The battle at midnight

In The Nutcracker, the clock strikes midnight, the Christmas tree grows enormous, and the mice pour out of the walls.

The Mouse King

In E. T. A. Hoffmann's original story of 1816, the Mouse King has seven heads, each wearing a little crown. In Tchaikovsky's ballet of 1892 he leads his army of mice against the Nutcracker and the toy soldiers. Just as the Mouse King is about to win, Clara pulls off her slipper and throws it at him. It turns the battle, and the Nutcracker becomes a prince.

About this game

The game is new, but it borrows from very old "hunt" games, where a few hunters try to trap one quick animal. Two examples are the Roman Ludus Coriovalli and the European fox and geese. The soldiers and the king each step one square up, down, left or right. The soldiers win when the Mouse King has nowhere left to step.

On the parlour floor, three soldiers can never trap the Mouse King on their own. A computer search over every possible position proves it. With Clara's slipper, thrown once to make him miss a turn, perfect soldiers can always corner him within 16 of his moves. As in the ballet, the slipper decides the battle.

The music

The march is Tchaikovsky's "March of the Wooden Soldiers", from his Album for the Young (Op. 39, 1878), little piano pieces he wrote for children fourteen years before The Nutcracker. It plays from a public-domain edition by the Mutopia Project, using a simple piano sound made in your browser.

Sources

• Mutopia Project: March of the Wooden Soldiers, Op. 39 No. 5 (public domain)
• Wikipedia: The Nutcracker and The Nutcracker and the Mouse King