{"id":3845,"date":"2010-03-29T11:33:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-29T16:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/?p=3845"},"modified":"2010-03-29T11:35:06","modified_gmt":"2010-03-29T16:35:06","slug":"in-which-they-become-addicted-to-a-thousand-year-old-board-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2010\/03\/29\/in-which-they-become-addicted-to-a-thousand-year-old-board-game\/","title":{"rendered":"In which they become addicted to a thousand-year-old board game"},"content":{"rendered":"

L<\/span>ike so many of the best things in life, it’s deceptively simply and devilishly addictive. No, we’re not talking about cupcakes, but about a thousand-year-old board game called Mancala that has overtaken our family like a virus.<\/p>\n

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Have you heard of it? I had not. Tristan got a Mancala set (also known as Kalah) for Christmas from my aunt, but we hadn’t gotten around to pulling off the wrapper until the March Break. From the first time we played, the big boys and I were hooked. We got Beloved addicted within the week. <\/p>\n

Mancala is a derivative of an ancient family of games that are played all over the world. It’s about as low-tech as a game can get — and can I just take a minute and say how delightful it is to see the boys engaged by something that doesn’t flash, vibrate, blast electronic warbles or detonate aliens? You have a small wooden board with six small ‘pits’ laid out in two rows, and a big ‘pot’ at either end. You start out with four beads in each of the little pits. In any given move, you simply scoop out the beads in any of the pits in front of you and move counterclockwise around the board, depositing one bead in each pit. Play continues, usually for 10 to 15 minutes, until one player has no beads left in front of him or her. Player with the most beads in their pot at the end wins. <\/p>\n

Here’s a complete set of rules from the (I swear!) official Mancala wiki<\/a>. They use the term “seed” instead of bead, and the “kalah” is the big pot at your end of the board on your right side. The “store” is your opponent’s kalah.<\/p>\n

Play is counterclockwise. The seeds are distributed one by one in the pits and the players own kalah, but not into the opponent’s store.<\/p>\n

If the last seed is dropped into an opponent’s pit or a non-empty pit of the player, the move ends without anything being captured.<\/p>\n

If the last seed falls into the player’s kalah, he must move again.<\/p>\n

If the last seed is put into an empty pit owned by the player, he captures all contents of the opposite pit together with the capturing piece and puts them in his kalah. If the opposite pit is empty, nothing is captured. A capture ends the move.<\/p>\n

The game ends when a player has no legal move and the remaining pieces are captured by his adversary. The player who has captured most pieces is declared the winner. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Devilishly addictive, dead simple, and oooh, pretty colours. What’s not to love?<\/p>\n

The beauty of the game is that you could play it anywhere, with anything. You could play it on the beach by drawing your pits and pots and using stones; one of my Flickr friends mentioned she made a set out of an egg carton. And you can get high-tech, too: there are online versions<\/a> and yes, there’s an app for that<\/a>. I’ve resisted the digital versions, though. Something about the tactile interaction with those glass beads really enhances the game for me!<\/p>\n

Everyone who has played seems to love the game, so I’m a little surprised to have never heard of it before. Have you played? If you haven’t, I highly recommend it for your next rainy day or family game night. I see many, many hours of Mancala tournaments in our future!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like so many of the best things in life, it’s deceptively simply and devilishly addictive. No, we’re not talking about cupcakes, but about a thousand-year-old board game called Mancala that has overtaken our family like a virus. Have you heard of it? I had not. Tristan got a Mancala set (also known as Kalah) for … Continue reading “In which they become addicted to a thousand-year-old board game”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fun-for-kiddies","category-life-the-universe-and-everything"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3845"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3851,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3845\/revisions\/3851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}