🧩 Ludemes
A ludeme is a building block of a game's rules. Once you can name them, you start to see the same block in games that look completely different — the word game and the board game that both use Connection. Here are the blocks our games are built from.
Connection
Join your two sides of the board with a chain of your tiles — like building a bridge.
Trace
Draw a path from tile to touching tile — here it must spell a real word.
Word (the Meaning Rule)
A move only counts when the tiles spell a real word — and you know what it means.
Flip (custodial capture)
Flank a piece — your ends, their middle — and the middle flips to become yours.
Capture
Surround or jump a piece to take it off the board.
Sowing
Scoop up a pit and drop one seed in each pit around the board.
Anagram
Rearrange a jumble of letters into a real word.
Subtraction (Nim)
Take some away each turn — the trick is not being the one left with the last.
Sound (phoneme)
Match by the SOUND at the start of a word, not the letter you see.
Inside the old games
Most of these games are hundreds or thousands of years old. Each one is made of smaller rule blocks — and the same block turns up in games from opposite sides of the world. Tap a block to see what it means.
Alquerque
The medieval Arab world and Spain
Brandubh (Celtic tafl)
Early-medieval Ireland & the wider Norse world (the tafl family)
Oware
The Akan people of West Africa (a game of the mancala family)
Fanorona
Madagascar (the national board game of the Malagasy people)
Congkak
Maritime Southeast Asia (Malay & Indonesian mancala)
The Royal Game of Ur
Ancient Mesopotamia (the city of Ur, in what is now Iraq)
Senet
Ancient Egypt (played from the pharaohs to ordinary households)
Cờ Gánh
Vietnam — Đà Nẵng & Quảng Nam ("cờ gánh", carrying chess)
Cờ Chân Chó
Vietnam ("cờ chân chó" / "cờ chó", dog's-paw chess) — a schoolyard folk game
Ô Ăn Quan
Vietnam ("ô ăn quan", mandarin square capturing) — a folk mancala
Makruk
Thailand & mainland Southeast Asia (Makruk, "chess" — a living cousin of the ancient game)
Cờ Cá Ngựa
Vietnam (Cờ Cá Ngựa, "horse chess" — the Vietnamese cousin of the pachisi/ludo race-game family)
The rule blocks
- Step
- Move one piece one space along a line to an empty point. Found in: Alquerque, Fanorona, Cờ Gánh, Cờ Chân Chó, Makruk.
- Slide
- Move a piece as far as you like in a straight line, stopping before anything in the way. Found in: Brandubh (Celtic tafl).
- Hop capture
- Jump over an enemy next to you, landing on the empty space beyond — the jumped piece is out. Found in: Alquerque.
- Chain
- After one capture, the same piece must keep capturing if it can. Found in: Alquerque.
- Sandwich capture
- Trap an enemy between two of your pieces in a line and it is taken. Found in: Brandubh (Celtic tafl).
- Approach and withdraw
- Step toward a line of enemies, or step away from one, and the whole line in that direction is taken. Found in: Fanorona.
- Carry
- Step between two enemies on one line and both of them change to your side. Found in: Cờ Gánh.
- Surround
- An enemy with no empty space next to it changes to your side. Found in: Cờ Gánh.
- Royal escape
- One special piece wins the game by reaching a goal square. Found in: Brandubh (Celtic tafl).
- Royal capture
- Surround the special piece on every side and the attackers win. Found in: Brandubh (Celtic tafl).
- Promotion
- A piece that reaches its promotion row turns into a stronger piece. Found in: Makruk.
- Check
- Threaten the king so the other player must deal with it on their very next move. Found in: Makruk.
- Land-on capture
- Move onto an enemy’s square and it is taken off the board. Found in: Makruk.
- Sow
- Scoop up every seed in one pit and drop them one at a time into the pits that follow. Found in: Oware, Congkak, Ô Ăn Quan.
- Relay
- When your sowing stops at a pit that still holds seeds, scoop that pit up and keep sowing. Found in: Congkak, Ô Ăn Quan.
- Sow capture
- Where your sowing stops decides which pits of seeds you capture. Found in: Oware, Congkak, Ô Ăn Quan.
- Scatter
- When your row is empty, refill it from the stones you have already won. Found in: Ô Ăn Quan.
- Enter
- Bring a new piece onto the track from the start. Found in: The Royal Game of Ur.
- Advance
- Move a piece forward along the track by the number you threw. Found in: The Royal Game of Ur, Senet, Cờ Cá Ngựa.
- Bear off
- Take a piece off the end of the track — it is home. An exact throw is needed. Found in: The Royal Game of Ur, Senet, Cờ Cá Ngựa.
- Send back
- Land on an enemy piece and it goes all the way back to the start. Found in: The Royal Game of Ur, Cờ Cá Ngựa.
- Swap
- Land on an enemy piece and the two of you trade places. Found in: Senet.
- Safe square
- A marked square where you cannot be captured — and landing there earns another turn. Found in: The Royal Game of Ur.
- Water square
- Land on the trap square and your piece is washed back down the track. Found in: Senet.
- Release
- Throw the special number to let a piece out of its stable. Found in: Cờ Cá Ngựa.
- Pass
- When the throw lets you move nothing, the turn passes on. Found in: The Royal Game of Ur, Senet, Cờ Cá Ngựa.
- Extra turn
- Some moves or throws let you go again straight away. Found in: Congkak, The Royal Game of Ur, Senet, Cờ Cá Ngựa.
Building your own game? Pick a few ludemes and combine them — that's how every game here started.