Instead of just White and Black, each piece also has a "gray" state. The first time a piece is surrounded, it doesn't get flipped to the opposite color, but merely "wounded", and turns gray. A second surround (which usually occurs from a different direction) finishes the job.
Gray pieces count as both White and Black. They can be used by either player to form surrounds, and a string of grays together with the opponents' color, all in a row, can be surrounded all at once.
Hence, Black to play, and the following row exists: [Black] [White] [Gray] [Gray] [White] Then Black can surround these four pieces, turing the two Whites to Gray and the two Grays to Black.
At end of game, grays count 0. Whichever player has more of his true color wins.-- phundug, Jul 15 2003 sp: grey
ask the good doc.-- po, Jul 15 2003 phundug: Hm, interesting. You tried playing it this way? po: that's the US spelling.-- DrCurry, Jul 15 2003 The horror. The horror...
I can see this devolving into some sort of demented MENSA game of horrors involving all the colors of the rainbow and a rules book as thick as my arm... Arg!-- k_sra, Jul 15 2003 not English then!
not Right then!-- po, Jul 15 2003 love it. especially good for colour (color) blind people.-- neilp, Jul 15 2003 perhaps you could make it actually fuzzy too, like velcro, so that you can play it in cars and in zero-G-- neilp, Jul 15 2003 ...or knock-up some pieces using that good old fuzzy felt from times past.-- silverstormer, Jul 15 2003 That might be fun. Or it might turn out to be rather unplayable. I'll have to try it some time. I second DrCurry's question. Have you actually tried it?-- scad mientist, Jul 15 2003 When the board's pretty full, how do you remember which ones have been surrounded twice? Do you have a referee?-- git, Jul 15 2003 I haven't tried it. (If I had, then it would be baked, wouldn't it?) So please, let me know how it turns out!-- phundug, Jul 15 2003 First time they are surrounded they go gray. Second time they are switched to appropriate colour.-- silverstormer, Jul 15 2003 That would alter the strategy somewhat. I used to win just about every game I played by going all out for the corners. This would disable that strategy very effectively.-- egbert, Jul 15 2003 Perhaps we should setup a Fuzzy Othello championship for bakers. In fact why not include all the baker invented games.-- silverstormer, Jul 15 2003 The corners would still be valuable, since a piece placed there can never be turned gray. But they won't be *so* valuable that you have to give up once your opponent gets one.-- phundug, Jul 15 2003 Exactly. You wouldn't be able to creep across the board like a slowly advancing cloud of locusts/avalanche devouring all in your path.
I used to own a version where the pieces were actually plastic rotatable shields let into a board. The shields had a 120°cutout which revealed one of three colours printed on the board - blue, red or neutral (start). A 90° cutout would allow this to work very well.-- egbert, Jul 15 2003 ...or tri-state Light Emiting Diode's-- silverstormer, Jul 15 2003 Tri-state Light Emiting Diode's what?-- egbert, Jul 15 2003 ...could work well, when implemented as an electronic version of Fuzzy Othello.-- silverstormer, Jul 15 2003 "Were I the Moor I would not be Iago."
"In following him I follow but am sort of wandering around, too."
"Heaven is my judge, I think. Or maybe it is that other guy."
"What was I doing? Something bad, I seem to recall."
"I sure am thirsty. And who the heck is this black dude? Oh, yeah..."-- bungston, Jul 15 2003 How do you plan on giving a two-sided playing piece three different shades?-- waugsqueke, Jul 15 2003 re: three shades: have a cube shape, or more appealing in a half-baked way, use a rotatable disk on the top of each piece that has alternating shades and a vented cover designed to hide the color not in play.-- RayfordSteele, Jul 15 2003 Indish it is, then.-- RayfordSteele, Jul 15 2003 Goodness Gracious Me.-- egbert, Jul 16 2003 a lot of the call centres that we telephone from here (uk) are based in India. the employees there are kept up to speed with our weather and tv soaps etc in order that they are able to chat to us more easily. one might not even guess where the call centre was located.-- po, Jul 16 2003 "Gunner who?"-- egbert, Jul 16 2003 Milligan?-- po, Jul 16 2003 A jailed artilleryman is informed by the jailer that there is a rodent in his cell. The prisoner is incredulous."Gunner?""Warden?""A rat!""Nay!"-- egbert, Jul 16 2003 [UB} If that's his name, he's Sri Lankan, not Indian. Sounds like he should be a left arm spinnner. ALso, when I first saw this idea, I thought it was going to be something to do with fat American golfers spouting shakespeare...-- goff, Jul 16 2003 I thought it was about interlectual furbee's, who'd have known?-- silverstormer, Jul 16 2003 furbee + shakespeare = hmmmm....-- RayfordSteele, Jul 16 2003 "A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse! ha ha ha ha ha he he he that tickles. What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet...Sleep! <annoying snoring sound>".-- silverstormer, Jul 16 2003 random, halfbakery