Oware Glossary — Board, Seeds and Rule Terms

The vocabulary you meet at the Oware board, from the parts of the board to the special capture and ending rules.

Oware: A two-player mancala game from West Africa: 12 pits, 48 seeds, won by capturing 25 or more seeds. Also played as awalé, ayoayo or warri.
Pit (house): One of the twelve hollows on the board — six per player. Only pits are sown into; stores never receive sown seeds.
Store: Each player's scoring house at their end of the board. Captured seeds go here; stores are outside the sowing loop.
Sowing: Lifting all seeds from one of your pits and dropping them one by one counter-clockwise, one per pit, skipping the starting pit on full laps.
Capture (2-or-3): Taking an opponent pit's seeds when your LAST sown seed leaves that pit with exactly 2 or 3 seeds.
Chain capture: Continuing the capture backwards through consecutive opponent pits that also hold 2 or 3 seeds, stopping at your own pits or a 1/4+ pit.
Grand slam: A move that would capture all of the opponent's seeds. On this site the capture is cancelled and seeds stay as sown (World Oware Federation rule).
Feeding: The obligation to leave the opponent at least one seed when their side is empty; starving moves are illegal while a feeding move exists.
Starvation: The situation of having no seeds to sow. It triggers the feeding rule and, when no feed is possible, ends the game.
Tally: The end-of-game total: store plus remaining seeds on your own side. The two tallies always sum to 48; 24–24 is a draw.