Quoridor in five lines
Quoridor is a strategy game by Mirko Marchesi, published by Gigamic since 1997. It is played on a board of 81 squares, nine by nine, by two or four players.
Each pawn starts in the middle of its edge and must reach the opposite edge. The first to get there wins.
On your turn, you choose: move your pawn one square, forward, back or sideways, or place a fence. Fences are two squares long and slot in between the squares. The box holds twenty: ten each with two players, five each with four.
The golden rule: a fence must never shut a pawn in. Every player must always keep at least one path to their finish.
When two pawns face each other, you may jump over the one in front. If a fence or the edge stops the jump, you move diagonally instead, to a square next to the other pawn.
Why the rules stop at two and four
The board is square, with four edges. With two, the pawns start face to face; with four, everyone has an edge. With three, one edge is left empty, and the box does not say how to share the board or the twenty fences.
The online offer follows the box. In our survey of 24 September 2026, Board Game Arena offers Quoridor for free, with more than a million games on its counter, for two or four players. The other sites and apps we found also offer two or four players, on a square board.
We found no three-player version, online or boxed. That does not prove none exists, only that it is not easy to find.
Playing with three using the box: the house variant
The simplest way: three pawns in the middle of three edges, the fourth edge empty. Everyone heads for the opposite edge as usual. Fences: six each, and the last two stay in the box.
It works, but it is not symmetrical. Two players start face to face and cross in the middle. The third cuts across their route, and their finish is the empty edge, which nobody starts next to. Draw lots for that seat, or rotate seats every game.
The second catch is shared by every blocking game with more than two players: when two players get in each other's way, the third one slips through. A fence placed against the leader also helps whoever did not place it. The table starts negotiating who blocks whom, which can be the best part of the evening or the most unfair.
A board that changes shape with the table
That is the idea behind The Squeeze, our game from the same family: instead of keeping the square, the board changes with the number of players, so that every start and every finish are worth the same.
With two and four, a square of seven by seven. Start in the middle of an edge, finish on the opposite edge.
With three, a triangle of hexagonal cells, nine cells a side. Each player starts in a corner and must reach the opposite side. The finish is wide, the game is symmetrical, and the three paths cross in the middle, the squeeze the game is named after.
With five, a pentagon: each player starts in a corner and heads for the opposite side, as on the triangle, and the five paths cross in the middle. With six, a hexagon: each player starts in the middle of a side and heads for the opposite side.
We also looked at the triangle the other way round, starting from a side and heading for the opposite corner. It works, but a corner finish acts as a funnel: a few blocks are enough to narrow it to a single cell, and the endgame turns into a traffic jam.
What changes compared with Quoridor
One-cell blocks instead of fences. You place a block on a cell, not between two cells. We tried thin walls between cells on 23 September: on the two-player square, our simulations gave games almost twice as long, because a wall takes up no cell and the board never fills up. And on a phone, a cell is easier to tap than a line.
Unlimited blocks. No stock to count: the brake is tempo, since placing a block means giving up a move this turn. Every block stays until the end and the last way through can never be closed, so the board ends up refusing any more blocks. The game always ends.
The same golden rule: you may never shut anyone in. The phone refuses the block before sending it, and the cell flashes red with the reason. No more arguments over a miscounted path.
The same jump over an adjacent pawn, and the same sidestep when a block or the edge prevents the jump.
A timer per move: ten seconds by default, twenty or thirty if the host prefers. When the gong sounds, the pawn moves one cell along its shortest path on its own. The first player is drawn at random.
At the end, the game replays every move at speed, then pauses on the final position. That is when you see who blocked whom.
What we do not know yet
The Squeeze came out on 27 September 2026. We do not have enough games yet to measure anything, so there are no table figures on this page.
The target length, four to five minutes at ten seconds a move, comes from simulations with bots. Our bots are short-sighted: they judge a block by its immediate effect, while a person builds a wall over several moves. Real games will probably run a little longer.
Where to play online
With two or four, on the Gigamic board: Board Game Arena offers Quoridor for free, remotely. It is the right pick for a duel between two people who are not in the same room.
With three, five or six, around the same table: The Squeeze runs in the browser, one phone per player, free, with no account and nothing to install. Everyone sees the board on their own screen and plays in turn. It has no dedicated TV view yet.