Daadi, at home and in the browser

Search for Daadi and you will find two things: cloth and wooden boards for sale, and mobile apps. Both are fine, but neither is what you want if you just remembered the game and would like a round now.

This site plays in the browser, with no download and no account — on a phone, a tablet or a laptop. Play the computer at three difficulty levels, pass one phone back and forth, or share a link and play someone in another city.

Daadi — also written Dahdi — is recorded as the Telugu name for the game, though in practice it travels much further than that. Indian board sellers use it as the default label across the country, usually alongside Navakankari, which tells you something about how widely it is understood.

That is normal for this game rather than unusual. It has a different name in nearly every Indian language: Navakankari in Sanskrit, Navkakri in Gujarati, Saalu Mane Ata, Jodpi Ata or Char-Par in Kannada, Nau Goti in Hindi. Europe is no better organised about it — mills, merels, marelles, morris.

Daadi has always been a game you make rather than buy, and everything you need is probably within reach.

1. 1Draw the largest square you can fit — on paper, on a slate, in chalk on a floor, or with a stick in dirt. Draw a second square inside it and a third inside that, leaving roughly equal gaps.
2. 2Through the middle of each side, draw one straight line that crosses all three squares.
3. 3Mark the 24 places where lines meet or turn: the four corners and four midpoints of each square. Pieces only ever sit on these points, never in the open spaces between them.
4. 4To play the version on this site, also join the corners of the three squares with four diagonal lines. For the board most families draw, leave them off.
5. 5Count out nine pieces each, in two kinds that cannot be confused at a glance.

Almost anything serves as pieces: two colours of coins, bottle caps turned up against bottle caps turned down, pebbles against tamarind seeds, buttons, or stubs of chalk against small stones. The one thing worth checking is that both sides start with exactly nine — a missing or extra piece is surprisingly hard to notice halfway through.

Draw each point as a small dot or circle before you start. On a rough floor drawing it is otherwise easy to argue about whether a piece is on a point or somewhere between two of them.

1. 1You have nine pieces. Take turns placing them on any empty point until all eighteen are down.
2. 2Three of your pieces filling one line takes an enemy piece off the board — straight away, even during placing.
3. 3Once everything is placed, slide one piece per turn to the next point along a line.
4. 4A piece inside a completed line of three is safe and cannot be taken.
5. 5Get your opponent down to two pieces and you have won.

That is enough to start. The full rules, including the exception to that fourth point, are on the rules page.

Rules make more sense on a board. Here are the first nine placements of a game on this site’s board, with the reasoning a newcomer usually misses. Points are named by square — outer, middle, inner — and then by compass direction, so “middle north-west” is the top-left corner of the middle square. Bone moves first, Seed second.

1. 1Bone places on middle north-west. It is a corner, and on this board a corner sits on three lines: the top and left sides of the middle square, and a diagonal.
2. 2Seed places on middle north-east, sharing the top side of the middle square so that Bone cannot finish it.
3. 3Bone places on inner north-west. Two pieces now sit on the north-west diagonal, and outer north-west would complete it.
4. 4Seed has to block, and places on outer north-west. Ignoring two-in-a-line is the commonest beginner mistake of all.
5. 5Bone places on middle west — two on the left side of the middle square, so the new threat is middle south-west.
6. 6Seed blocks again, on middle south-west.
7. 7Bone places on inner west. That single piece makes two threats: inner south-west would close the left side of the inner square, and outer west would close the west spoke.
8. 8Seed can only stop one. It takes outer west — which also puts two Seed pieces on the left side of the outer square, threatening outer south-west.
9. 9Bone places on inner south-west, completes a tigadi on the inner square, and captures. The right piece to take is outer west or outer north-west, because removing either one kills Seed’s threat in the same turn.

Two lessons come out of those nine turns. Blocking is not optional, and the way past a careful blocker is a placement that starts two lines at once. And when you capture, take the piece that matters most right now — usually one that belongs to your opponent’s own threat — rather than whichever is nearest.

Notice too that Bone’s first threat ran along a diagonal. On a board drawn without diagonals, turn three would have threatened nothing at all.

Ask three households how Daadi is played and you may get three slightly different answers. None of them is wrong — most people learned the game from whoever taught them, not from a rulebook — but agreeing before the first piece goes down saves an argument later. These are the questions that come up most, and how this site settles each one.

The diagonals and the blocked player are where this site most often differs from what people remember. Neither choice makes the traditional rules wrong; it is a variant, stated openly so nothing surprises you mid-game.

If you are playing someone who learned a different set, the fairest fix is one game by their rules and one by yours. The site always plays by the right-hand column, which at least makes it a neutral referee.