Inchworm

Inchworm is a two player game played on a 6x7 (or 8x9...) checkerboard initially filled with a checkered pattern of red and blue checkers. Players take turns moving their own checkers, one checker per turn, starting with Red. If you have a move available, you must make one. If not, you must sit the game out until you do have one. At least one of the two players will always have a move available. To win you must move all of your checkers off the far end or right side of the board. Draws can’t happen in Inchworm. Worms All STACKS are comprised of one or more like colored checkers. All ADJACENCIES are ORTHOGONAL (horizontal or vertical). A CONNECTION is an adjacency between like colored stacks. A SINGLE is a stack of height one. A BIG STACK has height two or more. A LONE stack has no connections. WORMS are groups of interconnected stacks, each stack connected to at most two other stacks. (A worm includes all stacks connected to it. There are no sub-worms.) Worms of length one only have a HEAD. Worms of length two or more have a HEAD and a TAIL, each occupying a single square at opposite ends of the worm. Loops of like colored stacks are not allowed. All of a worm’s stacks which are not its head or tail comprise its BODY. If a worm’s two ends are in different rows, its head is the forwardmost end. If its two ends are in the same row, its head is the rightmost end. Every interconnected group must be a worm. Moves You can remove a checker from any big stack on a worm’s body or tail and stack it onto the worm’s head. If a worm’s tail is a single, you can move it onto the worm’s head (the stack that is the worm’s head before the move). All other types of moves are to unoccupied squares (or off the board). A lone single can move one square forward or to the right. You can move the top checker from a lone big stack one square forward or to the right. The remainder of this section deals with worms of length two or more. You can remove the top checker from any big stack on a worm’s head, body, or tail, and move it adjacent to its head in a row forward of its tail or in a column rightward of its tail. If a worm’s tail is a single, you can move it in the following manner: Take note of the worm’s head square and tail square before picking up the tail checker. Move the tail checker to a square adjacent to said head square and forward or rightward of said tail square. Any move to an unoccupied square, as previously described, may merge two or three worms into one.