Skirnir StudiosMehen playtest
Old Kingdom Egypt · c. 3000–2200 BCE

Help work out how Mehen was played

Mehen is one of the oldest board games we know of: a coiled snake with its head at the centre, played with marbles and little ivory lions. No rules survive. Our simulation study narrowed them down to five candidates, but the simulations were played by bots. Now we need people.

You'll play one short game against the computer, usually 5 to 10 minutes, then answer a few quick questions. You'll get one of the five candidate rules at random.

Before you start

  • What we record: each number you hide and guess, how long each choice takes, how the game goes, your answers, and whether you're on a phone or a computer.
  • What we don't: your name, email, location, IP address or anything else that could identify you. There are no accounts and no cookies. A random code in this browser links your games together.
  • How it's used: in a research paper by Skirnir Studios, and released openly (without comments) so others can check the work. If you leave partway through, the rounds you played are still sent.
  • Taking part is voluntary. You can stop at any time. Because nothing identifies you, we can't remove a game once it has been sent.
  • You must be 18 or over.

Playing with a friend and real marbles? Use table mode: you play with your hands, and one of you taps in each round.

The game: each side races one marble from the tail to the snake's head. Each round one player hides 1 to 5 marbles in a fist and the other guesses how many. A wrong guess moves the hider's marble. What a right guess does depends on the lions, and that's the part nobody knows.