A game of corn, played by firelight
Puluc, also called bul or bool-ik, is a Maya game of chase and capture. It is not a relic. Q'eqchi' and Mopan Maya families in Guatemala and Belize have kept playing it for well over a century of written records, and almost certainly for much longer.
Whose game this is. Bul belongs to the Q'eqchi' and Mopan Maya communities who play it. Among Mopan and Q'eqchi' farmers in Belize, the linguist Lieve Verbeeck found the game linked to the vigil of the maize. Players moved their counters along a "corn track", and farmers mentioned playing bul in their prayers as a ritual obligation. She describes the games she saw as calm and friendly rather than competitive.
This app is only a way to learn the moves. It doesn't try to recreate that ceremony or its meaning. The rules here come from outsiders' written accounts, which disagree with each other and may not match how any family plays today. If you play bul at home and your rules are different, yours are the real ones.
How it's played
The board is simply corn kernels laid in a line on a swept floor. The gaps between the kernels are the spaces. The dice are four more kernels, each with a black spot burned or rubbed on one side. The counters are whatever is at hand: twigs, leaf stems, bits of leaf, grass, paper or thread.
Each side enters from its own end of the line. A counter that lands on an enemy catches it. The catcher then turns round and carries its captive back towards its own end. If it gets off the board, the captive is out of the game. But if an enemy lands on the catcher first, the new catcher takes the whole pile and carries it the other way. Any of its own side's counters in the pile are freed when it gets home.
An account from 1890
The fullest early description comes from Thomas J. Collins, who lived for a time among Q'eqchi' people in northern Guatemala. The museum curator Stewart Culin published it in 1907. Collins wrote that the game was "still in common use" in the outlying districts, and called it bool-ik. People played on the clay floors of houses, usually at night by the light of the fire, with fifteen kernels making fourteen spaces. Players could be "any even number", in two teams of partners. Collins recorded the words players used as they played. Here they are in his 1907 spelling, which differs from modern Q'eqchi' writing:
- bool
- the corn dice
- ru bool
- "face of the dice", the black-spotted side
- rit bool
- the blank side. All four blank counts as five.
- chet
- a space between two kernels
- xin chop
- "I caught", said when landing on an enemy
- ix guak
- "he is eaten", said of a captive carried off the board
- tex yolói bi chik
- "they are living again", said of freed counters that go back into play
Collins also noted how the players spoke of the game: lying in wait, intercepting, setting out as if to fish or hunt birds.
The two versions in this app
Two players, after Sapper (1906)
The geographer Karl Sapper described a two-player game, puluc, among the Q'eqchi'. Ten kernels make nine spaces, and each side has five counters. You throw twice each turn. With each throw you either bring a new counter onto the road or move one already on it, so you have real choices. Sapper counts the corn by matching sides: two alike is 2, three alike is 3, four black is 4 and four blank is 5. This version follows the rules in the Ludii database, with R. C. Bell's rule that you can't land on your own counter.
As Collins saw it (Culin 1907)
A longer road of fourteen spaces, played one against one. You count the black spots, and all blank is 5. You throw twice each turn. Each side has only one counter on the road at a time, and a new one comes on only when the last is caught. That leaves no choices at all: the corn decides everything. It matches Collins' account, and Verbeeck's description of an easy-going game.
Verbeeck saw ten men play five rounds in a row, each with a different rule. In one round the counters could go either way, and in another a "fire" in the middle space burned any counter that landed there. Her road had 25 kernels. The game changes from place to place.
Your own rules
Choose Your own rules on the home screen to mix the accounts: Sapper's, Collins' or Verbeeck's road, three to seven counters each, either way of counting the corn, one counter at a time or many, what happens at the far end, and Verbeeck's fire in the middle space. If your family plays bul differently, set it up your way.
Choices this version makes
- A counter that reaches the far end without catching anything comes back in at its own end, as if the road were a loop. This follows Collins and Sapper.
- A counter that has just carried a captive off the board goes home and can come back in with your next throw.
- A side loses when it has no counters left to bring in and none on the road.
Sources
- Culin, Stewart (1907). Games of the North American Indians. 24th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, pp. 141–143, quoting T. J. Collins. Full text at the Internet Archive
- Sapper, Karl (1906). "Spiele der Kekchi-Indianer." In Boas Anniversary Volume, p. 284.
- Verbeeck, Lieve (1998). "Bul: A Patolli Game in Maya Lowland." Board Games Studies 1: 82–100.
- Bell, R. C. (1960, rev. 1979). Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations.
- Ludii Portal: Puluc (Sapper's rules) and Bul (Verbeeck's account)
- Wikipedia: Bul (game)