Why ladybugs?

Chinese checkers is usually played with marbles, and a ladybug is about as round as a bug gets. So the marbles became ladybugs and the star board became a garden bed in the middle of a lawn.

There are six teams of bugs, one for each point of the star. Each team has its own spot pattern as well as its own colour, so you can tell them apart without relying on colour. Red is always yours.

A bit of real Chinese checkers history

The game is not from China, and it is not a kind of checkers. It grew out of Halma, a jumping game invented in 1883 or 1884 by George Howard Monks, an American surgeon at Harvard Medical School. Halma comes from the Greek word for a jump.

In 1892 a star-shaped version came out in Germany under the name Stern-Halma. Stern is German for star. In Germany the game is still called Sternhalma.

The name Chinese checkers came from the United States. In 1928 the toy maker J. Pressman and Company took up the game. It was first sold there as Hop Ching Checkers, then renamed Chinese checkers by Bill and Jack Pressman. The new name was a marketing choice to make the game sound exotic. It had no link to China.

In Chinese the game is called tiaoqi, which means jump game.

The garden animals

• Snail: wanders forward, often one hole at a time.
• Butterfly: takes the biggest hop it can see, but never plans the next one.
• Cricket: plans two moves ahead, so it sets up its own long hops.
• Frog: plans three moves ahead, keeps its bugs in a tight lane and leaves no one behind.

You can play one animal or a table of them. With 3 players the bugs start on every other point, so each goal starts empty. With 4, two facing points stay empty. Pass and play lets 2, 3, 4 or 6 people share one device.

How to play

• Each side has 10 bugs. Your goal is the point straight across the star. The first side to fill it wins.
• On your turn, move one bug. It can step into an empty hole next to it, or hop over one bug next to it into the empty hole just past it.
• After a hop it may hop again, in any direction, as many times as it can. It may also stop part way. A step and a hop can’t be mixed in one turn, and nothing is captured.
• A bug may hop through a point that isn’t its home or goal, but it can’t stop there.
• Tap a bug and every hole it can reach shows a yellow dot. A ringed dot means a hop. Tap a dot and the bug hops there along the route.
• The spoiler rule: this page adds one rule for a player who never moves a few bugs out of their home, which is your goal. Once that player has had 40 turns, their stay-at-home bugs count as filler. If every hole in your goal is full and at least one bug is yours, you win.
• Stars come from how few moves you take. Each animal sets its own target, shown under the ladder. Undo costs one star.

Tips

Build a ladder. Bugs in a line with an empty hole between each one make a ladder. A bug at the bottom can hop up it in one turn. Other players’ bugs work as rungs too.

Don’t leave anyone behind. The last bug out of your home often has nothing left to hop over and has to walk. Bring the back bugs along early.

Stay in your lane. Bugs that drift out to the side corners need extra steps to come back. The straight line from your point to your goal is the fastest road.

Fill the far tip first. Move your first bugs deep into the goal. If they stop in the first row, they block the holes behind them.

Your turn

Ten red ladybugs are waiting at the bottom of the garden bed at the top of this page. Start with the Snail and see how far up the ladder you can hop.