Black Holes the Game (A Fan-Made Playing Field)

What you are seeing is a homemade playing grid for a game called Black Holes the Game. The dotted grid represents the void of outer space, the large dot in the middle is a black hole, and below is where players keep track of their score. Of course, I didn’t invent the game. I actually read about it in a book entitled Black Holes A Traveler’s Guide written by Clifford A Pickover and published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. To play the game, the rules say that I simply have to draw a dotted grid on graph paper, however, I thought it was more interesting and fun to actually have an actual dotted grid to work with, so I made one in Microsoft Word using asterisks for dots. It turned out surprisingly well, so much so that I decided to post it here for others to use.

As for the rules of the game, I won’t tell you. I’m actually a fan of Pickover’s books, including Time A Traveler’s Guide and The Science of Aliens. Since I don’t own the copyright to his books, I decided it was only respectful that I reframe from revealing the rules and instead encourage you to buy his books. The rules to Black Holes The Game is detailed in chapter 13 of Black Holes A Traveler’s Guide and I do highly recommend it and other books Pickover has written to those who are science fiction writers and to those who are scientifically minded.