Enrichment · Cultural Studies

Two old games,
ready to play right now.

Oware has been played in Ghana and across West Africa for generations; Nine Men’s Morris was scratched into Roman stone and medieval church benches. Play both here against the computer or a friend, learn where they come from, and print a board to play with beans and buttons.

Play a gameWhat you get

Play and learn

Built for grades 1 to 5 with a grown-up nearby, and fun for older players too. The counting helper shows where the last seed will land. Games are saved in this browser; nothing is sent anywhere.

Setting up the boards. If nothing appears, turn on JavaScript.

What you get

Enrichment · Cultural StudiesFree

What you finish with
Two complete traditional games played by their real rules, against the computer at two levels or with a friend on one screen: Oware with sowing, captures, the feeding rule and the grand slam rule, and Nine Men’s Morris with placing, moving, flying and mills. A counting helper, a move list, a record of games played, the story of where each game comes from, and a printed rules sheet with a board to play at home or in class.
Who it is for
Students in grades 1 to 5 with a parent, teacher or older sibling, families looking for a screen activity that leads to a table game, and elementary teachers planning a world cultures or math-games lesson.
Format
Browser games. Works on a phone, tablet or computer, with touch, mouse or keyboard. Prints a rules sheet with a board for each game; downloads a game’s moves as a text file.
Access
Free. No account, no sign-in and nothing to install. Everything you type stays in this browser; nothing is sent to Caveat.
Where it lives
The Cultural Studies space in Caveat Enrichment.
Support
Questions, a correction or a request: team@caveatacademic.com.

How to use it

  1. Choose Oware or Nine Men’s Morris, and play the computer or a friend on the same screen.
  2. In Oware, point at or tab to a pit to see where its last seed will land, then choose. Try the worked example and find the move that captures 7.
  3. In Nine Men’s Morris, place your nine pieces, then move them along the lines to make mills.
  4. Read Where they come from together and talk about the try-it ideas.
  5. Print the rules and a board, and play with beans, buttons or coins away from the screen.

Play a game

How the games are played here

Traditional rules, as they are written down by game historians.

1 Pick up all the seeds in one pit and sow them, one per pit, to the right and aroundComputer’s row (sowing goes right to left up here)360121Your row302514← your pit 4 has 5 seeds2 The last seed makes 2 or 3 on their side: take them, and keep going backAfter sowing: their pits 1, 2 and 3 held 2, 3 and 2360000Your row302025Captured7 seedsfirst to 25 of the 48 wins1 Sow one seed per pitComputer’s row360121Your row: pit 4 has 53025142 2s and 3s on their sideTheir pits 1 to 3 taken360000Your row302025Captured7 seeds · first to 25 wins
The worked example: you sow the 5 seeds from your pit 4. The last three land on the computer’s side and make 2, 3 and 2, so all 7 are captured.

Oware, abapa rules

Twelve pits, four seeds in each. Seeds are sown one per pit counterclockwise, skipping the starting pit on a lap of 12 or more. A last seed that makes 2 or 3 on the other side captures, along with any unbroken run of 2s and 3s just before it on that side. A move that would capture every seed on the other side is allowed but captures nothing. A player whose opponent has no seeds must give them some if any move can; if none can, the game ends and each keeps the seeds on their side. The first to 25 of the 48 seeds wins. Some families play other versions of the rules, and that is part of the tradition.

Nine Men’s Morris, and the computer player

Twenty-four points on three nested squares joined at their midpoints. Players place nine pieces each, then move along lines; three in a row is a mill and removes an opposing piece that is not itself in a mill unless every piece is. With three pieces left a player may fly to any free point, a common rule that can be turned off. The computer player follows simple rules of thumb: in Relaxed it mostly picks at random; in Thinking it takes a capture or a mill when it sees one, blocks yours and avoids handing you an easy one. It is beatable on purpose.

Sources

  1. de Voogt, A. J. (1997). Mancala Board Games. London: British Museum Press.
  2. Russ, L. (2000). The Complete Mancala Games Book. New York: Marlowe & Company.
  3. Murray, H. J. R. (1952). A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  4. Shakespeare, W. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 2, Scene 1: “The nine men’s morris is filled up with mud.”
  5. Gasser, R. (1996). Solving Nine Men’s Morris. Computational Intelligence, 12(1), 24–41.
  6. Romein, J. W., & Bal, H. E. (2003). Solving awari with parallel retrograde analysis. IEEE Computer, 36(10), 26–33.

Rules for both games vary from place to place; the page uses widely published versions. The worked example position is made up. Games and the record stay in this browser. Support: team@caveatacademic.com.