Ayo

The board and sowing

Two rows of six pits, four seeds in each. Your row is the one nearest you. On your turn lift all the seeds from one of your pits and sow them one at a time into the following pits, counter-clockwise: along your row to the right, then back along theirs.

A pit with twelve or more seeds laps the whole board; the pit it came from is skipped, so it is always empty at the end of the move.

Capturing

If your last seed lands in one of their pits and makes it two or three, you take those seeds. Then look at the pit before it: if that one also holds two or three, take it too, and keep walking back along their row for as long as each pit holds two or three.

• Grand slam: a move that would take every seed they have is allowed, but takes nothing.
• Feed them: if their row is empty you must play a move that puts seeds into it. If no move can, the game ends and you keep the seeds on your side.

Winning

Twenty-five seeds wins, more than half of all forty-eight. The game also ends when the player to move has no legal move; then each side keeps the seeds on its own row and the bigger store wins. Twenty-four each is a draw. If a hundred moves pass without a capture, the game is settled the same way, so a few seeds chasing each other round cannot go on forever.

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