Four boards. Three games. Two thousand years of play.

Ancient Board Games and Puzzles, Free in Your Browser

Rome · Tamil Nadu · Greece · Egypt. No account, no ads, nothing to install.

Senet

Egypt · two players · about 15 minutes

Race five tokens along thirty squares while your opponent does the same, and let four casting sticks decide how far you go. Where you land matters more than how fast you travel. Some houses send a token back to the start, some hold it until you throw an exact number, and landing on a lone opponent swaps the two of you.

Senet was played in Egypt for more than two thousand years. Boards survive in tomb paintings and among Tutankhamun's burial goods. This version follows the reconstruction published by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

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align3

Rome and Tamil Nadu · two players · 2 to 5 minutes

Three stones each on a nine-point board, and the first player to line them up wins. Place your stones, then slide them along the lines. Legal moves light up as you drag, so the rules arrive while you play.

The two boards play differently. On the Roman circle, Terni Lapilli, you win on any spoke through the center or on three consecutive rim points. On the Tamil square, kattam, you win only on the eight straight lines of the grid. Roman boards like the first one are still scratched into paving stones across the former empire.

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ostomachion

Greece · one player · open-ended

A square cut into fourteen flat pieces, and 17,152 ways to put it back together. Scramble them, then rebuild the square. With that many solutions you are unlikely to repeat one.

Archimedes analyzed the puzzle in a treatise that survives only in fragments, most of it in the Archimedes Palimpsest. Nobody knew how many arrangements existed until 2003, when mathematicians finally counted them.

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Where These Games Come From

None of these games needed more than a scratched surface and a handful of stones. Romans cut Terni Lapilli boards into the paving of forums and temple steps, where you can still find them. In Tamil Nadu the same idea is drawn as a square kattam in the sand and played with pebbles and tamarind seeds. Egyptians painted Senet boards on tomb walls and buried finished sets with their dead. Archimedes cut a square into fourteen pieces and wrote a treatise about what he found.

The equipment was never the point. A board is a diagram, and the game lives in the rules two people agree to, which is also why these survive: anything that needs only lines and counters can be redrawn anywhere, including here. Where the original rules are lost we followed the people who did the reconstruction work rather than guessing, so Senet plays by the Oriental Institute's ruleset, and the count of 17,152 ostomachion squares is the one mathematicians settled on in 2003.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Senet?
An ancient Egyptian race game and one of the oldest board games known, played for more than two thousand years. Two players race five tokens each along thirty squares in three rows, moving by throws of four two-sided casting sticks. Boards survive in tomb paintings and among Tutankhamun's burial goods.
How is Senet different from backgammon?
Both are race games decided partly by chance, but Senet runs along a single snaking track of thirty squares rather than backgammon's twenty-four points, and moves come from four casting sticks instead of dice. Senet's marked houses also change the rules mid-race: the House of Waters sends a token back toward the start, and the last squares release a token only on an exact throw.
What is Terni Lapilli?
An ancient Roman board game and early form of three men's morris. Each player has three stones on a nine-point board and wins by aligning all three. Boards survive scratched into Roman ruins across the former empire.
What is Tamil kattam?
A Tamil three-in-a-row game on a 3×3 grid of nine points. Each player has only three pieces: after placing them, players slide pieces along the lines each turn until someone lines up all three.
What is the ostomachion?
An ancient Greek dissection puzzle (also spelled stomachion, sometimes called the loculus of Archimedes): a square cut into 14 flat pieces. Archimedes wrote a treatise about it, one of the earliest known mathematical studies of a puzzle. In 2003 mathematicians counted 17,152 distinct ways to rebuild the square.
Do I need an account or app to play?
No. Every game runs directly in the browser with no download, no sign-up, and no ads. Open the link on any device. Senet and align3 are two-player games, so set the device between you and take turns. Ostomachion is a puzzle for one.
How is three men's morris different from tic-tac-toe?
Tic-tac-toe ends after placement and usually draws. In three men's morris each player has just three pieces, so play continues after placement: pieces slide along the lines every turn until one player forms a line of three.