On a different note, I’ve been thinking about a hypothetical problem of teaching the game to a complete beginner with a series of interactive problems, starting only with the rule that a stone must be placed at an intersection. Interactive tutorial was useful for me when learning a programming language.
The following features would be useful for such effort:
- Explicitly showing illegal moves (e.g. red ‘X’).
- Integrating scoring in some problems; it might be easier to start with stone-counting, which helps in explaining seki and dead groups, and transition to one of the conventional counting methods later.
- Creating a problem from an existing problem, as many problems can be revisited by removing a move; keeping the trail of crumbs close together might facilitate assimilation and reduce the need for explanation.
- This is already available but indicating the last move by the opponent at the start of a problem would help make a problem feel like a real game.