Merels is essentially Noughts & Crosses on stilts. The ‘stilts’ are extra lines and points sticking out from the basically 3x3 grid of points or fields on which O-&-X is played. Whereas O-&-X is a purely static game when played, as it usually is, with pencil and paper, when played with three pieces each (Three Men’s Morris) it becomes a game of movement. Not that this makes it any more complex, though adding more and more lines or concentric boxes (see illustrations) at least makes it more complicated.