How to Play Sprouts

Sprouts is a very simple game played with pencil and paper.
These are the rules and a description of how to play:

• Mark a few vertices on the paper. (3 or 4 whilst you are learning.)
• You make a move by joining two vertices with an arc (edge) or forming a loop on the initial vertex.
• Add a new vertex to the arc you have just drawn.
• The vertex can go anywhere on the arc and the arc can have any shape.
• The arc cannot cross itself or any other arc.
• You can only have three arcs sprouting from any one vertex (ie the maximum degree of any vertex is 3).
• The winner is the last person to make a legal move.

The drawings below show the stages in a game of sprouts.

It is green to play and win from this position. Can you spot the winning move?

nRich Sprouts explained.