Herugolf Golf Puzzle Game

Herugolf Golf Puzzle Game

A recent article in Atlas Obscura highlighted a puzzle game based on golf. The puzzles first appeared in Puzzle Communication Nikoli, described as Japan’s “hugely influential” puzzle publication. Indeed, Puzzle Communication Nikoli popularized Sudoku.

At any rate, Herugolf is played on a grid with seemingly randomly placed circles representing tees, “H”s representing greens/holes and greyed areas representing hazards. Play involves connecting each circle to an “H” with lines representing shots. The catch is that the number inside the circle is the distance in squares that the first shot must travel.

Weirdly, as with real golf, in the puzzle solution, first shots often are the longest, shorter shots put the ball in position, greens may be missed, and chip shots taken.

Outside of golf, my hobby is playing board games of the more complicated sort, such as Wingspan, Terraforming Mars, Through The Ages (Amazon links) and others of similar ilk. I’ve been playing these “hobby games” since the mid 1970s, and enjoy the brain burn they induce. They are actually a lot like golf in evaluating a situation, weighing risk making strategic choices.

The Herugolf puzzles are board game adjacent and offer a similar brain burn.

I’d like to see a flip book of these golf puzzle games published for golfers to stick in their bags. Then, when waiting interminably on the tee for the group in front, I could pull it out and use a golf pencil to work on a puzzle. Maybe Puttview or GolfLogix could do it as an extension of their greens book business.

The Atlas Obscura article linked at top has more Herugolf games to play. You can find more golf games in general at the link.