📖 Articles
Guides, tips and news from the SynerWorlds games — read up, then play to practice.
📘 Guides
Learn to play
See all →How to Play Gomoku (Cờ Ca-rô) — Beginner's Guide
Learn Gomoku rules the Vietnamese way — five in a row, the blocked-ends rule, overlines, and basic strategy. Free bilingual guide (English/Vietnamese).
How to Play Cross Words — Beginner's Guide
Learn the rules of Cross Words — the Scrabble-style tile game — how scoring works, and beginner tips for your first game.
How to Play Sudoku — Beginner's Guide
Learn the rules of Sudoku, how to use pencil notes, and the basic solving techniques to complete your first 9×9 grid.
How to Play Word Search — Beginner's Guide
Learn the rules of Word Search — finding hidden English words in a letter grid — and tips for spotting words fast.
Using SynerWorlds
The Complete Feature Guide — Game Rooms, Challenges, Correspondence Chess and More
Discover every feature of Chess Online: play vs the computer across 10 levels, realtime game rooms, friend challenges, correspondence chess, puzzles, leaderboards and push notifications.
The Complete Feature Guide — Game Rooms, Challenges, Correspondence Chess and More
Discover every feature of Xiangqi Online: play vs the computer across 12 levels, realtime game rooms, friend challenges, correspondence chess, puzzles, the lesson library, leaderboards and push notifications.
The Complete Feature Guide — Game Rooms, Challenges, Correspondence and More
Discover every feature of Gomoku Online: play vs the computer at 12 levels, realtime game rooms, friend challenges, correspondence games, puzzles, leaderboards and push notifications.
How to Add the Xiangqi Shortcut to Your Phone's Home Screen (iPhone & Android)
Step-by-step guide to adding Xiangqi Online to your phone's home screen so it opens fast like a real app, with full push notifications.
🎯 Strategy & tactics
See all →
Cờ Gánh Endgames: Winning by Blockade, Liberty Races, and the Two Faces of the Fortress
As the board thins, Cờ Gánh becomes arithmetic: winning by leaving the opponent no move, liberty races between mutually surrounded groups, the endgame carry trap, and why a self-surround fortress can become a coffin.
Common Cờ Nhào Mistakes: Parity Blindness, Self-Blocking, and Forgetting the Reply Chain
Four mistakes that make Cờ Nhào players lose games they don't understand: ignoring which points have diagonals, blocking your own last move, counting only your own chain, and breaking the opening wall too soon.
Ô Ăn Quan Strategy: Count the Seeds, Chain the Captures, Never Let Your Land Burn
Ô Ăn Quan is deterministic arithmetic on a 12-cell ring: count where the last stone lands, build empty-full bridges for capture chains, watch both mandarins ripen past 5 stones, and avoid the 5-stone reseed tax.
Cờ Nhào Tactics: Capture Chains and the Art of the Landing Square
Read the landing square before the chain, know when to decline a capture, think in networks of empty points, and use the 1-vs-1 draw rule on time — four decisions that make a strong Cờ Nhào player.
🔍 Analysis
Ô Ăn Quan vs Mak Khom: One Mancala Family, Two Philosophies of Sowing
Vietnam's Ô Ăn Quan and Thailand's Mak Khom (หมากขุม) sow seeds into stores the same way but differ on everything else: free vs fixed sowing direction, forward chain captures vs the sideways kin thaen, a reseed tax vs a game-ending sweep — and which skills transfer.
Rook, Cannon, Horse: the same pieces, different logic in Xiangqi and Chess
The Chariot moves identically, the Cannon exists in only one game and captures over a screen, the Horse traces the same L but can be hobbled — a quick translation between the two games.
Xiangqi Skills That Make You Better at Chess (and Back Again)
X-rays and batteries learned from the Cannon, blocking-square calculation from the hobbled Horse, rook endgames, planning from chess — the skills that genuinely transfer between the two games.
7 Mistakes Chess Players Make When Switching to Xiangqi
Cannons need screens, Horses get hobbled, generals fly, and running out of moves loses — seven habits that are right in chess and wrong in xiangqi, and how to retrain them.
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📣 News
See all →Tropi Pop is live: match-3 with Vietnamese tropical fruits across 60 levels from Cái Răng to Phú Quốc
Tropi Pop (Xếp Trái Cây) is live at xeptraicay.synerworlds.com — a match-3 game starring 7 Vietnamese tropical fruits: dragon fruit, mangosteen, custard apple, durian, mango, star fruit and coconut. 60 levels across 4 regions, special fruits, falling baskets, leaf tiles and a star leaderboard.
Chroma Beads is live: line up 5 beads of a colour on a 9×9 board — the ball-lines classic returns
Chroma Beads (Xếp Bi) is live at xepbi.synerworlds.com — the ball-lines puzzle in the Color Lines tradition: slide beads along free paths, burst lines of 5 to score, a daily challenge, full replays and high-score leaderboards.
Mak Khom (หมากขุม) is live: the Thai sowing game of relay drops and kin thaen captures
Mak Khom (หมากขุม) is live at makkhom.synerworlds.com — the Thai folk sowing game of the Congkak family: relay sowing, store-landing bonus moves, kin thaen opposite captures, a 12-level AI, two-player rooms, interactive lessons and a daily puzzle.
Reversi Launches — Play Free in Your Browser
Reversi (Othello) is live at reversi.synerworlds.com — standard 8×8 outflank-and-flip rules, 12-level AI, two-player rooms, uniquely-verified puzzles, 6 strategy lessons and all 26 locales from day one.
🆕 Latest posts
See all →Tropi Pop is live: match-3 with Vietnamese tropical fruits across 60 levels from Cái Răng to Phú Quốc
Tropi Pop (Xếp Trái Cây) is live at xeptraicay.synerworlds.com — a match-3 game starring 7 Vietnamese tropical fruits: dragon fruit, mangosteen, custard apple, durian, mango, star fruit and coconut. 60 levels across 4 regions, special fruits, falling baskets, leaf tiles and a star leaderboard.
Chroma Beads is live: line up 5 beads of a colour on a 9×9 board — the ball-lines classic returns
Chroma Beads (Xếp Bi) is live at xepbi.synerworlds.com — the ball-lines puzzle in the Color Lines tradition: slide beads along free paths, burst lines of 5 to score, a daily challenge, full replays and high-score leaderboards.
Cờ Gánh Endgames: Winning by Blockade, Liberty Races, and the Two Faces of the Fortress
As the board thins, Cờ Gánh becomes arithmetic: winning by leaving the opponent no move, liberty races between mutually surrounded groups, the endgame carry trap, and why a self-surround fortress can become a coffin.
Ô Ăn Quan vs Mak Khom: One Mancala Family, Two Philosophies of Sowing
Vietnam's Ô Ăn Quan and Thailand's Mak Khom (หมากขุม) sow seeds into stores the same way but differ on everything else: free vs fixed sowing direction, forward chain captures vs the sideways kin thaen, a reseed tax vs a game-ending sweep — and which skills transfer.
Common Cờ Nhào Mistakes: Parity Blindness, Self-Blocking, and Forgetting the Reply Chain
Four mistakes that make Cờ Nhào players lose games they don't understand: ignoring which points have diagonals, blocking your own last move, counting only your own chain, and breaking the opening wall too soon.
Ô Ăn Quan Strategy: Count the Seeds, Chain the Captures, Never Let Your Land Burn
Ô Ăn Quan is deterministic arithmetic on a 12-cell ring: count where the last stone lands, build empty-full bridges for capture chains, watch both mandarins ripen past 5 stones, and avoid the 5-stone reseed tax.
Cờ Nhào Tactics: Capture Chains and the Art of the Landing Square
Read the landing square before the chain, know when to decline a capture, think in networks of empty points, and use the 1-vs-1 draw rule on time — four decisions that make a strong Cờ Nhào player.
Rook, Cannon, Horse: the same pieces, different logic in Xiangqi and Chess
The Chariot moves identically, the Cannon exists in only one game and captures over a screen, the Horse traces the same L but can be hobbled — a quick translation between the two games.