Senet▶Play

The path snakes through the board: squares 1 to 10 run left to right along the top row, 11 to 20 come back right to left along the middle row, and 21 to 30 run left to right along the bottom. Tap Path to show the route. The pieces start alternating on squares 1 to 10, and whoever holds the odd squares throws first; that swaps from one game to the next. Each stick is light on one side and dark on the other: count the light faces for 1 to 4, and no light face at all counts as 5. A 2 comes up 6 times in 16, a 1 or a 3 4 times in 16, and a 4 or a 5 only once in 16.

You must move if you can, and you may not land on your own piece. Landing on a rival piece swaps the two, sending it back to the square you came from — unless it is guarded by another rival piece on the square just before or just after it. Three or more rival pieces in a row form a blockade that you cannot pass. If no piece can move forward, one must move backward by the throw instead, under the same rules; if nothing can move at all, the turn passes and the message tells you why.

The special houses sit near the end. Square 15, the House of Rebirth, is where drowned pieces restart. Every piece must stop exactly on 26, the House of Beauty, before going on. From 26 a 1 drops into 27, the House of Water, which washes the piece back to 15 (or the nearest free square before it); a 2, 3 or 4 moves to 28, 29 or 30; a 5 bears off at once. A piece on 28 leaves only with a 3, on 29 only with a 2 and on 30 only with a 1. Squares 26, 28, 29 and 30 are safe: a piece there cannot be swapped. Tap any marked square to read its rule.

Each win adds one to your streak and the rival climbs a level — four levels in all, from careless to never slipping, the top one from your fourth game on. A loss ends the run, and so does a draw, which only happens if one game reaches 600 throws. Your saved score is wins × 10,000 plus your margin: the total distance the rival still had to travel in the games you won (up to 9,999), so a run of crushing wins ranks above a run of narrow ones.

Tips & strategy

Pairs are everything. A lone piece up to five squares in front of a rival piece can be swapped, and a swap costs you the distance twice over: your piece goes back and the rival's goes forward. Two of your pieces side by side cannot be touched, so whenever a throw lets you close up next to a friend, it is usually the right move. How likely a hit is depends on the gap: two squares is the dangerous one (6 in 16), one or three squares is 4 in 16, and four or five is a long shot of 1 in 16.

Three in a row is a wall. A rival piece behind your blockade cannot pass it at all, so the rival has to spend its throws on other pieces or even step backward. A blockade just before 26 is especially strong, because every piece must stop on 26 and the rival cannot get around you. Holding 26 itself does a similar job: while your piece sits there no rival piece can land on it, and the rival's runners pile up behind it.

Treat 26 as a launch pad, not a parking space. From 26 a throw of 1, which comes up 4 times in 16, drops the piece into the House of Water if you have no other move, and that costs it eleven squares at a stroke. Keep another piece free to use up a 1, and leave 26 with a 2, 3, 4 or 5 when you can. Pieces on 28, 29 and 30 each wait for one exact number, so spreading them over different squares means more of your throws will let something leave.

Plan around the extra throws. Because 1, 4 and 5 all throw again, 6 throws in 16 continue your turn, and a 1 is often best spent on a small safe step, such as closing a pair or nudging a back piece, so your leaders stay where they are. Sending a rival piece back from just short of 26 is worth far more than a swap near the start: squares 1 to 10 are cheap, and the last row is where the race is decided.