Classic Board Games Which Will Live Forever

Long ago - before T.V. reality shows, television itself, or even radio ... when all most people had for entertainment were other people ... there were board games. As a form of recreation, board games are special. A few people chatting or playing cards may enjoy themselves quietly and often unnoticed but opening up a board game generates communal interest and is an instant social event. Time passes quickly and pleasantly until the board is put away to play again another day. Thousands of board games abound but here are seven real classics:

Checkers (Invented Three Centuries B.C.)

A game of strategy everyone can play and a battle of the board in which one player tries to capture an opponent's "men" by "jumping" them and moving forward in a strategic manner. Whoever invades the opponent's territory, takes the most prisoners, and makes it to the other side of the board first wins. Playing Checkers really well probably is harder than it looks but almost everyone can enjoy a match.

Chess (Invented Two Centures B.C.)

It is unclear who invented Chess, a more challenging strategy game and a reproduction of medieval war between two kingdoms complete with castles (rooks), kings, queens, bishops, knights and pawns. Skirmishes are won and lost but the war isn't over until the opponent's king is dispatched via the dreaded Check Mate maneuver. Things can become intense so it may behoove everyone to remember that it is just a game and that casualties be confined to the board and not in the minds of the players or the way they regard each other when the game is over.

Today, Chess is played in 149 countries and hundreds of tournaments are held each year.

Chinese Checkers (Invented 1893)

This game, which is not Chinese but German in origin, has an attractive board - no small consideration for players staring intently at it. Each person picks his own color of glass marbles, moving them forward or sideways as play advances. As in all strategy games, each player begins in safe territory before venturing into the arena to clash with an opponent in a race to see who can get all his or her "men" to the other side of the board first.

Parcheesi (Invented 300 A.D.)

When I was little, my parents and I enjoyed playing this variation of the Indian game Pachisi. The board is marked with four circular "homes" and 68 squares, including 16 that are specially marked. Up to four people each receive four pieces in the his color of choice. In this deceptively simple game, the action is propelled along from square to square by the roll of dice and the winner is the first player to get all his pieces in his own final square. Today we play for the fun of it but it is said that ancient Indian princes sometimes bet their kingdoms on the outcome of this game.

Monopoly (Invented 1904)

This beloved game began life as The Landlords Game patented by Lizzie Magie in 1904 as part of a grassroots tax rebellion and social statement. It had already been bought under different names by Parker Brothers before Charles Darrow hijacked it in 1935 and cashed in on the game, claiming to have invented it. The tortured history of all this is too complicated to relate here but one can't help think that somebody should have gone directly to jail for such self-serving treachery. At any rate, it is hard to resist such an entertaining chance to become a millionaire right there in our own living rooms.

Scrabble (Invented 1931)

In 1931, unemployed architect Alfred Butts invented Lexico, a game of lettered tiles which each player used to create words laid directly on a table. Nobody was interested. STUPID is a good word to describe manufacturers who couldn't see Lexico's potential but Mr. Butts didn't give up. As time passed, he crafted a board, a pattern of positioning tiles in crossword puzzle fashion, a complex scoring system and renamed the game It. Still, no one cared.

In 1939, he acquired a partner named James Brunot who manufactured and marketed what was now called Scrabble. Sales languished at only 10,000 per annum until 1952 when Jack Strauss enjoyed playing it so much that he insisted his famous store stock it in inventory. It was Macy's who grasped Scrabble by the wrist and led it forward into the sunshine of success. After that, everybody who was anybody wanted the game and more than four million sets were sold in the next two years. The rest is HISTORY.

Candyland (Invented 1949)

Beginning with Chess and ending with Candyland may seem to be a stretch but it is important that there are board games which children can play unsupervised without ending up being hysterical or bitten. Candyland is a pleasant diversion for small children and a fun way to reinforce their knowledge of color, basic counting skills and the sporting rules of play.

The game was invented by Eleanor Abbott as a way to entertain children recuperating from polio, a disease that is gone now ... but Candyland lives on, into its sixtieth year, and people who played it as kids are introducing their children and grandchildren to this classic which will probably survive as long as children love candy and board games.

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The people who invented or helped to develop these classics are gone and sometimes not even credited for their achievements but the board games they created will live forever. How many reality T.V. shows can make a claim like that?

Sources:

Various Internet websites

Personal experience