Advent of Hive is an advent calendar of Hive puzzles.

Every day, you're invited solve one Hive puzzle. In 2024, we have 10 puzzles that will be unlocked one per day from December 16th to December 25th at 15 GMT.

Each puzzle will be a link to a Google Form. To solve the puzzle, you'll need to answer two questions that will be the same every day:

1. What is the minimum number of plies necessary to win, considering the opponent is playing the strongest moves (i.e. tries to maximize this number)?
2. What is your first move? Use Hive notation as explained on Entomology.

After you respond, use "View Score" button to see if you answered correctly. If you answer incorrectly, you can re-try as many times as you want (but there is a "but", see below). The puzzles can be solved even by inexperienced players, but most of them have, as we hope, some unexpected twists.

The first 5 players to correctly solve the daily puzzle from the first, second, or third try get victory points. (The "three tries rule" is there to avoid players trying to brute force the puzzles.)

The first player gets 5 points, the second player gets 4 points, and so on. The player with the most victory points at the end of the event wins.

If you're new to Hive, we hope this event will be a fun way to learn more about the beauty of the game, and if you're a more experienced player, we hope at least some of the puzzles can still be a challenge for you.

Credits. Puzzles: stepanzo. Playtesters: Frasco, shturik. Inspired by Advent of Code.