Mancala games which are using the move mechanism of reverse sowing (or: reaping, inverse sowing) instead of regular sowing are called "reverse mancala". If applied to existing games, reverse sowing is a meta-rule, which defines according to Jeff Erickson a peculiar sub-group of "sowing games" (in French mancala games are also called jeux de semailles, literally "sowing games"). This term was proposed by John Conway and Richard Guy as an alternative for "mancala" (the generic term for our games in social studies) in Combinatorial Game Theory (CGT).