A game from Ancient Egypt

How to Play Nine Men’s Morris

Form a mill with your nine pieces and take theirs away.

Origin Ancient EgyptPlayers 1–2Price ¥200 (or ¥2,000 for all)

The rules

First place your nine pieces, then slide them along the lines. Line up three and you form a mill — remove one enemy piece. Cut your opponent down to two and you win.

Where it came from

A board is scratched into the roof slabs of the temple at Kurna in Egypt, making this some 3,000 years old. It was hugely popular in medieval Europe and appears in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Tic-tac-toe is a relative.

How to win

Build a windmill. Arrange a mill you can open and close every turn and you strip a piece each time. During placement, grab the intersections that lead in four directions first.

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