Congkak for Teachers

Congkak is a centuries-old counting game from Malaysia and Southeast Asia. This version runs in any browser — school Chromebooks, Windows laptops, tablets or a projector — with no accounts, no downloads and no ads. Students can be playing within five minutes.

What Students Practise

• Mental arithmetic — the name comes from congak, Malay for counting in your head. Every move starts with “where will my last seed land?”
• Planning ahead — chaining extra turns and setting up captures means thinking two or three moves ahead, and about the opponent's options.
• Counting in cycles — seeds travel around a loop of 15 spaces (your 7 houses, your storehouse, the opponent's 7 houses). That makes it a friendly way into remainders and modular arithmetic.
• Culture and history — congkak belongs to the worldwide mancala family, and its relatives are played from West Africa to the Philippines. Malaysia's 10 sen coin carries a congkak board.

A 20-Minute Lesson

1. Hook (3 min) — show the board on the projector and ask who has played it with family. Share a minute of history.
2. Rules (5 min) — walk through the rules page; its four diagrams cover sowing, extra turns and captures.
3. Play (10 min) — pairs share one device in 2 Players mode, or play against the Easy AI individually. Early finishers try Medium.
4. Reflect (2 min) — pick one of the discussion questions below.

Discussion Questions

• A house has 8 seeds. Where does the last one land? What about 15 seeds? Why does a house with exactly 15 seeds always end up back where it started?
• Which opening moves give you an extra turn straight away? How can you tell without playing them?
• When is it a good idea to leave one of your houses empty?
• You're ahead near the end of the game. Should you try to finish quickly or slowly? Why?

Ways to Use It in Class

• 2 Players on one device — the most social option; pairs take turns on the same screen.
• Versus the AI — Easy, Medium and Hard, for individual practice or homework.
• Daily puzzle as a warm-up — everyone gets the same position each day, so the class can compare approaches. It changes at midnight UTC.
• E-ink tablets — a high-contrast E-Ink version works on Boox and Kindle devices.
• Bahasa Melayu — the whole site is available in Malay.

Printable Rules Handout

Open the rules page and print it (Ctrl+P or ⌘P). It prints as a clean black-on-white handout with the diagrams, without the site's navigation.

Privacy

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