Latho

Latho is a traditional solitaire game played by the Dorzé people of Ethiopia, using equipment like that of the mancala family: a board of two rows of six pits and thirty seeds. The seeds are set out in a fixed pattern of between one and four per pit. Although there is only one competitor, play needs a second person acting as dealer, and the two first agree which pit to start from. The player, with eyes closed or blindfolded, then calls out how many seeds lie in each pit in turn, counterclockwise from the starting pit, using the traditional declarations used in Ethiopia, such as take from four or do not take. Each correct call lets the dealer remove one seed from that pit. The player succeeds if the board is emptied and fails at the first wrong call. The game was first described in writing by the British academic Richard Pankhurst in 1971.