The origin
The puzzle that started as a Centre Term project.
Centre College runs a tradition called Centre Term—intensive one-month courses taken between semesters. Dr. Wilson designed one on recreational math, with Ben Orlin’s Math Games with Bad Drawings as the textbook.
The course project: every student had to invent their own game. Dr. Wilson decided to do the assignment alongside them. The puzzle he built that month is what eventually became Squarely.
The rules turned out to be simple enough to teach in a minute and rich enough to keep him—and now everyone—solving for years. Three books later, the same two rules still hold.
