Khorol or

Khorlo Khorlo ( Tib.: འཁོར་ལོ་; 'khor-lo') means: 'wheel', 'round', 'mandala', 'chakra', 'samsara'. It appears in the names of some tantric deities such as Chakrasamvara ('khor-lo bde-mchog, "wheel of great bliss") and Kalachakra (dus-k ...

( Mongolian: Хорол or Хорло) is a multi-trick

tile-based game A tile-based game is a game that uses tiles as one of the fundamental elements of play. Traditional tile-based games use small tiles as playing pieces for gambling or entertainment games. Some board games use tiles to create their board, givin ...

played in

Mongolia Mongolia; Mongolian script: , , ; lit. "Mongol Nation" or "State of Mongolia" () is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south. It covers an area of , with a population of just 3.3 million, ...

Inner Mongolia Inner Mongolia, officially the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. Its border includes most of the length of China's border with the country of Mongolia. Inner Mongolia also accounts for a ...

, and

Tuva Tuva (; russian: Тува́) or Tyva ( tyv, Тыва), officially the Republic of Tuva (russian: Респу́блика Тыва́, r=Respublika Tyva, p=rʲɪˈspublʲɪkə tɨˈva; tyv, Тыва Республика, translit=Tyva Respublika ...

, usually on Lunar New Year's. It is played between two and eight players with four being the most common. The game appeared during Manchu rule (1645-1912). It is similar to the game of Daaluu (Даалуу) played with a double set of

Chinese dominoes Chinese dominoes are used in several tile-based games, namely, tien gow, pai gow, tiu u and kap tai shap. In Cantonese they are called (), which literally means "bone tiles"; it is also the name of a northern Chinese game, where the rules are qu ...

.ダーロウ
at SekaiYugi. Retrieved 17 January 2022.

Composition

The most common set consists of 60 tiles, usually made from wood. There are 17 different types of tiles ranking from highest to lowest: # Khorol # Norov #

Khas Khas people (; ne, खस) popularly known as Khas Arya are an Indo-Aryan ethno-linguistic group native to the Himalayan region of South Asia, what is now present-day Nepal, Indian states of Uttarakhand, West Bengal and Sikkim. Historical ...

Khangarid Khangarid is a Mongolian professional football club based in Erdenet, that competes in the Mongolian National Premier League. Current squad Honours * Mongolian Premier League: (4)Sengi Elephant shrews, also called jumping shrews or sengis, are small insectivorous mammals native to Africa, belonging to the family Macroscelididae, in the order Macroscelidea. Their traditional common English name "elephant shrew" comes from a pe ...

Rat Rats are various medium-sized, long-tailed rodents. Species of rats are found throughout the order Rodentia, but stereotypical rats are found in the genus ''Rattus''. Other rat genera include ''Neotoma'' ( pack rats), ''Bandicota'' (bandicoot ...

# Ox #

Tiger The tiger (''Panthera tigris'') is the largest living cat species and a member of the genus '' Panthera''. It is most recognisable for its dark vertical stripes on orange fur with a white underside. An apex predator, it primarily preys on u ...

Rabbit Rabbits, also known as bunnies or bunny rabbits, are small mammals in the family Leporidae (which also contains the hares) of the order Lagomorpha (which also contains the pikas). ''Oryctolagus cuniculus'' includes the European rabbit speci ...

Dragon A dragon is a reptilian legendary creature that appears in the folklore of many cultures worldwide. Beliefs about dragons vary considerably through regions, but dragons in western cultures since the High Middle Ages have often been depicted as ...

Snake Snakes are elongated, Limbless vertebrate, limbless, carnivore, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes . Like all other Squamata, squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping Scale (zoology), scales. Ma ...

Horse The horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million y ...

Goat The goat or domestic goat (''Capra hircus'') is a domesticated species of goat-antelope typically kept as livestock. It was domesticated from the wild goat (''C. aegagrus'') of Southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of the a ...

Monkey Monkey is a common name that may refer to most mammals of the infraorder Simiiformes, also known as the simians. Traditionally, all animals in the group now known as simians are counted as monkeys except the apes, which constitutes an incomple ...

Rooster The chicken (''Gallus gallus domesticus'') is a domesticated junglefowl species, with attributes of wild species such as the grey and the Ceylon junglefowl that are originally from Southeastern Asia. Rooster or cock is a term for an adult m ...

Dog The dog (''Canis familiaris'' or ''Canis lupus familiaris'') is a domesticated descendant of the wolf. Also called the domestic dog, it is derived from the extinct Pleistocene wolf, and the modern wolf is the dog's nearest living relative. Do ...

Pig The pig (''Sus domesticus''), often called swine, hog, or domestic pig when distinguishing from other members of the genus '' Sus'', is an omnivorous, domesticated, even-toed, hoofed mammal. It is variously considered a subspecies of ''Sus s ...

There are four copies of each rank except for the

and

which only have two. Less common sets may forgo the Khas and Norov ranks in exchange for having every remaining rank with four tiles. Older sets may have more ranks taken from the

Ashtamangala The Ashtamangala is a sacred suite of ''Eight Auspicious Signs'' endemic to a number of religions such as Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism. The symbols or "symbolic attributes" () are yidam and teaching tools. Not only do these attributes (or e ...

such as the

endless knot Endless knot in a Burmese Pali manuscript The endless knot or eternal knot is a symbolic knot and one of the Eight Auspicious Symbols. It is an important symbol in Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism. It is an important cultural marker in place ...

, pair of fish, and

conch Conch () is a common name of a number of different medium-to-large-sized sea snails. Conch shells typically have a high spire and a noticeable siphonal canal (in other words, the shell comes to a noticeable point at both ends). In North Am ...

. Numbers 6 to 17 are the signs of the

Chinese Zodiac The Chinese zodiac is a traditional classification scheme based on the lunar calendar that assigns an animal and its reputed attributes to each year in a repeating twelve-year cycle. Originating from China, the zodiac and its variations remain ...

; Tuvans play the game with

domino tiles Domino Tiles is a Unicode block containing characters for representing game situations in dominoes. The block includes symbols for the standard six dot tile set and backs in horizontal and vertical orientations. History The following Unicod ...

instead. The earliest versions of both types of sets lacked the Ashtamangala tiles.

Rules

It can be played with or without partnerships. In four player games, tiles are shuffled face down and evenly distributed to all players. With 15 tiles in hand, the eldest can lead with the trick with one, two, three, or four identical tiles. In a clockwise fashion, the following players must put down an identical number of tiles but only sets of a higher rank will prevail. Players are also able to slough losing tiles face down (this is characteristic of some

trump Trump most commonly refers to: * Donald Trump (born 1946), 45th president of the United States (2017–2021) * Trump (card games), any playing card given an ad-hoc high rank Trump may also refer to: Businesses and organizations * Donald J. T ...

less trick-taking games like

Tien Gow Tien Gow or Tin Kau () is the name of Chinese gambling games played with either a pair of dice or a set of 32 Chinese dominoes. In these games, Heaven is the top rank of the civil suit, while Nine is the top rank of the military suit. The civil su ...

and

Ganjifa Ganjifa, Ganjapa or Gânjaphâ, is a card game and type of playing cards that are most associated with Persia and India. After Ganjifa cards fell out of use in Iran before the twentieth century, India became the last country to produce them. The f ...

). The winner of the trick will lead the next one. The goal is to capture as many tiles as possible. There are minor regional variations with their own special rules. In older versions of this game, only single and double tricks were allowed. The rules of Khorol and Tien Gow appeared to have evolved in tandem and the Mongol and Tuvan game may be a simplification of the Chinese domino game.

References

External links

Mongolian traditional game "Horlo"
at

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Horol
at

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* :zh:十二生肖牌, a draw-and-discard card game using the Chinese zodiac played in Taiwan during the Lunar New Year's. {{List of trick-taking games Mongolian games Trick-taking tile games