Game of twenty squares rules

Then they both moved up the middle until reaching the end on the 8th square. Finally they separated again, back toward their respective directions and exited the board after the 7th square. Later boards had the middle going straight to the end so that each piece was vulnerable until it left the board. Those versions help narrow down the direction of play. I believe they were borrowed in part from another person before the tablet was fully understood. Personally I find rules that give each decorated square a special significance a bit convoluted and not supported by the evidence.

Eyes are used for decoration a lot in Middle-Eastern cultures. There are even some decorative eyes around the sides of the board. We know the big quincunx squares are decorative, and look at how they alternate in a pattern with eye squares.

There is no apparent significance to the positioning of the eye squares, and being able to stack pieces but only on two of the four squares in your home area makes very little sense gameplay-wise. I do like the path you describe as it links up all the rosette squares by moves of 4, however, this path does make the game quite long. B1 is particularly interesting, being the only unique square on the board.

It must have some special significance. The image looks like it could either be a scoring table or an abstract representation of two armies facing off. I agree that B3 and B6 also have a special meaning. They only appear in the central lane, where both colour pieces can be found, and so these squares having some special conditions for interactions between opposing pieces makes sense. If they are not special squares then why not just repeat the eye pattern like you would expect?

Either they are the square where piece get flipped, and so the safety prevents them from being captured by opponent pieces that have just been flipped also; or perhaps the players have a choice of which way they wish to loop around the small end of the board, this would mean a piece can be taken on the rosettes A7 and C7, and A8 and C8 being safe squares forces the opponent to take the other direction.

The rule set presented here is the most interesting one for modern players, at least among the non-betting variants. After working my way up to level 5 I think I may have discovered a flaw in the game. Once a player forms a stack of two on B6 consisting of a dotted piece of his own over a blank piece of the opponent, the game is essentially over. This strategy is particularly powerful for the first player to occupy B7, since he can then sit there with a dotted piece like a spider waiting for a fly.

An alternate solution might be to alter rule 6 so that when a player with pieces on the board has no moves either he wins, or he is able to move a piece that would normally be blocked.

Another solution might be to change the rule governing the 4-eyes square B7, perhaps removing its safety, so that the spider would be in danger of capture. This looks like a very interesting game. Is there someone offering it for sale? In my opinion, these diamonds are placed too arbitrarily to be an adornment. Even more so, they are drawn attention to by the pattern on the sides of the game — or the lack of it.

I think they indicate something just as a guess, to announce times for betting? Anybody with a suggestion? This game uses the two-sided chips, most like representing children or servants, sent to collect the grain dole from the granary for a family unit B1 2-parents and 4-grandparents, the home square. Or a Bring Your Tithes to the Storehouse.

This is a game for many on multiple levels, 7 chips may represent children or the wealth of employing servants, note: a healthy fruitfulness for civilization growth, FRR 7.

It was played in Cyprus, though Cyprus fell within the Egyptian empire. It was found in Mesopotamia, in the new form as well as the old, and as far east as India, from where it may have originated. The Game of Twenty Squares is played on a board of 20 squares, arranged in 3 rows of 4 with an 8-square extension to the middle row as shown in the diagram.

Five of the squares are marked. Players each have a knuckle-bone or four-sided die, giving values of 1, 2, 3 or 4 when thrown. The path of a player's pieces starts on his side of the board, in the large block, four squares from the end. The piece moves toward the corner with the rosette, before moving to the adjacent square on the middle row and continuing in the opposite direction till it reaches the far end. If none of his pieces are in play, then he must enter a piece on the first, second, third or fourth square on the board, according to the score of the die.

The find included a rectangular board made of ebony, pieces made from turquoise and agate, and dice. The design of the board features an engraved serpent coiling around itself to produce the requisite 20 squares. The Sumerian boards appear to be the ancestors of boards found at Egyptian sites which are years younger and on which the Egyptian Game of Twenty Squares was played, presumably in a similar fashion.

The boards sometimes came in the form of a box inside which the pieces were held - often these boards had a different gaming pattern on the reverse side - usually a Senet board. The pattern for the game is similar to that of "Ur" - at one end a block of 4 x 3 squares lies and then extending from the middle of one side of 3, lies a row of 8 more squares. It is as if the Egyptians moved the 2 blocks of 2 squares on either side at the other end from the edge to the middle row.

The 3 rosettes are found in the same places on the 4 x 3 block with another at the far end of the "handle" and a fifth positioned centrally between the other 2 rosettes on the middle row. Parlett, in the Oxford History of Board Games makes no mention of the name 'Tau' which both Bell and Murray quote but instead says that an inscription says the name is "Aseb".

This is not an Egyptian word and so the guess is that it is derived from Ancient Sumerian. There is another relative in this family of extremely ancient games which is played on a kind of doubled up form of the Game of Twenty Squares.

Only three examples of this board have ever been found and as with the 2 games above, it is not known how to play it. For any one toss of the sticks, the probabilities of the scores are:. Suppose, however, that the sticks are cylinders cut in half , so that the probability of rolling onto the flat side is not small. Thus, the asymmetry of the sticks in a particular Aseb game set could be significant to the game play.

This issue of the asymmetry of the sticks arises in all the games in which the sticks are round on one side and flat on the other! Your email address will not be published. Currently you have JavaScript disabled. In order to post comments, please make sure JavaScript and Cookies are enabled, and reload the page. Click here for instructions on how to enable JavaScript in your browser. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam.