Selinsgrove, Pennsylavania - Ruby's the name and Tantrix is his game. Joe Ruby, 16, of Selinsgrove, holds the world record -38 seconds- for the fastest game of Tantrix played against another player online, and has been to Tantrix tournaments in England twice.

Tantrix? If you've heard of it before, or even played it, you're in the minority. It's a relatively new game, developed in 1987 by Mike McManaway, that involves 56 hexagonal tiles with straight and squiggly lines painted on them. The object is to choose a line color –red, blue, yellow, or green- and try to create the longest, uninterrupted line. Make it into a loop, and your points double, but that’s difficult to do when your opponent is trying to do the same thing with his color and block your moves at the same time.

“That’s the most interesting thing about it,” Joe said as he walked me through a game at his kitchen table. “You’re playing offense and defense at the same time.” Interesting and challenging, I thought, as I scanned my six allotted tiles for my best move. I placed a tile, trying to lengthen my red line.

“Now, if I were mean, I’d do this,” Joe said, immediately placing one of his tiles in a way that gave him a few more moves, and blocked my line, which would mean I’d have to start all over.

“Hey,” I complained, but he laughed and withdrew his killer piece and placed a more friendly one on the table, one that allowed me to continue my little line of red.

And that’s how you play the game, always thinking a few moves ahead, like chess, trying to open up moves for your line while forcing your opponent to regroup. Tantrix can be played on a flat surface with the actual tiles, or online, which is where Joe plays most of his games, on the Tantrix Web site.

“I’ve played about 7,000 ranked lobby games,” he said, referring to the site’s sponsored games, in which players start with a rank of 500 and then move down from there or up to 1,000.

He’s been playing for about five years, ever since he first learned of the game in a book given to him by his aunt and uncle who were living in New Zealand at the time. The book, “No. 8 Wire,” is about New Zealand inventions, including this unusual game of spatial and computing skills called Tantrix, which so intrigued Joe that he started to play and never stopped. In fact, he’s begun teaching it to elementary level students for his senior project at Selinsgrove Area High School.

“Children seem to pick up on it pretty fast, like, surprisingly fast,” he said.

For the past two summers Joe has travelled to Cambridge and London to compete in the world championships. (“Hungary kicks butt,” he says.) There he gets to meet several of the players he’s competed against all year long.

“I’ve met about 50 people from Europe in person,” he said, “and I know hundreds from with them online.” The nearest American player he knows of is from Boston, though they’ve never met.

Online tournaments throughout the year keep his skills sharp, including Blitz tournaments, which are played all at the same time. “I once woke up at 3 a.m. to play,” he said.

And he’s also awakened at 5 a.m. on a school day to play someone from New Zealand. “The time zones just don’t mesh. Unfortunately,” he laughed.

His aunt and uncle had no way of knowing that their gift of a book would lead their nephew to meet friends around the world, but it’s one of the things Joe treasures most about his Tantrix times. When asked if he would go to England again next year, there was no hesitation.

“Every year, hopefully. Every year that I can,” he said. “That’s probably the best experience I’ve had, just meeting everybody and hanging out in London.”

All made possible by a tantalizing little game called Tantrix.