June 29, 2025
Description
Entropy is a two-player abstract strategy game invented by Eric Solomon in 1977. It’s a battle of Order vs. Chaos on a square grid.
One player takes the role of Chaos, trying to scatter patterns.
The other plays Order, trying to organize those patterns into palindromes.
There are two common versions of the game:
Hyle: played on a 5×5 board.
Hyle 7 (or Entropy): played on a 7×7 board.
🎯 Objective
Chaos wants to prevent Order from scoring — by making disorder.
Order wants to slide coloured chips to form palindromes (sequences that read the same forwards and backwards, like red-blue-red or green-yellow-green-yellow-green).
🎲 Components
Board: A 7×7 grid (49 spaces total).
Stones / Discs / Chips:
There are 49 total discs, each one coloured. 7 colours in total, so 7 discs per colour.
The exact colour distribution can vary slightly depending on the version.
Two players: One is Chaos, the other is Order.
🕹 Rules
The game is played in two phases that repeat until the board is full:
Each round is split into two parts:
Chaos draws a random chip (usually from an opaque bag) and places it on any empty space on the board.
Chaos’s goal is to spread colours in a way that disrupts symmetry and prevents Order from forming palindromes.
Order may slide one chip, in a straight line (up, down, left, or right), through empty spaces only, until it reaches the end of the row or hits another chip.
Only one chip may be moved per turn.
After sliding, if any horizontal or vertical line contains a palindrome of 2 or more matching colours, that sequence scores points.
🧮 Scoring
Order scores points for every palindromic sequence of 2 or more discs in a straight line (horizontally or vertically).
| Palindrome | Points |
|---|---|
| Red-Red | 2 |
| Red-Blue-Red | 3 |
| Green-Red-Red-Green | 4 |
| Blue-Green-Red-Green-Blue | 3 + 5 = 8 |
Longer palindromes score higher.
Multiple palindromes may be formed with a single slide.
Overlapping palindromes are scored separately. See the last row of the scoring examples: you must count the Green-Red-Green and it to the whole 5 discs sequence.
🏁 End of the Game
The game ends when the board is completely full (all 49 spaces occupied).
The total points scored by Order are summed up.
There is no “score” for Chaos — their goal is simply to minimize Order’s total.
⚖ Strategy Notes
Chaos aims to block symmetric setups, placing discs so that no future palindrome can be formed.
Order watches for potential palindromes and plans slides in advance to align them.
The game is one of perfect information, with no hidden elements beyond the random draw for Chaos.
License:
Creative Commons — Attribution
Matt_2024
