Ludus Anglicorum, also called the English Game, is an historical English

tables game Tables games are a class of board game that includes backgammon and which are played on a tables board, typically with two rows of 12 vertical markings called points. Players roll dice to determine the movement of pieces. Tables games are among ...

for two players using a board similar to that used today for

Backgammon Backgammon is a two-player board game played with counters and dice on tables boards. It is the most widespread Western member of the large family of tables games, whose ancestors date back at least 1,600 years. The earliest record of backgammo ...

and other games. It is a "strategic game for serious game-players" and was well known in the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...

.Lewins (2021)
Tabula at Rumwoldstow
. 28. At one time it was considered the most popular tables game in England.Forgeng and McLean (2009), p. 224.

History

The English Game or Long Game is described in detail in a 14th century manuscript written in Latin and Anglo-Norman French, which is held in the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

.MS Royal 13A (1333), British Museum. It was said to be the most popular tables game in the mediaeval England of

Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer ( ; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for '' The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He ...

's time. The English Game bears close similarity to the game of ''Emperador'' listed by King Alfonso X of Castile in his ''

Libro de los Juegos The (Spanish: "Book of games"), or ("Book of chess, dice and tables", in Old Spanish), is a 13th century Spanish language, Spanish treatise of chess that synthesizes the information from Arabic works on this same topic, dice and Tables games, ...

'' ("Book of Games") published in 1278.Cram, Johnston and Forgeng (2003), p. 285. It may have been the game frequently referred to simply as 'Tables'. It appears to have evolved into

Ticktack Ticktack or Tick-Tack, is an historical English tables game for two players using a board similar to that used today for Backgammon and other tables games. Like its much more elaborate French counterpart, Trictrac, it has the unusual feature that ...

and Irish which had both superseded it by the 17th century.

Players and equipment

The English Game was a game for two players using three

dice A die (: dice, sometimes also used as ) is a small, throwable object with marked sides that can rest in multiple positions. Dice are used for generating random values, commonly as part of tabletop games, including dice games, board games, ro ...

and 15

men A man is an adult male human. Before adulthood, a male child or adolescent is referred to as a boy. Like most other male mammals, a man's genome usually inherits an X chromosome from the mother and a Y chromosome from the fa ...

apiece, and played on a

tables board Tables games are a class of board game that includes backgammon and which are played on a tables board, typically with two rows of 12 vertical markings called point (tables game), points. Players roll dice to determine the movement of pieces. Tab ...

(see illustration) with 12 playing positions or

points A point is a small dot or the sharp tip of something. Point or points may refer to: Mathematics * Point (geometry), an entity that has a location in space or on a plane, but has no extent; more generally, an element of some abstract topologica ...

on each side. The four quadrants of the board are known as 'tables', a player's

home table The following is a glossary of terms used in tables games, essentially games played on a Backgammon-type board. Terms in this glossary should not be game-specific (e.g. specific to a single game like Backgammon or Acey-deucey), but applicable to ...

being the first six points on his side including the starting or

home point The following is a glossary of terms used in tables games, essentially games played on a Backgammon-type board. Terms in this glossary should not be game-specific (e.g. specific to a single game like Backgammon or Acey-deucey), but applicable to ...

; and a player's

bearing table The following is a glossary of terms used in tables games, essentially games played on a Backgammon-type board. Terms in this glossary should not be game-specific (e.g. specific to a single game like Backgammon or Acey-deucey), but applicable to ...

being the final and opposite quadrant, where the opponent starts. The game could also be played with two dice, in which case a third throw of 6 was assumed each time.''Royal 13 A XVIII - 1330''
at The Origin of Backgammon. Retrieved 28 November 2021.

Rules

The notation used in the original manuscript is illustrated. In this case, Black sits at the bottom by the side marked nф and assembles all 15 men on his or her home point, point "a". White sits at the top by the side marked am and assembles all 15 white men opposite on point "ф". Black moves anticlockwise; White clockwise. Black's aim is to move the 15 men on point "a" along the remaining 11 points of the opposing side of the board and then in the reverse direction on the home side towards the bearing table, tф. White moves from point "ф" clockwise around to White's bearing table, af.Fiske (1905), p. 166. To move their men, players roll the dice and assign each roll to one man, moving it the corresponding number of points forward. Two rolls may be combined e.g. a 4 and 3 may be used to move a man 7 points. Men may move to any point except one occupied by two or more opposing men. If a point is occupied by just one enemy piece and a man is moved to that point, or 'rests' on that point as part of a two- or three-dice move, the opponent's man must be removed and re-entered. When a man is removed, its owner may not play any men on the board until the removed piece has been re-entered; this must be done into the player's home table e.g. if Black rolls a 4, the man may enter point "d" if it is not blocked by the opponent or already occupied by a black piece. When all 15 men have safely reached the bearing table, they are

borne off The following is a glossary of terms used in tables games, essentially games played on a Backgammon-type board. Terms in this glossary should not be game-specific (e.g. specific to a single game like Backgammon or Acey-deucey), but applicable to ...

. The first player to do so, wins. To successfully bear a man off, the player must roll the exact number needed to take it off the board e.g. Black needs a 6 if the man is on "t", a 5 if on "u" and so on. If the die roll is higher than the number required by the furthest man, then that man may be borne off.

Lympolding and lurching

Another way of winning is to create a

blockade A blockade is the act of actively preventing a country or region from receiving or sending out food, supplies, weapons, or communications, and sometimes people, by military force. A blockade differs from an embargo or sanction, which are ...

such that the opponent cannot move. For example, if Black occupies n to r with two men each and creates a situation where White has 8 men queued up on "a" waiting to be borne off while having a man on each point of the home board plus one waiting to be re-entered, he is stuck. This is called ''lympolding''.''Le jeu anglais (ludus anglicorum)''
at aisling-1198.org. Retrieved 27 November 2021. Another way of winning is called ''lurching'' which is achieved, for example, if Black secures the opponent's entire home board and the "s" point. Shelagh Lewins interprets lympolding and lurching slightly differently. Lympolding occurs when a player cannot re-enter a man because all points in the home table are blocked by the opponent or occupied by friendly men. Lurching is when a player is unable to move due to any combination of a blockade and a pile up of men on the final point. In either case, Lewins only requires the player to miss a turn.

Related games

Murray (1941) relates Ludus Anglicorum to the Spanish tables game of Emperador, which is described in ''

El Libro de los Juegos The (Spanish: "Book of games"), or ("Book of chess, dice and tables", in Old Spanish), is a 13th century Spanish treatise of chess that synthesizes the information from Arabic works on this same topic, dice and tables (backgammon forebears) g ...

'' ("The Book of Games") by King Alfonso X of Castile in 1278. Emperador opens with the same starting position and also has special terms for winning in different ways. For example, a six-point blockade was a ''barata'' or

prime A prime number (or a prime) is a natural number greater than 1 that is not a product of two smaller natural numbers. A natural number greater than 1 that is not prime is called a composite number. For example, 5 is prime because the only ways ...

.Murray (1941), p. 67. Parlett places Ludus Anglicorum in the same group as the French games of Tieste and Impérial, the Greek game of

Plakoto Plakoto (Πλακωτό) is a tables game for two players that is popular in Greece. The object is for the player to bring all 15 pieces around to his or her own home board and then bear them off. The player who bears off all 15 pieces first ...

and the Italian game of Testa, as well as Spanish Emperador.Parlett (1999), p. 82.

Footnotes

References

Literature

* _ (1333) Royal 13 A XVIII, part 2, folio 158r,

Latin transcript and English translation
by Will McLean (2015). * Fiske, Willard (1905)
''Chess in Iceland and in Icelandic Literature: with Historical Notes on Other Table-Games''.
Florence: The Florentine Typographical Society. * Forgeng, Jeffrey L. and Will McLean (2009)
''Daily Life in Chaucer's England''
2nd edn. Westport, CT and London: Greenwood. * Murray, Harold James Ruthven (1941). "The Mediaeval Games of Tables" in ''Medium AEvum.'' Vol. 10, Part 2. pp. 57–69. * Murray, Harold James Ruthven (1952). ''A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess.'' Oxford: Clarendon. *

Parlett, David David Parlett (born 18 May 1939 in London) is a games scholar, historian, and translator from South London, who has studied both card games and board games. He is the president of the British Skat Association. Life David Sidney Parlett was bo ...

(1999). ''The Oxford History of Board Games''. Oxford: OUP. *

Willughby, Francis Francis Willughby (sometimes spelt Willoughby, ) FRS (22 November 1635 – 3 July 1672) was an English ornithologist, ichthyologist and mathematician, and an early student of linguistics and games. He was born and raised at Middleton Hall, Wa ...

(2003). Forgeng, Jeff; Johnston, Dorothy; Cram, David (eds.). ''

Francis Willughby's Book of Games Francis may refer to: People and characters *Pope Francis, head of the Catholic Church (2013–2025) *Francis (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters *Francis (surname) * Francis, a character played by YouTuber Boogie29 ...

.'' Farnham: Ashgate. ISBN 1-85928-460-4. (Critical edition of Willughby's volume containing descriptions of games and pastimes, c.1660-1672. Manuscript in the Middleton collection, University of Nottingham; document reference Mi LM 14) * Lewins, Shelagh (2021). ''Tabula at Rumwoldstow: Early mediaeval backgammon in an Anglo-Saxon monastery'' (pdf).

External links

* Rules for Ludus Anglicorum a
''Royal 13 A XVIII - 1330''
- Latin transcript of the MS and English translation. {{Tables games Historical tables games 14th-century board games British board games