Nine men's morris

Nine men's morris

• Nine men's morris is a strategy board game for two players. It is an ancient game, dating back to at least the Roman Empire. The game is also known as nine-man morris, mill, mills, the mill game, merels, merrills, merelles, marelles, morelles, and ninepenny marl in English. In North America, the game has also been called cowboy checkers**, and its board is sometimes printed on the back of checkerboards. Nine men's morris is a [[solved-game]], that is, a game whose optimal strategy has already been calculated. It has been shown that with perfect play from both players, the game results in a draw.

The classical Latin term is a diminutive of 'man'; the Ecclesiastical Latin word means 'gamepiece', which may have been corrupted in English to 'morris', or "jump") from any point to any vacant point.

Some rules sources say this is the way the game is played, and some do not mention it at all.. Contemporary strategy manuals, such as Hans Schürmann and Manfred Nüscheler’s So gewinnt man Mühle , Dr. Rainer Rosenberger's muehle lehrbuch and Benjamin Brandwood’s Nine Men’s Morris: Strategy, Edition 2, further emphasise the importance of building multiple latent mill threats while controlling key junctions that support both offensive mill formation and effective blocking play.

Advanced computer-assisted analysis, including work by the Brillant Mill project by Alexander Szabari, Jozef Mičko, Ferenc Volman and György Bándy and the Malom program developed by G. E. Gévay and G. Danner , demonstrates that many positions are theoretically drawn with perfect play; nonetheless, practical winning chances arise when a player can manoeuvre into structures where a single piece shuttles between two distinct mills, enabling repeated captures or inducing zugzwang-like situations for the opponent. In high-level play, an ideal winning configuration is therefore one in which a player maintains such a “double-mill” shuttle while following precise, engine-verified sequences to convert structural advantages into victory or, at minimum, to avoid well-known drawing sequences identified in these computational studies.

Variants ### Three men's morris

• Three men's morris**, also called nine-holes, is played on the points of a grid of 2×2 squares, or in the squares of a grid of 3×3 squares, as in [[tic-tac-toe]]. The game is for two players; each player has three men. The players put one man on the board in each of their first three plays, winning if a mill is formed (as in tic-tac-toe). After that, each player moves one of the player's men, according to one of the following rules versions:

A player wins by forming a mill.

H. J. R. Murray calls version No. 1 "nine holes", and version No. 2 "three men's morris" or "the smaller merels".

Six men's morris

• Six men's morris** gives each player six pieces and is played without the outer square of the board for nine men's morris. Flying is not permitted. The game was popular in Italy, France and England during the Middle Ages but was obsolete by 1600.

History Based on boards for the game, which included diagonal lines, "cut into the roofing slabs of the temple at Kurna in Egypt", R. C. Bell assumes a date for them of  BCE.

One of the earliest mentions of the game may be in Ovid's Ars Amatoria. A brick found on a mediaeval site near Wisbech, had been used by the brickmakers as a board before being fired. Boards have been found carved into the cloister seats at the English cathedrals at Canterbury, Gloucester, Norwich, Salisbury and Westminster Abbey. Another board is carved into the base of a pillar in Chester Cathedral in Chester. Giant outdoor boards were sometimes cut into village greens. In Shakespeare's 16th century work A Midsummer Night's Dream, Titania refers to such a board: "The nine men's morris is filled up with mud".

Some authors say the game's origin is uncertain. King also notes that the game was popular among Roman soldiers.

In some European countries, the design of the board was given special significance as a symbol of protection from evil. Kensington is a similar game in which two players take turns placing pieces and try to arrange them in certain ways. Luk k'i ('six man chess') in Canton, China, also played as Tapatan in the Philippines, is equivalent to three-men's-morris played on a board with diagonals. Morabaraba, almost equivalent to twelve men's morris. However, rather than men, the counters are called "cows". It is played competitively internationally in competitions run by the International Wargames Federation. Lusalos is played in the Philippines. It uses the same board and number of pieces as Nine Men’s Morris. The rules are identical, except that Phase 3 (the Flying rule) is not included. Shax is played on the board of nine men's morris, but with somewhat different rules and with twelve pieces per player instead of nine. Fangqi is played on a seven-by-seven grid. Players move pieces one point at a time along the grid, attempting to form four-by-four squares and removing one of the opponent's pieces after forming a square. It is played in Xinjiang and other parts of northwest China. * [[tic-tac-toe]] uses a three-by-three board, on which players place pieces (or make marks) in turn until one player wins by forming an orthogonal or diagonal line, or until the board is full and the game is drawn (tied).

See also * History of games * Méreau (token)

References ## External links * ["What Planet Is This?"](http://inamidst.com/notes/merels) by Sean B. Palmer * **[Mühle-Lehrbuch](https://muehlespieler.de/download/muehle_lehrbuch.pdf) by Dr. Rainer Rosenberger* *[Brilliant Mill](http://www.brillant-mill.eu/milleng.html) by Alexander Szabari, Jozef Mičko, Ferenc Volman and György Bándy *[So gewinnt man Mühle](http://muehlespiel.ch) at WMD *[Malom](https://www.inf.u-szeged.hu/~danner/mills/?fbclid=IwY2xjawQK5upleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeh4RpSI4JxaKN1mlSIKCVzzYkf1mowE4_Zc_tJpW4NRND5VsVkj-UfTtBNbA_aem_R2e0yI6DS7Asu1QKBaYzKw) by *Gábor Danner, Gábor E. Gévay* *[Nine Men's Morris Strategy](https://www.amazon.com/Nine-Mens-Morris-Beginners-Intermediate-ebook/dp/B0GNYZ6VZJ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1G5WE5JHQU511&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.pdWk6iy1DNHuwb292DnwnkL-JOgeFudxV-AL12BOB8c.g0BJZyc4e7MJHgFmBiX3hwDDIoJ6Dzf98EgFcj4YksA&dib_tag=se&keywords=nine+mens+morris+brandwood&qid=1771964419&sprefix=nine+mens+morris+brandwood%2Caps%2C307&sr=8-1) by Benjamin Brandwood

• Variants**