I was recently inspired to try my hand at composing a Redstone endgame puzzle. I’ve made two so far.
A brief summary of Redstone
Redstone is a Go variant in which…
- Capturing moves are made by placing “red stones” that are neutral, immortal, and provide neither players’ chains with liberties.
- Red stones can only be placed when doing so results in a capture, including self-capture.
- All strings without liberties belonging to either player are removed simultaneously when a red stone is placed. The capturing player’s stones are not spared just because the removal of their opponent’s stones would have given them liberties.
- Passing is not allowed.
- As a result, players at some point run out of non-harmful legal moves and must start filling in their own eyes.
- Eventually, at least one player will have no stones left on the board at all: At that point the game ends and the other player wins.
- In almost all cases this is the player who first runs out of safe eye-filling moves.
- If all stones belonging to both players are captured simultaneously, the player performed those final captures wins.
- See also the official rules.
Redstone has been discussed in these two previous threads on the OGS forums. The latter also has some discussion of several puzzles!
Here are the two puzzles I’ve come up with so far. Please enjoy!
