a competitive game involving tossing pellets and little slabs, whereby scores were kept (see attestations)
Bernal Díaz del Castillo describes Motecuhzoma and Cortés playing the game while observers kept the score: "I remember that Pedro de Alvarado was keeping the score for Cortés, and one of his nephews, a great cacique, was marking for Montezuma, and Pedro de Alvarado always marked one point more than Cortés gained, and when Montezuma saw it he said courteously and laughingly that he did not like Tonatio (for so they called Pedro de Alvarado) to keep score for Cortés, because he always made such yxoxol in what he marked, which in their language means to say that he cheated, in that he always marked one point too many. Cortés and all of us soldiers who were on guard at the time, could not restrain our laughter at what the great Montezuma said, because Pedro de Alvarado, although he was so handsome and well mannered, had a mania for excessive talking, and we knew his temperament." (The True History of the Conquest of New Spain, 1928, pp. 323-324.
See the verb texoxoloti, which can mean to fool people like a shyster or scoundrel. The same root might apply to ixoxol (apparently a possessed noun) (See below.)