Navakankari: the traditional game

Navakankari means, roughly, “nine pebbles” — nava for nine, and a word for the small stones that served as pieces. The name describes the equipment exactly: nine pebbles a side, and a board that can be drawn in dust with a stick.

Indian sources place play as early as the 4th century BCE, with the game appearing in records of the Maurya and Gupta periods, and describe it as a pastime of scholars, warriors and royalty. A board survives cut into the floor of a roughly 400-year-old Hanuman temple at Kuluru, in Andhra Pradesh’s Nandyal district.

As documented by Indian sources, Navakankari is played like this:

• ·The board is three squares one inside another, joined by lines from the midpoint of each inner side to the midpoint of the corresponding outer side. Pieces go on the 24 intersections.
• ·Each player has nine coins or pebbles, placed one per turn onto any empty point.
• ·Three of one player’s pieces in a straight line — horizontally or vertically — is a mill, and removes one opponent piece.
• ·A diagonal alignment does not count.
• ·A piece already part of a mill cannot be removed.
• ·After placing, pieces move one step to an adjacent empty point along a line.
• ·A player loses when reduced to two pieces, or when they have no valid move left.

Note the two details that distinguish the tradition: diagonals do not count, and being blocked loses you the game.

The game here is called Tigadi rather than Navakankari, and that is deliberate — it is a variant of the same family, not the traditional game.

If you want the traditional game, play on a board without diagonals and treat a blockade as a loss. If you want the version with more lines and no blockade defeat, that is what runs here.

The traditional board and this site’s board share all 24 points. What differs is how those points are connected, and the differences can simply be counted.

On the traditional board, then, all 24 points are equal for making lines — each belongs to exactly two — and the only inequality is in movement. The four midpoints of the middle square have four neighbours each; all twelve corners have just two.

• ·Corners are traps rather than strongholds. A corner piece on the traditional board has two exits, so two enemy pieces on the neighbouring midpoints seal it in completely. On the diagonal board the same piece has a third exit, and needs three pieces to hold it.
• ·Blocking is a way to win. Because the traditional rules end the game against a player with no legal move, an attack does not have to capture anything — shutting every enemy piece in is enough. With twelve two-exit corners on the board, that is a realistic plan rather than a curiosity.
• ·Forks are smaller. Every point lies on two lines, so a single placement can start at most two threats, never three. The double threat is the ceiling.
• ·Placing is about freedom as much as lines. With no square better than another for line-making, the placing phase leans towards keeping pieces able to move later; a piece put where it can be boxed in becomes a liability once a blockade can decide the game.

In short: the traditional game rewards restriction, and its blockade rule turns restriction into a result. The diagonal variant rewards line-building, and treats a blockade as a lost turn rather than a lost game.

Plenty of players learn one version and meet the other later. A few habits need resetting each way.

• ·From the traditional board to this one: look along the four diagonals before every placement, and stop treating a blockade as the finish — a blocked opponent here just passes, and you still have to take pieces until they are down to two.
• ·From this board to the traditional one: stop counting diagonal pairs as threats, guard your corner pieces against being sealed in, and remember that running out of moves now loses outright.
• ·Either way, agree the rules first. Families who play the traditional game do not all play it identically, and the rules recorded in the sources below are one documented version rather than the only one.

Navakankari needs no equipment. A board scratched in the ground and eighteen pebbles, tamarind seeds or cowrie shells is a complete set, which is why it turns up on temple floors and courtyard stones rather than in collections.

It is also genuinely deep for something so simple. The placing phase alone rewards planning several moves ahead, and the mill-and-remove mechanic produces the kind of grinding advantage that makes a game worth replaying rather than just finishing.