Minigame: Cars - Solution

Puzzle Location: Angel Island

Next Puzzle: Stars

The trick to winning is for the black player to use his first two moves to immediately get his outside piece all the way to the end of the board (the upper right corner). This severely limits the number of moves that the white player can make, leading to a few winning strategies for the black player. Let's consider the case where the white player moves his outside white piece once. In each case, the arrow shows what the black player should do to ensure a win.

And if we consider the case where the white player moves his inside piece up first, we get:

White has three options for its second move. Regardless of which one it does, black will win: 1. If white moves the middle piece to the right, we'll have one of the situations above. 2. Again, this reflects one of the situations above. 3. Again, one of the situations described above.

Note that if the black player doesn't immediately move to get his outside piece in the upper right corner, then the white player can do so, and then has winning strategies which are the mirror image of the black ones shown above.