Perhaps you are wondering what on earth got me thinking about board games in the first place. Maybe it is the recession and the need to find cheaper entertainment, maybe the left over games that inevitably get taken out for Christmas but not really taken seriously the rest of the year or maybe it is a backlash against the ever increasing electronic world we live in and a desire to connect to something a bit more nostalgic that doesn’t need electricity!
Well actually if I am honest it was an article by Rosie Millard in the Waitrose Weekend paper. She wrote about a well-thumbed small booklet, so far about half full, that represented the tallies of Scrabble games that her husband and she had played over the last ten years. Perhaps the article struck a sentimental cord in me as I love a good game of scrabble. When Rosie first started playing though she mainly lost to her husband, not because her vocabulary was less than her husband’s but because she played the game like it was all about anagrams. Of course her husband was playing to win and understood the need to not just be able to make words from those seven tiles but also to place them at exactly the right moment to achieve those all-important double / triple letter or word scores. Well as you can imagine after a little time Rosie decided to fight back and as such invested in a Scrabble dictionary, learning all of the crucial two letter words Aa, Zo for example along with words beginning with Q that don’t require a U to follow – and so now a more even, albeit strategic, cunning and devious game is played between them. But the best thing about the story is that they play regularly, on holiday, at home, with friends…No TV needed as distraction, no Ipad or Facebook playing, just played the good old fashioned way with a proper board, a bag of tiles, and a score book.
If Scrabble doesn’t appeal to you there are plenty of other best-selling board games to try:
Monopoly was created by Charles Darrow in 1934, believe it or not when he first tried to sell the game he was turned down by Parker Bros., and so he self-published and within a year Parker Bros. started selling it. It has gone on to become one of the most best-selling global board games of all time, and of course it now has regularly updated versions from geographical locations to Star Wars.
Chess is believed to have first appeared in India around the sixth century, by 1,000A.D it was being played in Europe and the Middle East, although the board and rules have evolved the principals of the strategy have remained the same.
Cluedo was actually designed in Birmingham, by a solicitor’s clerk called Anthony E.Pratt. Originally it was produced by Parker Bros, and Waddington’s in the UK but these companies were acquired by American Hasbro. It is a strategic murder/mystery game and like Monopoly various versions have sprung up and several changes have occurred to the weapons and rooms over time.
Trivial Pursuit is actually relatively new in terms of board game history having been created in Canada by Chris Haney in 1979. There is a funny story behind the games origins in that Chris and his friend Scott Abbott were trying to play a game of Scrabble and found some letters were missing, so they decided to create a game of their own and Trivial Pursuit was born.
It’s not just us; celebrities are playing board games too…
Adele (from The Sun), as well as doing up their new pad — including adding a nursery — the singer has been enjoying playing board games. A source added: “She’s become a bit obsessed with board games. Jenga, Monopoly and Scrabble are her favourites. Her mate recently bought her a charades set too.”
MTV News spoke to Christina Aguilera and she said “Target is an amazing store. You can find anything there. Board games… I’m a big gamer. I love my Nintendo DS. I love my board games – on the road, especially to kill time”.
In an article by Michael Inbar (for TODAY), “Daniel Radcliffe admitted sheepishly, “This is the side of my personality I didn’t want to air, this competitive monster that I actually am. I’m a horrible person to play board games with for the same reason. I cheat at Monopoly.”
Here are some other games (not all of them board games) that other celebrities have mentioned playing: Cranium, Taboo, Pictionary, Boggle, Mahjong, Poker, Bridge, Life, Checkers, Charades, Cribbage, Uno and Backgammon.
So maybe this will inspire you to keep a board game or two out and maybe play a weekly game…
Happy winning!
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