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Playable heritage game

Nanduti

Also known as spider-web lace

Ñandutí, the Guaraní word for spider web, is a needle lace of Paraguay worked on a stretched frame: fine threads are laid out as sixteen rays from a centre and then stitched ring by ring into suns, flowers and webs, often in bright colours.

Play the previewAbout this tradition
Nanduti: photograph by Trey Jones
Photo: Trey Jones, Public domain, source on Wikimedia Commons
Nanduti: the game in attract modeLive previewPlay

Runs in your browser, works offline once loaded.

How to play

  1. Choose a thread colour and a stitch from the strip under the disc.
  2. Tap a sector of the lace disc: the same stitch appears in every sector that matches it as the disc turns.
  3. Match the small disc shown above, then press Check.
Rules at a glance
  • The disc has sixteen rays and six rings, and its design repeats eight times around the centre, like a web worked outward from the middle.
  • A sector counts only when its stitch and its thread colour both match the design.
  • Three stars need a nearly perfect copy; you may undo or clear as often as you like.

About the tradition

Ñandutí is made by women of Paraguay, with the town of Itauguá long known as its home, and has been handed down since the colonial period; each round motif is only a few centimetres across and many are joined into larger cloths.

Origins

A living tradition passed from person to person; it is not tied to a single dated origin. It belongs to the cultural world of The Americas: Andes and South America.

Credits

Sources

Get the app

Nanduti is one of 17 textile crafts in the Textile Crafts of the World app for iPhone, iPad and Android. Submitted to the App Store and Google Play; in review. Store links appear here the day it goes live. One app, many traditions, no account needed.

See all 17 textile crafts in the app

In review on theApp StoreIn review on theGoogle Play

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