David Parlett's Hare & Tortoise game

The Italian edition also featured the Ravensburger board and cards, but surmounted it with this visually garish and conceptually corny box-lid.

With the demise of Intellect Games, the UK licence was taken up in 1980 by Waddingtons House of Games, with abysmal design and production values.

I first heard of the pirated Czech edition from Tom Werneck (a founder of the Spiel des Jahres award), who sent me a black-and-white photocopy of the box-lid. For a complete set of the real thing (right) I am indebted to the French games-collector François Haffner, who was kind enough to let me have it in exchange for one of my only two remaining copies of Shoulder to Shoulder. An image of the board can be seen on Haffner's website. An unexplained curiosity of this game is that lettuces are replaced by apples. Does that mean Bohemia is a lettuce-free zone?

Gibson Games, of whom I live within walking distance, took up the UK rights in 1987 and had the happy idea of going back to Shirtsleeve Studio (who designed the original Intellect version) for a new design. Shirtsleeve responded by updating it from early to late Victorian. It was for this new edition that I revised the layout by shifting the first lettuce square from seventh to tenth away from Start, which experienced players recognise as an obvious improvement.

Back to Ravensburger again, nearly 30 years after they first published it! This one reverts to its most widely known and best loved design, but incorporates the improved layout of 1987 (with the first lettuce on the 10 square) and some changes to the hare-card instructions that you draw when you land on a hare square.

Site map	Everything you never wanted to know about
Site map	HARE & TORTOISE A clever race game with a classic theme... ...where even he who hesitates can win
	© 2008 by David Parlett
	Hare & Tortoise was first published in Britain by Intellect Games UK in 1974 and has been in print ever since, though Intellect has long since vanished from the scene. The first German edition was published by Ravensburger in 1978 and became the first ever game to win the now prestigious Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year) award. It has since sold some 2 million units in at least 10 languages, including two known pirated editions, and has never been out of print. The latest edition, incorporating slight revisions and improvements, is being republished by Ravensburger Games in February 2008. At time of writing I don't know if an English-language version is on the cards, but obviously it's something I will be pressing for. For full details of the latest version, see Hare & Tortoise Rides Again!
	What's it all about?
	Hare & Tortoise is a uniquely original race game in that movement is governed by skill rather than chance. Instead of rolling dice to find out how far to move, you can always move forwards as far as you like - but only if you can afford to pay for it. This you do by consuming units of energy called carrots. The 65 carrots you start with are just enough to get you home one square at a time by spending one carrot per move. Alternatively, they are enough to get you up to ten squares forward in a single leap, and you can earn more by carefully choosing which square to land on. But there's a catch! The catch is that the further you move in one turn, the faster the cost of moving accelerates. Therefore - If you play like a hare, taking great leaps forward at each move, you risk running out of carrots so fast that you may lose valuable time trying to get them back. But: If you play like a tortoise, plodding along as cheaply as possible, you risk lagging so far behind that you may never have time to catch up with the others. The skill of the game lies in choosing which square to move to, and deciding whether to play hare-wise or tortoise-wise depending on your position. The fun of the game lies in changing other runner's positions by overtaking them - or even undertaking them by moving backwards. So, unlike traditional race games, Hare & Tortoise is won by superior strategy and player interaction. The element of chance is not only reduced to a minimum, but can be eliminated altogether by agreeing to avoid landing on Hare squares, which are, by design, the only external chance elements in the game.
	Mathematical stuff
	The actual cost of moving is: 1 for the first square, plus 2 for the second, plus 3 for the third... and so on. It therefore costs 1 carrot to move 1 square, 3 to move 2, 6 to move 3, 10 to move 4, etc. To generalise, moving forwards n squares in one turn costs n(n+1)/2 carrots. So, given 65 carrots to start with, you might play tortoise-wise and get home in 65 moves at 1 carrot each and still have 1 carrot left over. Playing hare-wise, you could get home in just one move, but only if you could afford the 2080 carrots such a leap would cost. To add to your problems, the further ahead you are, the fewer the carrots you earn when you land on a pay-out square. In Hare & Tortoise, unlike certain other games, you don't collect 200 carrots every time you pass Go.
	Fabulous background
	In Aesop's classic fable the hare is so confident of winning that he takes a nap and wakes up too late to discover that he has been overtaken by the plodding tortoise. Aesop's moral is "Slow but steady wins the race". In Germany and neighbouring countries the game is called "Hare and Hedgehog" (Hase und Igel), being based on an equivalent fable by the Brothers Grimm. In this, the hare doesn't nap but runs as fast as possible. The hedgehog wins by concealing all his friends and relations along the route. As each lap begins the current hedgehog immediately hides, and the next relative in succession pops out of concealment just ahead of the hare. The moral here is "Slow and cunning wins the race". Or perhaps: "If at first you don't succeed, cheat".
	Biological query
	I've noticed that American commentators tend to switch indiscriminately between tortoise and turtle, and between hare and rabbit. I'm baffled as to why, seeing that tortoises are essentially terrestrial and turtles aquatic. (Tortoises have legs and walk; turtles have flippers and swim). Hares and rabbits are not merely different species but different genera to boot. (And hares don't burrow.) Or do they do things differently on the other side of the Atlantic? Update: Apparently they do. Here's an item from the Corrections and Clarifications column of The Guardian dated 1 March 2005 and referring to a previous article about the evolution of modern turtles: "The accompanying photograph showed a tortoise, distinguished by its domed shell and clawed limbs, but was described in the caption as a turtle. Turtles have flattened shells and flippers. The agency which supplied the photograph captioned it according to the American convention, calling it a turtle." Just goes to show how few English people are capable of using their own language properly any more.
	Publishing history
	I invented Hare & Tortoise in 1973, basing it on an original movement mechanism devised in 1969 for an abortive game called Space Race. (It was the year of the first moon landing.) Its development was remarkably rapid: invented 13 October, first played 20 October, revised and replayed 4 November, play-tested soon after by the Games & Puzzles review panel, and licensed to Intellect Games (UK), a relatively new company, on 17 December. Pictured left is the prototype after first revision. (Click to enlarge.) Haring forwards at great speed, Intellect had it on the shelves by the following June. The first edition (right) was designed by Shirtsleeve Studio in Victorian style. Ravensburger published the award-winning first German edition in 1979 in a design best described as Ruritanian, or fairy-tale romantic. Sublicensed to other European manufacturers, the same design appeared in French (Le Lièvre et la Tortue), Dutch (Haas en Schildpad) and Spanish (La Liebre y la Tortuga). The Italian edition also featured the Ravensburger board and cards, but surmounted it with this visually garish and conceptually corny box-lid. Having discovered by now that H&T was not really a kids' game, Ravensburger produced this more restrained box design for the French edition, which was also used for their English-language edition published in the USA. With the demise of Intellect Games, the UK licence was taken up in 1980 by Waddingtons House of Games, with abysmal design and production values. Waddingtons produced this promotional version of the game in which carrots were replaced by glasses of Britvic fruit juice. It would have been nice if they had sent me a copy (I only managed to get this image courtesy of www.thegamesjournal), but at least I got some royalties for it. Waddingtons sublicensed the Scandinavian rights to the Swedish games company Alga, who published it in Swedish, Norwegian (right), Danish, and, I believe, Finnish, though I have never actually seen the Finnished product. Alga subsequently smartened up the box design to make it look less like a kids' game. Here's the Swedish version. I first heard of the pirated Czech edition from Tom Werneck (a founder of the Spiel des Jahres award), who sent me a black-and-white photocopy of the box-lid. For a complete set of the real thing (right) I am indebted to the French games-collector François Haffner, who was kind enough to let me have it in exchange for one of my only two remaining copies of Shoulder to Shoulder. An image of the board can be seen on Haffner's website. An unexplained curiosity of this game is that lettuces are replaced by apples. Does that mean Bohemia is a lettuce-free zone? Another pirated edition was produced by a South American games company called Tipo's. My thanks to Jaime Poniachik of Buenos Aires for this copy. Gibson Games, of whom I live within walking distance, took up the UK rights in 1987 and had the happy idea of going back to Shirtsleeve Studio (who designed the original Intellect version) for a new design. Shirtsleeve responded by updating it from early to late Victorian. It was for this new edition that I revised the layout by shifting the first lettuce square from seventh to tenth away from Start, which experienced players recognise as an obvious improvement. The German rights reverted to me in 1999 and were taken up by Joe Nikisch of AbacusSpiele. Given the self-evident requirement of producing a new and distinctive design, his artist has effected a clever updating that combines fantasy with modernity. Back to Ravensburger again, nearly 30 years after they first published it! This one reverts to its most widely known and best loved design, but incorporates the improved layout of 1987 (with the first lettuce on the 10 square) and some changes to the hare-card instructions that you draw when you land on a hare square.
	Variations
	Games collectors are intrigued by the fact that almost every edition or reprinting incorporates greater or lesser differences from the previous one. The most significant difference is as follows. When "jugging the hare" in the original and current version, you roll a die, add the number you get to your position in the race, and follow the appropriately-numbered instruction printed on your race-card. But when Ravensburger first published the game in 1979 they wished to emphasise the its essential dicelessness and so replaced this feature by having you simply draw a Hare Card and follow the instruction printed on it. The result was that "jugging the hare" gave you equal chances of good or bad outcomes regardless of your position in the race, instead of (as I prefer) more strongly favouring those lying further behind. In the latest (2008) version, however, I have revised the hare-card instructions in such a way as to slightly favour trailers over leaders (on average) as originally intended.
	Links
	The Games Journal Review by Greg Aleknevicus, pictures of boards and boxes, details of different course layouts, analysis and notes on strategy. Jeuxsoc François Haffner's site is devoted to favourite games from his specialist collection. It includes a substantial page (in French) on Le Lièvre et la Tortue, with many illustrations. The Boardgame Geek Review and move-by-move accounts of individual games played by the Dallas Metrogamers.
	January 2008
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HARE & TORTOISE

A clever race game with a classic theme...

...where even he who hesitates can win