How do you play Ttangttameokgi?
You flick a small flat stone up to three times and bring it back to your own land. If you make it, the shape traced by the points where the stone stopped becomes your territory. Whoever owns more land at the end wins.
Ttangttameokgi (땅따먹기, literally "eating land") is a Korean playground game. Kids scratch a big rectangle into the dirt, each player draws a hand-span half circle in a corner as their home, and a flat pebble or a piece of broken pottery serves as the playing piece. Knock it out of the lines, or fail to get home within three flicks, and your turn ends with nothing.
Here, Yellow's home is the bottom left corner and Blue's home is the top right. On a narrow phone screen the field turns upright so it fits, but the rules stay the same.
What are the rules on this site?
Your stone always starts from a fixed spot inside your home, and a turn scores when the stone stops on your own land (home included) after the second or third flick.
Every neighborhood plays this game a little differently, so here is exactly how this version works.
| Rule | How it works here |
|---|---|
| Start | Each turn begins from the white dot inside your home. |
| Flicks | Up to three per turn. The ●●○ marks at the top show how many are left. |
| Scoring | Stop on your own land after flick two or three and the turn scores. Landing back home after the first flick just moves you on to the next flick. |
| Land gained | The start point, every stop, and the final point are joined into a polygon. Only free ground inside it becomes yours. You never take land that already belongs to your opponent. |
| Failing | Going out of bounds, stopping on your opponent's land, or not getting back within three flicks ends the turn with no land. Sliding across enemy land is fine. |
| Game end | After each player finishes the chosen number of turns (6, 10, or 14), or when less than 1.5% of the field is still free. |
| Winner | The player holding the larger share of the field. Equal shares are a draw. |
How do you grab more land?
- Swing wide. Your gain is the area of the shape your stops make. Send the first flick far to the side and the second deep into the field to carve out a big triangle.
- Always leave a way home. Even a full power flick only travels so far. If your second stop is too far from your land, the third flick cannot reach home and the whole turn is wasted.
- Do not pull to the max every time. The aiming arrow shows your power, but the stone actually travels farther than the arrow. Try a few medium flicks to learn the distances.
- Stay off enemy land. Stopping on it fails the turn instantly. Passing over it is allowed, so aim to land beyond it.
- Grow a bigger landing zone. Any part of your land counts as home. Spread your land toward the middle and later turns can go farther while still getting back safely.
The computer uses the same physics to test many possible routes, weighing how likely each one is to succeed against how much new land it would win. On Easy its hand shakes a lot. On Hard it barely shakes at all.
Is there one official rule set?
No. Ttangttameokgi is a folk game, so the details change from neighborhood to neighborhood.
The "get home in three flicks" version is the best known, but kids usually settle the finer points among themselves before they start. This site sticks with the three flick version and the rules in the table above, so every player gets the same conditions.
Controls
- Flick: Press anywhere on the field, drag in the opposite direction of where you want the stone to go, and release. Like a slingshot, a longer pull means more power.
- Aiming: While dragging you see an arrow from the stone and the power in percent. Green, orange, and red mean weak, medium, and strong.
- Cancel: Drag back close to where you first pressed and let go. Nothing is flicked.
- Phones: Aiming keeps working even if your finger slides off the field, so feel free to pull long.
- Undo: Restarts the current turn, or takes you back to your previous turn.