Mū tōrere

How to play Mū tōrere

Not from the book. Mū tōrere is the Māori game of the East Cape of the North Island, played on a star scratched on the ground or on bark; the rules follow the common account (Wikipedia, read 7 November 2026, after Best's 1912 record), with the gaps filled as marked.

From the sources

• A board of nine points: eight kewai in a ring, joined to the pūtahi in the middle, and each to its two neighbours on the ring — the eight-pointed star.
• Each player has four counters, perepere. They start on four kewai next to each other, one side's four facing the other's; the pūtahi is empty.
• Players move one counter a turn to an empty point next to it along a line.
• A counter «can move to the pūtahi only when the moved counter is adjacent to an opponent's counter».
• «The player who blocks all the opponent's counters from moving is the winner.» There is no capturing; it is a game of blocking, with no chance in it.

My choices

• «Adjacent to an opponent's counter» for the move into the middle is read as a neighbour on the ring, the usual reading; the common extra rule is also applied: in each player's first two moves the counter moved must stand next to an enemy, so the first move is one of the two end counters and nobody is shut in at once.
• The same position for the third time is a draw; the sources give no rule for it.
• White moves first. The game is small enough that the machine has solved it whole: at Strong it plays the solved move every time — the start is a draw with best play — and at Medium and Easy it slips in a random move now and then.

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