The object of the game is to form a mill of three men along any of the 16 lines. Players alternate placing all 18 men on the board. To win: A player wins when he or she reduces the number of the opponent's pieces to 2 or puts the opponent into a position where he or she cannot make any legal moves. "Fly" rule (third phase): When a player is down to 3 pieces, that player may move his or her piece to any empty node on the board. A mill may be broken and reformed several times and the player may remove a piece each time it is formed. If a player's move (during either phase) completes a "mill", which is a line of 3 of that player's piece, then that player gets to remove any opponent's piece from the board that is currently not in a mill. Once all 18 pieces have been played, players alternate taking turns sliding a piece from its node to any other empty node connected to it by a line.
When beginning the game, players alternate placing one of their pieces on any empty node on the board. To move: The moves are split into three phases. Traditionally the two colors used are black and white. Any two types of pieces will work as long as there are 9 for each player. There are 9 pieces or men of one color for one player and 9 markers of a different color for the other player. The pieces are played on the intersections of the lines and the squares' corners. The midpoints of each side are connected to the midpoints of the corresponding sides of the other squares by a line. The board consists of 3 concentric squares of increasing size. Known as Trencho, these versions of Nine Men's Morris were inspired by trench fighting. During World War I, new versions of the game sprung up. On June 24, 1897, boys and girls were used as pieces at Saffron Walden.
The game has also been played with real life pieces. In Civis Bononiae MS, the popularity of the game among commoners is described as "Tunc merellos doceo quibus plebs iocatur" (Murray 45). The game is also mentioned in the medieval literature of France and Germany. This passage is often cited as evidence that the game was played outdoors. The rain has not stopped causing disease and the Nine Men's Morris Board to be unplayable. In the passage, Titania, the queen of the fairies blames Oberon for causing chaos in the world. Shakespeare refers to Nine Men's Morris in A Midsummer Night's Dream, when he wrote "The Nine Men's Morris is fill'd up with mud" (Act 2, Scene 2). By the late 16th century, the game was called Merels from an Old English word "mere" meaning boundaries. The board was found scratched onto the seats of many British cathedrals, and on the "steps of Furness Abbey, tombstones at Dryburgh Abbey, Worksop, and Arbory in the Isle of Man, at Norwich, Dover, Helmsley, and Scarborough Castles, and on stones built into the walls of churches, as at Hargrace (Northants), Ickford (Bucks.), Sparsholt (Berks.), and Kirkby Underdale (Yorks.)" (Murray 44). The game was also frequently played with pebbles on engraved boards in taverns or on boards drawn in the ground with a trowel. When opened, the box was used as a backgammon board. When the box was closed, one surface had a chessboard while the other had a Nine Men's Morris board. During the fourteenth century, Nine Men's Morris boards were a part of a set of games that were played on "shallow boxes with hinged lids" (Bell 8). The game was most popular in the 14th and 15th Century. The central square known as the Cauldron or Mill was a symbol of regeneration while the lines and squares coming out from the middle were symbols of "the four cardinal directions, the four elements and the four winds"(Mohr 30).Īlthough it is not known when Nine Men's Morris reached Britain, it was widely played during the Middle Ages, along with similar games such as Three, Six, and Twelve Men's Morris. To the ancient Celts, the Morris square was sacred. In the US, Kere, Tigua, Tew and Zuni Indians played a version of the game called paritariya, picarva, and pedreria. Evidence of the board scratched in the ground has also been found in the Bronze-Age Ireland, ancient Troy, and the Southwestern United States. In Ceylon two boards are cut on the steps leading to the hill at Mihimtali and others are found on a rock near Lankarama dagaba. AD 10) and in the Gokstad Viking ship (c. Other boards have been discovered in Ceylon of Sri Lanka (c. The earliest known diagram of this game was found in an Egyptian temple in Kurna Egypt, dating around 1440 BC. Morris does not have to do with Morris dancers, instead it comes from the Latin word merellus, meaning the corruption of counters.
It is an alignment and configuration game that is found widely around the world. Nine Men's Morris is believed to be one of the oldest games in history.
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