Sprouts

The game of sprouts was originally developed by math professors at Cambridge University in 1967. As simple as this game may appear, there are complicated math properties involved in solving the game and as a result, Sprouts has been written about in the magazine; Scientific American. Due to the complexity of Sprouts, it was the focus of study at the famous Bell Laboratory.
In its forty years history, Sprouts has never been popular as a recreational game but it has been popular in academic circles however, this all may eventually change as more people become aware of how challenging it is and will want to play sprouts recreationally.
To prepare for play, you start with a piece of paper and draw three random dots in an attempt to be the player who has the most bushy, tangled sprout at the end of the game. This is done while following four simple rules. It sounds easy, when you think that all you have to do is connect the dots, but the game is a whole lot more than meets the eye.
There are basically four rules that you must follow in the drawing of the sprouts; two dots must be connected by each sprout, existing sprouts must be not crossed over by newly drawn ones, with every new sprout drawn and new dot must be added along its length and each dot may only make contact with a maximum of three sprouts.
There has been one variation added to this game since its creation, this change has been to add plus signs in place of dots and has been referred to as Brussels sprouts. With every turn, a player draws a sprout that joins an arm of one plus signs to another.