Editing Nine men's morris

{{Short description|Strategy board game}}
{{Infobox Game
 |title = 
 |italic title = no
 |image_link = [[Image:Nine Men's Morris board with coordinates.svg|300px]]
 |image_caption = A game of nine men's morris in phase two. Even if it is Black's turn, White can remove a black piece each time a mill is formed by moving e3-d3 and then back again d3-e3.
 |years = > 2000 years ago to present
 |genre = {{ubl|[[Board game]]|[[Abstract strategy game]]|[[Mind sport]]}}
 |players = 2
 |setup_time = < 1 minute
 |playing_time = 5–60 minutes
 |random_chance = None
 |ages = 5+
 |skills = [[Strategy game|Strategy]]
 |AKA = {{ubl|Nine-man morris|Mill, mills, or the mill game|Merels or merrills|Merelles, marelles, or morelles|Ninepenny marl|Cowboy checkers}}
 |footnotes =
}}

'''Nine men's morris''' is a [[Abstract strategy game|strategy]] [[Board games|board game]] for two players, dating back to at least the [[Roman Empire]].<ref name="Berger">{{cite journal |last=Berger |first=Friedrich |date=2004 |title=From circle and square to the image of the world: a possible interpretation for some petroglyphs of merels boards |journal=Rock Art Research |volume=21 |issue=1 |pages=11–25 |url=http://mc2.vicnet.net.au/home/aura/shared_files/Berger1.pdf |access-date=2007-01-12 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20041121040028/http://mc2.vicnet.net.au/home/aura/shared_files/Berger1.pdf |archive-date=2004-11-21 }}</ref> The game is also known as '''nine-man morris''', '''mill''', '''mills''', '''the mill game''', '''merels''', '''merrills''', '''merelles''', '''marelles''', '''morelles''', and '''ninepenny marl'''<ref>{{cite book |last=Hone |first=William |title=The Every-Day Book |publisher=Hunt and Clarke |location=London |date=1826 |asin=B0010SXPN0}}</ref> in English. In North America, the game has also been called '''cowboy checkers''', and its board is sometimes printed on the back of [[checkerboard]]s. Nine men's morris is a [[solved game]], that is, a game whose optimal strategy has been calculated. It has been shown that with perfect play from both players, the game results in a draw.<ref name="Gasser">{{cite journal|last=Gasser|first=Ralph|year=1996|title=Solving Nine Men's Morris|journal=Games of No Chance|volume=29|pages=101–113|url=http://library.msri.org/books/Book29/files/gasser.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221010/http://library.msri.org/books/Book29/files/gasser.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-10 |url-status=live|access-date=2015-06-01}}</ref>

The [[Latin]] word {{lang|la|merellus}} means 'gamepiece', which may have been corrupted in English to 'morris',<ref name="Berger"/> while ''miles'' is Latin for [[soldier]].

Three main alternative variations of the game are [[three men's morris|three]], six, and [[twelve men's morris]].

==Rules==
The board consists of a grid with twenty-four intersections, or ''points''. Each player has nine pieces, or ''men'', usually coloured black and white. Players try to form 'mills'—three of their own men lined horizontally or vertically—allowing a player to remove an opponent's man from the game. A player wins by reducing the opponent to two men (whereupon they can no longer form mills and thus are unable to win) or by leaving them without a legal move.

The game proceeds in three phases:
# Placing men on vacant points
# Moving men to adjacent points
# (optional phase) Moving men to any vacant point when the player has been reduced to three men

===Phase 1: placing pieces===
[[Image:Nine Men's Morris board with coordinates, modified.svg|thumb|upright=1.0|Nine men's morris starts on an empty board.]]
The game begins with an empty board. The players determine who plays first and then take turns. During the first phase, a player's turn consists of placing a man from the player's hand onto an empty point. If a player is able to place three pieces on contiguous points in a straight line, vertically or horizontally, they have formed a ''mill'', which allows them to remove one of the opponent's pieces from the board. A piece in an opponent's mill, however, can be removed only if no other pieces are available. After all men have been placed, phase two begins.

===Phase 2: moving pieces===
Players continue to alternate moves, this time moving a man to an adjacent point each turn. A piece may not "jump" another piece. Players continue to try to form mills and remove the opponent's pieces as in phase one. If all a player's pieces get blocked in (where they are unable to move to an adjacent, empty space) that player loses. A player can "break" a mill by moving a piece out of an existing mill, then moving it back to form the same mill a second time (or any number of times), each time removing one of the opponent's men. The act of removing an opponent's man is sometimes called "pounding" the opponent. When one player has been reduced to three men, phase three begins.

===Phase 3: "flying"===
When a player is reduced to three pieces, there is no longer a limitation on that player of moving to only adjacent points: The player's men may "fly" (or "hop",<ref name="Mohr"/><ref name="Wood">{{cite book |last=Wood |first=Clement |author2=Gloria Goddard |title=The Complete Book of Games |year=1940 |publisher=[[Doubleday (publisher)|Garden City Books]] |location=[[Garden City, New York]] |pages=342–43}}</ref> or "jump"<ref name="Foster">{{cite book |last=Foster |first=R. F. |title=Foster's Complete Hoyle: An Encyclopedia of Games |year=1946 |publisher=[[J. B. Lippincott Company]] |pages=568–69}}</ref>) from any point to any vacant point.

Some rules sources say this is the way the game is played,<ref name="Wood"/><ref name="Foster"/> some treat it as a variation,<ref name="Mohr"/><ref name="Ainslie">{{cite book |last=Ainslie |first=Tom |title=Ainslie's Complete Hoyle |year=2003 |publisher=[[Barnes & Noble#Publishing|Barnes & Noble Books]] |isbn=978-0-7607-4159-7 |pages=404–06}}</ref><ref name="Morehead">{{cite book|last=Morehead|first=Albert H.|author2=Richard L. Frey |author3=Geoffrey Mott-Smith | author-link2=Richard L. Frey | author-link=Albert Morehead | author-link3=Geoffrey Mott-Smith | title=The New Complete Hoyle|url=https://archive.org/details/newcompletehoyle00frey|url-access=registration|year= 1956|publisher=Garden City Books|location=Garden City, New York|pages=[https://archive.org/details/newcompletehoyle00frey/page/647 647–649]}}</ref><ref name="Grunfeld">{{cite book|last=Grunfeld|first=Frederic V.|title=Games of the World|year=1975|publisher=[[Henry Holt and Company|Holt, Rinehart and Winston]]|isbn=978-0-03-015261-0|pages=[https://archive.org/details/gamesofworldhowt0000unse/page/59 59–61]|url=https://archive.org/details/gamesofworldhowt0000unse/page/59}}</ref> and some do not mention it at all.<ref name="King"/> A 19th-century games manual calls this the "truly rustic mode of playing the game".<ref name="Mohr"/> Flying was introduced to compensate when the weaker side is one man away from losing the game.

==Strategy==
At the beginning of the game, it is more important to place pieces in versatile locations rather than to try to form mills immediately and make the mistake of concentrating one's pieces in one area of the board.<ref name="Vedar">{{cite web|url= http://gamescrafters.berkeley.edu/games.php?game=ninemensmorris|title=Nine Men's Morris|access-date=2006-12-31|last= Vedar|first=Erwin A.|author2=Wei Tu |author3=Elmer Lee |work=GamesCrafters|publisher=[[University of California, Berkeley]]}}</ref> An ideal position, which typically results in a win, allows a player to shuttle one piece back and forth between two mills, removing a piece every turn.

==Variants==

===Three men's morris===
{{main|Three men's morris}}
[[Image:Three Men's Morris variant board.svg|150px|left]]
'''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:
{{ordered list|style=list-style-position:inside
| To any empty position
| To any adjacent empty position 
}}
A player wins by forming a mill.<ref>{{cite book |last=Murray |first=H. J. R. |author-link=H. J. R. Murray |title=A History of Chess |edition=Reissued |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=1913 |page=614 |isbn=978-0-19-827403-2}}</ref>

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

===Six men's morris===
[[Image:Six Men's Morris.svg|150px|left]]
'''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.<ref name="Bell vol. 1">{{cite book|last=Bell|first=R. C.|author-link=Robert Charles Bell|title =Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations |volume=1 |date=1979 |publisher=[[Dover Publications]] |location=New York |isbn=0-486-23855-5<!-- Volumes 1 and 2 are bound in the same book and thus have the same ISBN. -->|pages=90–92}}</ref> The game was popular in Italy, France and England during the Middle Ages but was obsolete by 1600.<ref name="Bell vol. 1"/>

This board is also used for five men's morris (also called smaller merels). Seven men's morris uses this board with a cross in the center.
{{clear}}

===Twelve men's morris===
{{main|Morabaraba}}
[[Image:Twelve Men's Morris board.svg|150px|left]]
'''Twelve men's morris''' adds four diagonal lines to the board and gives each player twelve pieces. This means the board can be filled in the placement stage; if this happens the game is a draw. This variation on the game is popular amongst rural youth in South Africa where it is known as ''[[morabaraba]]'' and is now recognized as a sport in that country. H. J. R. Murray also calls the game "the larger merels".

This board is also used for eleven men's morris.
{{clear}}

===Lasker morris===
This variant (also called '''ten men's morris''') was invented by [[Emanuel Lasker]], chess world champion from 1894 to 1921. It is based on the
rules of nine men's morris, but there are two differences: each player gets ten pieces; and pieces can be moved in the first phase already. This means each player can choose to either place a new piece or to move one of the player's pieces already on the board. This variant is more complex than nine men's morris, and draws are less likely.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.althofer.de/stahlhacke-lasker-morris-2003.pdf|title=The Game of Lasker Morris|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150106012331/http://www.althofer.de/stahlhacke-lasker-morris-2003.pdf|archive-date=2015-01-06|url-status=live}}</ref>
{{clear}}

==History==
[[Image:NineMensMorrisTileMycenae.jpg|thumb|right|Clay tile fragment from the archeological museum at [[Mycenae]] showing what appears to be a Nine Men's Morris board]]
According to [[R. C. Bell]], the earliest known board for the game includes diagonal lines and was "cut into the roofing slabs of the temple at [[Kurna]] in Egypt"; he estimated a date for them of {{circa|1400}}&nbsp;[[Common era|BCE]].<ref name="Bell vol. 1"/> Friedrich Berger wrote that some of the diagrams at Kurna include [[Coptic cross]]es, however, making it "doubtful" that the diagrams date to 1400&nbsp;BCE. Berger concluded: "Certainly they cannot be dated."<ref name="Berger"/> However, these Coptic crosses themselves certainly are dated no earlier than 42CE according to [[Coptic Orthodox Church|Coptic Orthodox]] tradition, very near the end of the known architectural development of the temple.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://discoveringegypt.com/karnak-temple/ | title=Karnak Temple }}</ref> On the other hand, the earliest known board for the game certainly can be dated before the Common Era,<ref>but R. C. Bell certainly could not have estimated the date so confidently unless he knew which "roofing slabs of the temple at Kurna in Egypt" the earliest known board for the game was cut into and the game already existed at the time that part of the temple was being built or that an earlier part of the temple had been defaced with the game board in that year</ref> as this article shall explain subsequently.

One of the earliest mentions of the game may be in [[Ovid]]'s ''[[Ars Amatoria]]''.<ref name="Berger"/><ref name="Bell vol. 1"/> In book III (c.&nbsp;8&nbsp;CE), after discussing {{lang|la|[[Ludus latrunculorum|latrones]]}}, a popular board game, Ovid wrote:
<blockquote>There is another game divided into as many parts as there are months in the year. A table has three pieces on either side; the winner must get all the pieces in a straight line. It is a bad thing for a woman not to know how to play, for love often comes into being during play.</blockquote>

Berger believes the game was "probably well known by the Romans", as there are many boards on Roman buildings, even though dating them is impossible because the buildings "have been easily accessible" since they were built. It is possible that the Romans were introduced to the game via trade routes, but this cannot be proven.<ref name="Berger"/>

[[Image:Nine Men's Morris with dice in Libro de los juegos.jpg|thumb|right|A 13th-century illustration in ''[[Libro de los juegos]]'' of the game being played with dice]]
[[File:Clevelandart 1953.284.jpg|thumb|An early gaming table (Germany, 1735) featuring [[chess]]/[[draughts]] (''right'') and nine men's morris (''left''), [[Cleveland Museum of Art]]]]

The game might have been played by the sculptors while they were building the huge temples. Inscriptions are seen in many places, carved on stone. The game peaked in popularity in [[History of England#England during the Middle Ages|medieval England]].<ref name="Mohr">{{cite book|last=Mohr|first=Merilyn Simonds|title=The New Games Treasury|url=https://archive.org/details/newgamestreasury0000mohr|url-access=registration|year=1997|publisher=[[Houghton Mifflin]]|isbn= 978-1-57630-058-9|pages=[https://archive.org/details/newgamestreasury0000mohr/page/30 30–32]}}</ref> A brick found on a mediaeval site near [[Wisbech]], had been used by the brickmakers as a board before being fired.<ref>{{cite journal|title= Games Old and New|journal= The Fens|volume=20|year= 2020|last=Monger|first=Garry|pages=20–21}}</ref>
Boards have been found carved into the [[cloister]] seats at the [[England|English]] [[cathedral]]s at [[Canterbury]], [[Gloucester]], [[Norwich, England|Norwich]], [[Salisbury, England|Salisbury]] and [[Westminster Abbey]].<ref name="Bell vol. 1"/> These boards used holes, not lines, to represent the nine spaces on the board—hence the name "nine holes"—and forming a diagonal row did not win the game.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.gamesmuseum.uwaterloo.ca/VirtualExhibits/rowgames/nineholes.html|title=Nine Holes|access-date=2007-01-09|date=2005-09-12|work=Row Games|publisher=[[Elliott Avedon Museum and Archive of Games]]|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070208195130/http://www.gamesmuseum.uwaterloo.ca/VirtualExhibits/rowgames/nineholes.html|archive-date=2007-02-08}}</ref> Another board is carved into the base of a pillar in [[Chester Cathedral]] in [[Chester]].<ref name="Hickey">{{cite web|url=http://www.timetravel-britain.com/05/fall/cathedral.shtml|title=The Hidden Treasures of Chester Cathedral|access-date=2007-01-13|last=Hickey|first=Julia|year= 2005|publisher=TimeTravel-Britain.com}}</ref> Giant outdoor boards were sometimes cut into village greens. In [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]]'s 16th century work ''[[A Midsummer Night's Dream]]'', [[Titania (Fairy Queen)|Titania]] refers to such a board: "The nine men's morris is filled up with mud".<ref>''A Midsummer Night's Dream'', Act II, Scene I.</ref>

Some authors say the game's origin is uncertain.<ref name="Mohr"/> It has been speculated that its name may be related to [[Morris dance]]s, and hence to ''[[Moorish]]'', but according to Daniel King, "the word 'morris' has nothing to do with the old English dance of the same name. It comes from the Latin word {{lang|la|merellus}}, which means a counter or gaming piece."<ref name="King">{{cite book|last=King|first=Daniel|title=Games|url=https://archive.org/details/gamesfrombackgam0000king|url-access=registration|year=2003|publisher=[[Kingfisher plc]]|isbn=978-0-7534-0816-2|pages= [https://archive.org/details/gamesfrombackgam0000king/page/10 10–11]}}</ref> 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.<ref name="Berger"/>

==Related games==
* ''[[Achi (game)|Achi]]'', from [[Ghana]], is played on a three men's morris board with diagonals. Each player has four pieces, which can only move to adjacent spaces.<ref name="Bell vol. 2">{{cite book|last=Bell|first=R. C.|title=Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations, volume 2|year=1979|publisher=[[Dover Publications]]|location=[[New York City]]|isbn=0-486-23855-5<!-- Volumes 1 and 2 are bound in the same book and thus have the same ISBN. -->|pages=55–56}}</ref>
* [[Kensington (game)|Kensington]] is a similar game in which two players take turns placing pieces and try to arrange them in certain ways.
* ''Luk {{not a typo|ssut}} k'i'' ('six man chess') in [[Guangdong|Canton]], China, also played as ''Tapatan'' in the [[Philippines]], is equivalent to [[three men's morris]] played on a board with diagonals.<ref name="Culin">{{cite journal|last=Culin|first=Stewart|date=October–December 1900|title=Philippine Games|journal=American Anthropologist |series=New Series|volume=2|issue=4|pages=643–656|doi= 10.1525/aa.1900.2.4.02a00040|jstor=659313|doi-access=free}}</ref>
* ''[[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]].
* ''[[Shax (board game)|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==
{{Reflist|30em}}

==External links==
{{Commons category|Morris games}}
* [http://inamidst.com/notes/merels "What Planet Is This?"] by Sean B. Palmer
*{{bgg|3886|Nine Men's Morris}}

'''Variants'''
*{{bgg title|19915|Three Men's Morris}}
*{{bgg title|25702|Six Men's Morris}}
*{{bgg title|29080|Twelve Men's Morris}}
{{Tic-Tac-Toe}}
{{Authority control}}

[[Category:Morris games]]
[[Category:Traditional board games]]
[[Category:Solved games]]