Konane

Board Game X is Konane, an ancient Hawaiian game played on a board, or on a slab of lava and rock. Konane was a popular pastime in preliterate Hawaii, but has undergone a drastic drop in it's popularity over the past two hundred years.

In this contest, we will be playing a variant of Konane that resembles Ancient Konane. The game is similar to checkers; except that one may not "advance" pieces, and the first player to run out of time or moves loses.The exact rules of this game may be found in the contest specifications.

Konane itself is a rich an interesting game. It appears to be authentically Hawaiian, and consists of capturing "men" for justice and for sacrifice. To this purpose black and white pebbles were moved around from hole to hole. The holes, especially the central one, the pika, or navel, were inset with human teeth.

A detailed anthropological discussion of Konane is presented here.