{#if room}Back to your game{' · '}{/if}Back to the hall · The rules

How to play

Two sentences that set the scene: who the player is, and what they are trying to do.

The hall

Write your name and choose your company. Play now against the bot seats you across from the bot and begins. Open a table lays a table and hands you a link and a four-letter code to send. Join one takes a code someone sent you. Beneath, your games lists every table this browser holds a seat at, and whose move it is.

The table

A table fills as players open the link. Whoever laid it is the host. The host may seat a bot in any empty chair or send one away, and they begin the game when the company suits them, however full the table. Once begun, the seats are closed.

The board

What the player sees during play, section by section, with a figure for each.

The Peanut Gallery and table talk

A room's link is an invitation to sit while the table is laid and to watch once the game has begun. Anyone who opens it without a seat takes a place in the Peanut Gallery, shown only what every player at the table could see. Table talk is for the players seated, unless the host lets the gallery talk. Then a watcher gives a name, and their lines are marked as the gallery's. A line goes to everyone at the table and everyone in the gallery, and is kept with the game.

A seat can follow you to another device. Transfer seat in the masthead gives four words, good for ten minutes, and the hall on the other device claims them. If your browser loses the seat, the host's Seats makes those words for you. If a player cannot go on, the host can give their seat to a bot there, and the same words bring them back to it. When a game ends, anyone at the table may call for a rematch, which opens a new table for the same company and holds their seats until they are back. While a table is laid, you may challenge the keeper of this site to a seat; the note beside the button gives the hour where they live.

A first game

The advice you would give a friend across the table for their first few turns.

The full rules are on the rules page. If a rule here reads wrong to you, or something misbehaves, send word. The hall's about this game lists the other ways to reach the keeper.