Coming to the Forgotten Games iOS app
Seven points. Six stones. One empty space that will not stay still.
Once all six stones are down, a single empty point becomes the engine of the game. Step into it—or leap across another stone to reach it—and the triangle rearranges around you. The leap looks like a capture, but nothing is taken. Every piece remains to complicate the next move.
See how the app edition plays
Beyond the board
A 1964 report records a triangular Tsoro Yemutatu form played in Zimbabwe. Decades later, a university outreach project sets out the seven-point board and the leap-without-capture rule used here. One source catches the game in the record; the other lets a new player put stones on the triangle and feel its puzzle begin.
Tsoro Yematatu also appears as a teaching game: three stones per side, seven points and a leap that changes position without taking anything. A 2016 article calls tsoro ye mutatu an old traditional game of three stones. The surviving trail is brief, but the game itself is immediately communicable—draw the triangle, find six counters and the puzzle is ready.
The form followed here is Zimbabwean. The wider word tsoro can name more than one game, so this little triangle is best encountered on its own terms: a specific seven-point form within a much larger landscape of play.
The turn that changes everything
Tsoro Yematatu borrows the drama of a capture without removing a single stone. A leap carries you across friend or opponent into the one vacancy beyond, suddenly opening a line on the other side of the triangle. With seven points and six pieces, there is almost no empty space—and an astonishing amount to calculate.
From first move to victory
This is the selected Forgotten Games app edition. Other ways of playing exist.
Take turns placing one piece on any empty point of the seven-point triangular board.
When all six pieces are down, move one piece along a marked line to an adjacent empty point.
You may instead jump straight over an adjacent piece of either side into the empty point beyond. The jumped piece stays on the board.
Align your three pieces on one of the five marked lines to win. In the app, an alignment can also end play during placement.
The version in the app
Forgotten Games follows the reviewed seven-point core, including non-capturing jumps. Unlike the guide’s stated sequence, the app can award an alignment win during placement; its exact threefold-position and no-legal-move draws are also product decisions.
Follow the evidence
These are the principal records and accounts reviewed for this introduction. A source can show a dated game, ruleset or practice; it cannot by itself prove a single origin or an unchanged tradition.
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The final App Store destination will be added before release.
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