Over the garden gate

Black Box

This is one of my all-time favorite board games
It was invented in the 1970's by Eric Solomon and sold as a board game by Wadingtons in 1976.
It was the first programme I ever wrote.

The object of the Game is to find hidden "Atoms" by shooting "Rays" into a Matrix. A Ray marker is placed in the margin to show what happened. If a Ray directly hits an Atom - it is absorbed (shown by a Black Marker). Some Rays are reflected back, these are shown by White Markers. Some Rays are deflected one or more times inside the matrix and exit somewhere else - these are marked by coloured pairs.
How Atoms affect Rays... The Ray from A was absorbed when it hit Atom 1 The Ray from B was deflected twice, by Atoms 1 & 2 The Ray from C was refelected back on itself by Atoms 1 & 3 Ray D was also reflected, because it was deflected into the margin by Atom 2 See also the very detailed entry in Wikipedia
To play, click on a numbered square in the margin to shoot a Ray. To help you visualise the Hidden Atoms you can set markers by clicking on a square in the matrix. To remove the marker - click on it again. When you think you know where the Atoms are - place markers and Click "Done" You score 1 for each Ray Marker and 5 for each Atom you get wrong - so a low score is better.
The Original Board Game had an 8 by 8 Playing Area and was a Two Player Game. In this version you can define the size of the playing area and the number of hidden "Atoms". Games can be generated at random - or you can choose from some pre-defined games. Try a couple of Practice games from the drop down list.