Tigadi (तिगड़ी) is a two-player board game from India, played on three concentric squares with 24 points. It is a variant of nine men’s morris — known in Hindi as नवकंकरी or नौ गोटी — with one important difference: the corner diagonals are real lines, so they carry both moves and captures. The name comes from the tigadi, a trio of your pieces on one line, which is what lets you capture.

How do you play Tigadi?

Each player has nine pieces, called gotis. You take turns placing them on any empty point until all eighteen are down. After that, you take turns sliding one goti to the next point along a drawn line. Whenever three of your gotis occupy one full line, you take an enemy goti off the board. Reduce your opponent to two gotis and you win.

A tigadi is three of one player’s gotis filling all three points of a single drawn line — the same idea as a mill in nine men’s morris. There are 20 such lines on this board: twelve around the three squares and eight along the spokes. Closing a tigadi captures exactly one enemy goti, no matter how many lines you complete at once.

Can a piece jump when you only have three left?

No. In Tigadi a goti always steps to the next intersection along a line — at nine pieces, at three, at two. There is no flying, hopping or jumping at any piece count. This is the biggest difference from the widely published nine men’s morris rules, where a player reduced to three pieces may move anywhere.

What happens if a player has no legal move?

They pass, and the turn goes back to their opponent. Being blocked is never a loss in Tigadi. Because the board is fully connected and every point has at least three neighbours, both players can never be stuck at the same time.

Is Tigadi the same as Nau Goti?

They are the same family of game. Nau goti means “nine pieces”, which is what each player starts with, and the game is also called नवकंकरी across parts of India. Elsewhere you will find it as nine men’s morris, mills, merels or morabaraba — though the diagonals and the no-jumping rule make this version distinct.

Can a tigadi capture more than once?

Yes, and this is how games are won. Move a goti out of a completed tigadi and back in on a later turn, and it counts again, capturing another enemy goti each time. Players call this a running tigadi, and setting one up is the strongest plan in the game.

Which pieces can I capture?

Any enemy goti that is not standing inside a completed tigadi of its own. Pieces inside an enemy tigadi are protected. If every one of your opponent’s gotis is inside a tigadi, that protection lapses and you may take any of them.

Can I play Tigadi online with a friend?

Yes. Create a room and you get a four-character code and a shareable link. Your friend opens the link on any device and you play in real time, with the server refereeing every move. You can also play on one device by passing it back and forth, or against the computer at three difficulty levels.

How does a game of Tigadi end in a draw?

Two ways. If the same position occurs three times with the same player to move, the game is drawn. So is a run of 100 turns with no capture at all. Both counters only start once every goti has been placed.

History of Nine Men’s Morris and Navakankari

The 3,000-year claim, and why it is disputed

Almost every article about this game opens by saying it is over 3,000 years old, on the strength of boards cut into the roofing slabs of the temple at Kurna in Egypt. R. C. Bell assumed a date of around 1400 BCE for them.

That dating does not hold up. Friedrich Berger pointed out that some of the Kurna diagrams include Coptic crosses — a Christian symbol, far later than 1400 BCE — and concluded that "certainly they cannot be dated".

So the honest position is that the Kurna boards are undated, and the confident 1400 BCE figure repeated across the web rests on an assumption its own field has since questioned. The game is old; that particular number is not evidence.

One detail of the Kurna boards is still worth noting for players of this variant: they are described as including diagonal lines.

The record, in order

Set out chronologically, the evidence is thinner and more interesting than the usual summary suggests. One entry is marked as disputed, and that marking is the important part.

c. 1400 BCE
Boards cut into roofing slabs at the temple at Kurna, Egypt — including diagonal lines. R. C. Bell assumed this date.
disputed
4th century BCE
Indian sources place play from around this period, with the game appearing in records of the Maurya and Gupta periods.
c. 8 CE
Ovid’s Ars Amatoria describes a game of three-in-a-row on a small board — possibly the earliest textual mention.
Roman era
Boards scratched into stonework across Roman buildings, in enough places that Berger considered the game "probably well known by the Romans".
Medieval England
The game peaks in popularity. Boards carved into cathedral cloister seats at Canterbury, Gloucester, Norwich, Salisbury and Westminster Abbey.
c. 1600s
A board cut into the floor of a Hanuman temple at Kuluru, Nandyal district, Andhra Pradesh — now around 400 years old.

What the Roman record shows

Firmer ground begins with Rome. One of the earliest textual mentions may be in Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, written around 8 CE, which describes a game of three-in-a-row on a small board.

The physical evidence is broader: morris boards are scratched into stonework across Roman buildings in enough places that Berger considered the game "probably well known by the Romans". Boards cut into public stone are a good sign of a game played casually and often, rather than ceremonially.

Medieval England, and boards in church

The game peaked in popularity in medieval England, and the evidence for it is charming: boards carved into the cloister seats of cathedrals at Canterbury, Gloucester, Norwich, Salisbury and Westminster Abbey — cut by people with time to fill in places where they were meant to be doing something else.

Some of those medieval boards use holes rather than lines for the points, and on at least some of them a diagonal row did not win. The rules were never uniform, which is worth remembering whenever anyone claims a single correct version.

The Indian tradition

In India the game is old, widespread, and known by a different name in almost every language. Indian sources describe play from as early as the 4th century BCE, with the game appearing in records from the Maurya and Gupta periods, and treat it as a pastime of scholars, soldiers and royalty alike.

The physical record continues into the recent past. A board is cut into the floor of a roughly 400-year-old Hanuman temple at Kuluru, in the Nandyal district of Andhra Pradesh — the same habit as the Roman stonework and the English cloisters, repeated on another continent.

Navakankari
Sanskrit — “nine pebbles”
Navkakri
Gujarati
Daadi · Dahdi
Telugu; used widely across India
Saalu Mane Ata
Kannada
Jodpi Ata
Kannada
Char-Par
Kannada
Nau Goti
Hindi — “nine pieces”
तिगड़ी Tigadi
Hindi — a trio

The traditional Indian game as documented is the board without diagonals: three squares joined at the midpoints, diagonal alignments not counting, and a blocked player losing. The version on this site keeps the family and changes those specifics, which is why it goes by the name of the formation rather than claiming to be Navakankari itself.

What the names tell you

In English alone the game answers to nine-man morris, mill, mills, merels, merrills, merelles, marelles, morelles and ninepenny marl — and, in North America, cowboy checkers. Add the Indian names and the European ones and you have a game that has been reinvented and renamed everywhere it has travelled.

That is the real historical claim worth making. Not a precise date, which nobody has, but a spread: a game simple enough to scratch into any flat surface, and good enough that people in Rome, medieval England and Andhra Pradesh all bothered to.

A history of the morris family