Games Our Grandparents Played

• China, and widely played across East and Southeast Asia

  Xiangqi

  Also called Chinese chess; cờ tướng in Vietnamese

  Xiangqi has been played in China for well over a thousand years, and in parks and on doorsteps across East and Southeast Asia today.

  In Vietnam it is cờ tướng, the general's game, and it is often played outdoors with an audience offering advice nobody asked for.

  The rules, briefly

  • The board is nine lines by ten, with a river across the middle and a small palace at each end.
  • Pieces sit on the points, not in the squares. You win by trapping the other side's general.
  • The cannon moves like a rook but must jump exactly one piece to capture. The elephant may not cross the river.

  Try this: The central cannon

  The most common first move puts a cannon on the middle file, aiming straight at the other general's palace. Try it, then try defending against it.

  Play on GeneralsTale (two players, one screen)

  Read more: Xiangqi on Wikipedia

• Vietnam

  Ô ăn quan

  Also called the mandarin square capturing game

  Ô ăn quan is a Vietnamese sowing game, often drawn in chalk on the ground and played with pebbles or seeds.

  Its name means roughly "the mandarin's squares". The two large end squares each hold a mandarin, a bigger stone worth more than the others.

  The rules, briefly

  • Ten small squares in two rows of five sit between two large end squares.
  • On your turn you scoop the stones from one of your squares and drop them one by one into the squares that follow.
  • When you run out, the squares after where you stopped decide what happens next: an empty square followed by a full one lets you take the full one.

  Try this: Count before you scoop

  Before you scoop, count the stones and say where the last one will land. The AtlasTales board plays one common set of rules; many families play theirs a little differently.

  Play on AtlasTales (two players, one screen)

  Read more: Ô ăn quan on Wikipedia

• Vietnam

  Cờ gánh

  Also called the carrying game

  Cờ gánh is a Vietnamese strategy game played on a small grid of lines with diagonals, often scratched into the ground.

  Its name comes from the shoulder pole used to carry two loads at once, which is how its capture works.

  The rules, briefly

  • The board is a five-by-five grid of points with diagonal lines. Each player has eight pieces.
  • Move a piece one step along a line to an empty point.
  • Pieces are never removed. If you step between two enemy pieces in a line, you carry them: both become yours. A group with no way to move also changes sides.

  Try this: Step into the gap

  Look for two enemy pieces with an empty point between them on one line. Stepping into that gap turns both. Then look for the same gap in your own position before your opponent does.

  Play on AtlasTales (two players, one screen)

  Read more: Cờ gánh on Wikipedia

• West Africa, played across Africa and the Caribbean

  Oware

  Also called awari, ayo; a mancala game

  Oware belongs to the mancala family of sowing games, among the oldest board games still played.

  It is played on a carved board of two rows of six pits, and has a strong tournament tradition in Ghana and among the Akan people.

  The rules, briefly

  • Each pit starts with four seeds, forty-eight in all.
  • Scoop all the seeds from one of your pits and sow them one by one, anticlockwise, into the following pits.
  • If your last seed lands in an opponent's pit and makes two or three there, you capture them, and the pits before it too while they also hold two or three.

  Try this: Count where the last seed lands

  Before every move, count the seeds and point to the pit where the last one will fall. Good players do this for their opponent's best move too.

  Play on AtlasTales (two players, one screen)

  Read more: Oware on Wikipedia

Written from published sources. If you play one of these in your family and something here is wrong, tell us: hello@sparkanvil.org.