Friends and family had packed him off to Valhalla on his death in 870. But the first reliably datable evidence was in the luggage of a Viking. Museum curator Douglas Smith, almost disappearing in a flurry of memorandums, correspondence files, and notes on the game's history, tried to put it into perspective: The Romans called it Merellus, a slangy Latin term for ``tokens'' or ``counters,'' the nine pieces each player begins with. One just had to enjoy playing the game, and show up on time at the Ryedale Folk Museum. One didn't have to be a regional winner, or local champion. Once there, they muscled the sheep out of the way and prepared to play for keeps. In late September, alerted by the flurry of publicity and the sweet smell of competition in the air, 56 Merrills-lovers - locals and strangers from all around Yorkshire, a father and son from Surrey, and a young fellow from Worcestershire - rode or hiked into Hutton-le-Hole (actually a ``hole in a valley,'' four hours' drive north of London). Hence its popularity since ancient days: It can be learned in less than a minute, is played without speaking, and can become as mind-challenging as you wish to make it when studying your next move.īut that doesn't explain why a game so old that few still played it was suddenly in worldwide competition. And the simplest way to explain it is to imagine playing tic-tac-toe with triple the options. The game is best known as Merrills, or Nine Men's Morris. But that's exactly why it wasn't a moment too soon. It was 500 years too late, of course, because hardly anyone plays the game anymore. THEY held the world championships this fall for one of the most popular games ever played in England. And being the only entrant from the US, he is also now the American grand champion. That nonetheless ranked him 17th in the world. There he won six games, lost seven, and tied three, thus failing by a wide margin to join the top 16 in the finals. Amazed to learn of the Merrills world championship, he packed up his board and left for Hutton-le-Hole. He taught his wife and children, who soon beat him at it regularly. The writer is an artist and an author of books on medieval history, who discovered the game of Merrills 20 years ago in a book on antiques.
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