The history of {game}
Where these games come from, and how they travelled.
Timeline
Origins
Fanorona is Madagascar's national game and has been played there for centuries. It grows out of the alquerque family of lattice boards, which reached the island through trade across the Indian Ocean, but its capture rules are its own and are found nowhere in that family.
The name of the full board, tsivy, and the smaller dimy and telo, are Malagasy: the numbers refer to the boards rather than to the rules, which are the same in the two larger games.
The game in Malagasy life
Fanorona appears throughout Malagasy oral tradition, most famously in the story of King Ralambo's successor, who is said to have been so absorbed in a game that he failed to defend his kingdom. Whatever the truth of it, the story tells you how seriously the game was taken.
It has been analysed heavily by computer since: the standard opening is highly forcing, and the smaller boards have been solved outright.
Works consulted
Cited, never copied. Where accounts disagree we say so rather than choosing the tidier story.
- H. J. R. Murray, A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess (1952), on the Malagasy game and its board.
- R. C. Bell, Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations, for the standard setup and rules.
- Published computer analyses of fanorona, for the solved status of the smaller boards.