Stone Pits

The basics

Stone Pits is Kalah, the sowing game from the mancala family. Each of you owns six pits and one store; every pit starts with four stones, forty-eight in all. On your turn pick one of your pits and drop its stones one at a time into the pits that follow counter-clockwise: rightwards along your own row, into your store, then leftwards along the computer's row. You never drop a stone into the computer's store, and you never pick a pit on its side. Two things turn a move into a bonus. If your last stone lands in your own store you bank it and move again, so the walk around the board decides how long your turn lasts. If your last stone lands in an empty pit on your own side you take that stone plus every stone in the pit directly across the board, and all of them go into your store. The game ends as soon as one row of pits runs dry: the stones still in the other row go straight to that player's store and the fuller store wins, so a clear lead can still be cut down at the end. Land your last stone on a pit that already holds stones and nothing is captured, which means the safe piles in front of a hungry pit are the ones you should avoid leaving alone. There are three difficulty levels, and a hint that runs the strongest search on your own position without playing it for you.

Objective:

Finish with more stones in your own store than the computer. Stones you drop into your store stay there, and when one row of pits runs dry the stones left in the other row go to their owner, so the fuller store wins.

Controls:

Tap or click a pit in your bottom row to sow it; the computer answers after a short pause. Buttons: Easy, Medium and Hard, Hint and New game. Keyboard: 1 to 6 sow the matching pit from the left, H asks for a hint. Every tap target is 34px or larger. Add ?level=easy, ?level=medium or ?level=hard to the URL to start on a difficulty, and ?seed= to reproduce the computer's tie-breaks.