Hex game winning strategy I was teaching myself how to play a hex board game by reading some books a couple days ago. I learned how to do $2$ x $2$ and $3$ x $3$ hex games by starting at the principal diagonal.
I wanted to know what the winning strategy would be for player one (white) on a $4$ x $4$ Hex game starting from the principal diagonal to block the second player's move (black).

Consider a $4$ x $4$ Hex.
Show that White has a winning strategy, starting anywhere on the principal diagonal that is in any of the hexagons $1,6, 11,$ or $16$.

Here is the setup:
Let the Hexagons be represented by numbers such as:
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16
I do not know how to draw hexagons here so I replaced them with numbers. This is suppose to be a regular Hex board game. Sorry if this confused anyone.
Let White have the first move (match up and down). Let black have the second move (match left to right). White has to start at 1, 6 ,11, or 16 since it is part of the principal diagonal. Show that White can win starting at this position.
White opens up at 6 (principal diagonal).
 A: If White plays $6$ as his opening move, then Black can force a win as follows.
First, Black plays $10$. After that, Black makes sure to play at least one element in each of the following disjoint pairs: $\{4,8\},\{7,15\},\{9,13\},\{11,14\},\{12,16\}$.
$10$ connects to the left side via $9$ or $13$.
If Black plays 7, then $10$ connects to $7$ which connects to $4$ or $8$ on the right side; if Black plays $15$, then $10$ connects via $11$ or $14$ to $15$, which connects to $12$ or $16$ on the right side.
A: @bof yes Mendelson did state this problem the same exact way. He said show White has the winnng strategy at 1, 6, 11, or 16. White has to start at one of these positions. 
A: A winning strategy for the first player on a 5 by 5 board is to play in the center.

Now consider the horizontal and vertical striped regions separately. If you have a strategy to connect the green edge to the center, taking place only in the horizontally striped squares, with red going first, then you can apply it separately on both sides to win. (If red plays on horizontal, you respond in kind. ) Here are the responses to all red moves, red dots represent a place that red might have moved, and the second green dot is the response. Yellow lines are matching pairs, any time that red places on one side, you place on the other. If red plays on the white (non striped) squares, pretend they played on some other square.

For a 4 by 4 board, use this strategy on one side, and a matching pair on the other.

