Mancala (the name mancala:منقلة comes from the Arabic word naqala:نقلة meaning literally "to move") is a generic name for a family of "sowing" board games that are popular all over the world. According with Wikipedia
If you are curious and want to know more about the variants, history, and many other aspects about mancala visit Mancala World.
Tchoukaillon is a single player one row Mancala game which was developed by the French mathematician Véronique Gautheron in 1977. It is derived from another single player Mancala variant called Tchuka Ruma first described in 1895. It is interesting but perhaps not surprising that the number of single player Mancala games is very small (compared with the two-player variants).
An interesting description and investigation of Tchuka Ruma, including a mathematical investigation, description of variants of single player Mancala and anthropological details can be found in the 1995 paper Tchuka Ruma Solitaire by Paul J. Campbell and Darrah P. Chavey.
For many details about Tchoukaillon (including its rules) visit its page in Mancala World. Similarly Tchuka Ruma is explained in detail there.
The Tchoukaillon board consists of a sequence of houses/bins/stores that can contain 0 or more stones/seeds, together with an additional house called the Ruma. The goal of the game is to move all of the seeds into the Ruma house. During each turn, the player picks up all of the seeds in a selected house and places/sow them in the houses to the right of the selected house with the important rule that the last seed MUST be placed in the Ruma house. Other moves that either don't place a seed in the Ruma or end up with seeds left over are not allowed and are illegal.
The restriction that the last seed in a turn must end up in the Ruma limits severely the number of moves available to the player. If we index the Ruma and houses from right to left starting with the Ruma at index zero, moving the seeds from a particular house at index i is legal only when the number of seeds in that house is exactly i (if it is smaller than i, the last seed will end up in a house to the right of the Ruma; if it is higher than i, the Ruma will end up receiving more than one seed).
Even in winnable starting configurations, the player must choose carefully when picking among the possible legal moves. In particular, the player should always choose the move whose house is closer to the Ruma. If the player picks the move for the house farther away from the Ruma, after the move, the house closer to the Ruma that the player should have chosen will hold more seeds than its index position and as mentioned above there will never again be a legal move and the player loses.
For example imagine the following initial configuration (the Ruma is in pink), with 3 seeds in the house at index 3, and 1 seed in the next two houses.
And now time to play Tchoukaillon (will not work in IE, please use another browser like Chrome, Firefox or Safari).
"More than 800 names of traditional mancala games are known, and almost 200 invented games have been described. However, some names denote the same game, while some names are used for more than one game."Archaeological evidence suggests that some games of this family are at least 1300 years old. Before modern times (and even now) the games were played on wooden boards with one, two and more rarely three or four rows of holes carved into them. Sometimes larger holes are carved at each end of the board and are used to store captured seeds although in some variants these are used in the actual play.
If you are curious and want to know more about the variants, history, and many other aspects about mancala visit Mancala World.
Tchoukaillon is a single player one row Mancala game which was developed by the French mathematician Véronique Gautheron in 1977. It is derived from another single player Mancala variant called Tchuka Ruma first described in 1895. It is interesting but perhaps not surprising that the number of single player Mancala games is very small (compared with the two-player variants).
An interesting description and investigation of Tchuka Ruma, including a mathematical investigation, description of variants of single player Mancala and anthropological details can be found in the 1995 paper Tchuka Ruma Solitaire by Paul J. Campbell and Darrah P. Chavey.
For many details about Tchoukaillon (including its rules) visit its page in Mancala World. Similarly Tchuka Ruma is explained in detail there.
The Tchoukaillon board consists of a sequence of houses/bins/stores that can contain 0 or more stones/seeds, together with an additional house called the Ruma. The goal of the game is to move all of the seeds into the Ruma house. During each turn, the player picks up all of the seeds in a selected house and places/sow them in the houses to the right of the selected house with the important rule that the last seed MUST be placed in the Ruma house. Other moves that either don't place a seed in the Ruma or end up with seeds left over are not allowed and are illegal.
The restriction that the last seed in a turn must end up in the Ruma limits severely the number of moves available to the player. If we index the Ruma and houses from right to left starting with the Ruma at index zero, moving the seeds from a particular house at index i is legal only when the number of seeds in that house is exactly i (if it is smaller than i, the last seed will end up in a house to the right of the Ruma; if it is higher than i, the Ruma will end up receiving more than one seed).
Even in winnable starting configurations, the player must choose carefully when picking among the possible legal moves. In particular, the player should always choose the move whose house is closer to the Ruma. If the player picks the move for the house farther away from the Ruma, after the move, the house closer to the Ruma that the player should have chosen will hold more seeds than its index position and as mentioned above there will never again be a legal move and the player loses.
For example imagine the following initial configuration (the Ruma is in pink), with 3 seeds in the house at index 3, and 1 seed in the next two houses.
If the player moves the three seeds from house at index 3, she reaches the following configuration
and loses, since house 1 has more seeds than can be carried to its right in one turn.
On the contrary if the player moved the one seed on house at index 1 she would reach the configuration
and she could win on the next turn by distributing the 3 seeds at house 3.
And now time to play Tchoukaillon (will not work in IE, please use another browser like Chrome, Firefox or Safari).
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