Board games are played on special boards and they follow certain rules
Board games
Board games are played on special boards and they follow certain rules. One of the simplest and earliest board games is Nougats and crosses. Most of us play it on paper, but all one needs is sand or mud and a finger. Some board games such as Snakes and Ladders are won by luck alone. Chess is won by sill, While Monopoly is a mixture. Here are some games you may like to know about.
A game of snakes and ladders made in the year 1900.
Backgammon is one of the oldest board games that people play. Its name comes from the Saxon `Back game’ because pieces have to go back to the beginning. In the middle ages it was called `tables’. Church leaders tried to stop people from playing the game as it amounted to gambling. This game uses a dice to decide how far one can move. Therefore, it is a mixture of luck and skill.
Mah –jong is a Chinese board game. A combination of dice and dominoes, it is played with 136 or 144 rectangular tiles, engraved with Chinese symbols. One of the symbols resembles a sparrow, from which the name is derived.
Pachisi originated in India. Four players sit around a boar, shaped like a cross. They throw dice or cowries shells to see how many spaces they can move. The game of dice in the Mahabharata was actually Pachisi. Its name is derived from the number of cowries shells (25) tossed in a roll.
Monopoly is one of the most popular board games of our time. Its inventor, Clarence Darrow, was an unemployed American engineer in the Depression years of the early 1930s. Cash scarce then, in real life. Therefore, he invented a game which revolved around winning easy money. This game involves business bankruptcies, property foreclosures, suggested play deeds and real estate that could be won or lost on the roll of a dice. Scrabble was invented by Alfred Butts during the Depression years when he was unemployed. The game was initially known as Criss Cross and Butts got the patent rights in 1938. in 1946 the game was being sold as `Lexico’. Later in 1948, Selchow and Ricter, a US firm bought the rights and renamed it `Scrabble’.
Emperor Akbar’s Pachisi board was the royal courtyard and the ladies of the court were the game’s pawns. They moved in accordance with roll of the Emperor’s dice.
Cluedo, a detective board game was devised by Anthony pratt, an English cleak, and his wife in 1944.
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