National Board Game Day: Nine Men's Morris

The 11th April 2026 is National Board Game Day and to mark this day we are providing details of a board game from Francis Willughby’s Book of Games: Nine Men’s Morris. This game has been played in England since the Middle Ages, but is believed to date back much further to at least the Roman Empire. It has always been an internationally played game. It had numerous other names in English such as merels, mills and ninepenny marl.

The board consisted of three squares drawn inside one another and two vertical and horizontal lines connected the squares together at the mid-point. This formed 24 intersections, or points. The innermost square was called the pound. Each player had nine pieces, or men, which could only be placed on the points. Willughby wrote that anything could be used as a counter.

Nine Men's Morris board. By Elembis, PD, via Wikimedia Commons.

He also noted that this game could be played outdoors with people for the game pieces instead. Furrows would be made in the ground to demarcate the squares, a circle in the centre for the pound and cross-furrows for each of the points. This type of outdoor board was even referred to in William Shakespeare’s work A Midsummer Night’s Dream in which it was written “The nine men’s morris is filled up with mud.”

The aim of the game was to form what Willughby called “rows”, often referred to as “mills”, which were three pieces of the same side in a line either horizontally or vertically. When this was achieved, the player was allowed to remove one of their opponent’s pieces and place it in the pound. A player won by reducing the opponent to two pieces.

The first stage of the game was the setting of the pieces. It began with an empty board. Each player took it in turn to set a piece down on an empty point. If anyone formed a row, then they removed one of their adversary’s pieces and put it in the pound. A piece in a completed row could not be removed at any time unless there were no other pieces available. This continued until all of the pieces were placed.

Willoughby called the next stage “the Rim”. Continuing to take turns, the players moved their pieces to an adjacent point. At this stage pieces could not skip or jump over other pieces. If a row was formed through these movements, then the player could place one of his opponent’s pieces in the pound. If all of the pieces of a player were blocked so that none could move, they lost. Anyone who had made a row was permitted to move a piece out of that row and then return it to form the same row for another time and each time doing so could remove another of their opponent’s pieces.

When one player was reduced to three pieces, the final stage began. Willughby called this “Hip Skip”. This was because when that player had only three pieces, they were no longer restricted to move to only an adjacent point and could skip, also known as jump, fly or hop, from any point to another vacant point. Willughby commented that if both players were Hip Skip then the game might last a very long time.

Nine Men’s Morris is described as a solved game, which is a game where the optimal strategy has been calculated. With perfect play from both players, the game will always result in a draw. Therefore, it is not surprising that Willughby, with his interest in games primarily arising from his interest in probability, wrote about this game. To that end, Willughby commented that the cunning in this game was to create and keep a “Running Rotchet” (which was a row on one of the intersecting mid-point horizontal or vertical lines), and then contrive to get five points occupied so that whenever you moved a piece from one completed row it completed the other.

Willughby posed a question at the end of his entry for this game: Is it possible to win after your opponent has managed to get five pieces in such a layout?

Further Reading: David Cram, Jeffrey L. Forgeng & Dorothy Johnston, Francis Willughby’s Book of Games, 2003. pp.215-217.

Author - Debbie Jordan, Middleton Hall Volunteer.

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