!" If they don't and pass the turn, the other player can call and steal the win. Of course if they both miss it, then no one can call the missed quarto.
I think this game is so elegant. That fact that the other player picks your piece is genius. It has you thinking in layers. "I can make this three in a row here, but I have to make sure never to hand him a short piece." It's not just about blocking, but about knowing when the population of pieces is coming to that critical point of having no good choices to had the other player. Plus it's usually a pretty quick game.

After busting this one out. The waitress had to ask about it. She had a face of interest and slight confusion. On we played. Our first game was a draw. Liz was under the impression she could only hand me white pieces for some reason. She realized the mistake mid-game. Even so, she played well enough to not cause a quarto. We played another game and started fresh. I quickly scored my quarto with 4 square pieces. We had one more go and Liz turned the tables on me. I was so focused on not handing her a black piece, that I didn't notice I couldn't hand her a short piece. As we left, the waitress asked for the score. She was puzzled that we didn't play a 4th game to determine a champion. I didn't really consider it. We don't often play the meta-game.

Tally: 54/152  Bonus: 13/50