Fidchell

Have you ever wondered what people played prior to chess? Throughout Europe people played various board games. Some ranging in giant tables sizes with many pieces right down to some boards that were a foot in size.

Fidchell was a board game people played in Ireland. It was simple in design, a 7 square by 7 square board with 25 pieces. Fidchell also went by other spellings in Irish as Fitchneal and Fithcheall. They all have one thing in common and that is the etymology of the word comes to translate to wood-sense/wood-intelligence/wood-knowledge. A game about having a wisdom from playing with and on pieces of wood. This will be starting us on an adventure to a theme behind the surface of the game. What of this wood wisdom?

So far we have mentioned that the game was played on a 7 by 7 board and that there was…