Game of the Amazons

The Game of the Amazons (in Spanish, El Juego de las Amazonas; often called Amazons for short) is a two-player abstract strategy game invented in 1988 by Walter Zamkauskas of Argentina.

First, one moves one of one's own amazons one or more empty squares in a straight line (orthogonally or diagonally), exactly as a queen moves in chess; it may not cross or enter a square occupied by an amazon of either color or an arrow.

The strategy of the game is based on using arrows (as well as one's four amazons) to block the movement of the opponent's amazons and gradually wall off territory, trying to trap the opponents in smaller regions and gain larger areas for oneself.

Since it would be tedious to actually play out all these moves, in practice the game usually ends when all of the amazons are in separate territories.

When scoring, it is important to note that although the number of moves remaining to a player is usually equal to the number of empty squares in the territories occupied by that player's amazons, it is nonetheless possible to have defective territories in which there are fewer moves left than there are empty squares.

An approved English translation written by Michael Keller appeared in the magazine World Game Review in January 1994.

[3] This is proven by reducing it to finding the Hamiltonian path of a cubic subgraph of the square grid graph.