Thirty spaces, twelve stones each, two people. First you place your stones, then you slide them one step at a time. Line up exactly three and you take one of your opponent's stones. Take enough of them and they can never make three again.
The same rules as the ones written below. You have the pale stones and you place first. No account, and nothing is kept.
The board starts empty. Each player has twelve stones to place.
The board is five rows of six spaces, and it starts empty. Each player has twelve stones.
Take turns putting one stone on any empty space, until all twenty-four are down. Nothing is captured while you place.
You may not place a stone where it would line up three or more of your own. If every empty space would do that, you may place on any of them, and it still takes nothing.
Once every stone is down, the player who placed first moves first. On your turn, slide one of your stones one step up, down, left or right into an empty space. No diagonal steps and no jumping.
If the stone you just moved now sits in a line of exactly three of your stones, along a row or a column, take any one of your opponent's stones off the board. Then it is their turn. One move takes one stone, even if it makes a three both ways.
A line of four or more is a legal move but takes nothing. Diagonal lines never count.
You win when your opponent is down to two stones, because two can never make three. You also win if it is their turn and none of their stones can move. If both players together make 80 moves in a row with no capture, the game is a draw.
Dara is a bench game of Northern Nigeria, Niger and Chad. It also goes by Dili and Derrah. The board is thirty holes, scratched into the sand or cut into wood, and the pieces are whatever is to hand: stones, bottle caps.
The rules drift from village to village. If you learned it differently from the rules above, you did not learn it wrong. These are the ones our tables use, so that two people who have never met can sit down and agree.
Dara is one of the games in the Arcade.