The Game of Gale

The Game of Gale was invented by mathematician and economist, David Gale and introduced to the world by Martin Gardner (who also coined the name). Since then it has been a board game (Bridg-it), a programming exercise and a great pencil-and-paper game (or at least, a great colored-pens-and-paper game). GoG is a close relative of Hex and its rules are comparably simple. Start out with a grid of dots like the one below. Each player gets a color then takes turns connecting his or her dots. The object for the blue player is to draw a continuous path from the top row to the bottom. The objective for the red player is to connect the leftmost column and the right. The only rule is that a red line can't cross a blue and vice versa. Here's a sample game: