Aadu Puli Aattam (Goats and tigers)
Three tigers hunt fifteen goats. The goats can still win.
- Players
- 2
- Ages
- 8 and up
- What you need
- A board drawn on paper or scratched in the ground, 3 large and 15 small stones
Known as Aadu Puli Aattam in Tamil, Puli Meka in Telugu, Huli Gatta in Kannada and Bagh-Chal in Nepal. The board is often found carved into the stone floors of South Indian temples, where it was scratched out by people waiting — some of those boards are hundreds of years old and still playable.
How to play
- 1Draw the board: a triangle crossed with lines, giving 23 points where lines meet.
- 2One player takes 3 tigers, the other 15 goats.
- 3Tigers start on the board. The goat player adds one goat per turn until all 15 are placed.
- 4Tigers capture by jumping over a single goat into an empty point behind it, as in draughts.
- 5Goats cannot capture — they win by surrounding the tigers so none of them can move.
Good for the body
A quiet, seated game — good for a hot afternoon or a long journey.
Good for the brain
Genuine forward planning. The goat player must see two moves ahead to avoid offering a jump; the tiger player must engineer positions where a jump becomes unavoidable. This is the same muscle a multi-step maths problem uses.
A note for parents
An asymmetric strategy game, which is rarer and better than it sounds: the two players need completely different plans to win. Goats must think in formations; tigers must think in traps. Play both sides and a child learns to think from two directions.
Played today?
Ask a parent before going outdoors.