The simplest of rules (literally a few lines and some example pictures); you have to take it in turns to lay pieces within the circle of permitted places. Whoever lays the fourth in a row is the winner. But those 4 pieces must have at least one attribute in common; tall/short, dark/light, hollow/solid, rounded/straight.

He creates a line of 4 light pieces or 4 dark pieces or 4 round pieces or 4 square pieces or 4 tall pieces or 4 short pieces or 4 solid pieces or 4 hollow pieces. With a 5/8" bit, drill each of these points. It only has to be deep enough to underline the places where the game pieces go : it is not even necessary to drill (you could just draw or paint small circles), but I find it gives a nice optical effect, especially if you let the bit slightly burn the wood, for more contrast. The players throw dice to see who starts. The first player selects one of the 16 pieces and gives it to his opponent. The suggested age range is 8 and up, and I think that’s about right; players need to be able to look for several potential patterns and adjust to new pieces as they are placed on the board.And, standard disclaimer. This is only what I've seen. I again do not consider myself an expert, and have lost badly to some opponents. (Yeah, still fresh in my mind is the loss I had 6 pieces in. That stung. http://en.boardgamearena.com/#!gamereview?table=7425275 At least the rematch lasted longer...) No warranty, express or implied. Your mileage may vary.

If none of the players sees the alignment during the move during which it is created, it loses any value and the game continues. Finally the game comes with a rule book in about a million different languages. Well not that many, but short of you only speaking something rare like Klingon, chances are you’ll find rules in your native tongue. How to Play: As mentioned in the components section, the traits are: dark or light color, tall or short, round or square, solid or hollow. If a player places a fourth piece and doesn’t see the match, on their opponents turn they can call out the match and win. Rule 4. You have one move at a time, not a place the piece move followed by a chose a piece move. IE, whenever you place a piece, you should already know there is at least one piece available that you can give that cannot win. It is disheartening to realize that your placement set up both lights and darks, or that it set up both circles and hollows (and the only pieces left are either circular or hollow). So far we have changed the size of the board, but there is more we can generalise if we wish. Can you imagine three different heights? Three different colours? A ternary number taking values 0, 1 or 2? Then we can design games where attributes take three values.

You may have noticed there’s still a pesky number in our equation: the 2, reflecting the fact we are on a two-dimensional game board.