Pagade
The Mysore court’s chaupar, on the embroidered cross. Two to four players, four pieces each, three long dice. Out of the centre, all the way round, and home again.
The throw
Three long dice: four-sided brass sticks marked 1, 2, 5 and 6, opposite faces adding to seven. Your move is their sum, three to eighteen. Three of a kind is a grace throw: it earns another throw after you move, and only a grace throw can bring a piece out of the centre — unless you have nothing on the board at all, when any throw will do.
Houses that play with six cowries can choose them when they open a table: two to six mouths up count as they fall, one up is ten, none up is twenty-five, and six, ten and twenty-five are the graces.
The journey
A piece comes out down the middle of your own arm, turns at the end, runs the whole rim of the cross anticlockwise, and climbs your middle column home to the centre. A throw larger than the distance left still brings it home. First to bring all four home wins.
Cutting and castles
Land on a square holding rivals and they are cut: back to the centre, to wait for a grace. A cut earns another throw, and so does bringing a piece home. The twelve crossed squares are castles: nothing is cut there, and anyone may share them.