July 15, 2024

TRX | S5E10 | FUN & GAMES: GAMES

According to webster.com a game is a structured type of play usually undertaken for entertainment or fun but can also have an educational component. Welcome back to another episode of Remnant Stew, I’m Leah. I’m Phil, And I’m Steve. Today we are going to unfold the board and set up the pieces. This is Season 5 Episode 10 GAMES.

INTRO AND STORIES

INTRO Continuing from webster.com, games are an integral part of all cultures and are one of the oldest forms of human social interaction. Common features of games include uncertainty of outcome, agreed upon rules, competition, and personal enjoyment. In today’s episode we are going to open up the game box and pass out the play money as we talk about some interesting games, mostly board games but we might throw in a card game or two along the way.

<Banter about our favorite games> Mexican Train, Ticket to Ride, HuggerMugger, Carcassone, Guillotine, Quarto, Bananagrams

<Games we hate> Monopoly, Life, Checkers

Mensa Mind Games

Let me tell you about a really cool event in the tabletop gaming world that happens each year. I want to tell you first how I discovered it…In 2003 I was a stay-at-home mom of three boys aged 2, 3 and 5 and life was…messy. I loved being a mom, but the never-ending chores, the being needed all the time and never having any alone time…well it gets rough after a while. So, when I heard about this board game convention happening in Houston that year, I decided I wanted a night out of the house (a personal little get away) and was looking forward to signing up. When I went to register however, I found out that it was a Mensa event and you had to be a member of Mensa to participate. I had no idea what Mensa was but found out that it is a high-IQ society. Wikipedia says that it’s the largest and oldest high-IQ society in the world. It is a non-profit organization open to people who score at the 98th percentile or higher on a standardized, supervised IQ or other approved intelligence test.

On a whim I decided to take the test to see if I qualified. While I didn’t think I would really pass the test, I could say at least I tried and if I did get in then it would be a much-needed ego boost. I took the test and to my surprise I passed! I was so excited to go to the convention but as life would have it, I just couldn’t get away at the time and thought, no big deal I’ll just catch it next year now that I’m a member of Mensa. Little did I know that the convention was not for just the local Mensa group but rather the entire U.S. organization and is held in different cities every year. I missed my opportunity and since I really wasn’t interested in much else the society did (I admit that I really didn’t give it a fair shake), I stopped paying my dues and am now a Mensa drop out.

All that to say that even though I am not an active member, I love that Mensa has these conventions, called Mensa Mind Games, each year because they play and vote on the board games giving only the best of the best the coveted “Mensa Select” seal. I enjoy so many of those games with three of my personal favorites being on the Mensa Select list such as SET, Quarto, Quiddler,

If you are interested in perusing a list of Mensa Select games you can go to MensaMindGames.com then navigate to Mensa Select Games where they have a list of the five winning games for every year they’ve held the convention. The lists go back 34 years to 1990!

In my opinion, games are perfectly suited for grandparents and grandchildren. Both have considerable free time to spend, and games can be wonderful bonding activities that connect the generations. Have you seen the Young Sheldon episode where he is playing games with his Meemaw? Some of my earliest childhood memories are of playing games at my grandmother’s kitchen table. She started me off easy with Parchesi, Go Fish, and Crazy 8s. Then as I matured, I graduated to Cribbage, Canasta, and Scrabble. We still own her kitchen table at our cabin in West Texas and I have enjoyed introducing some of my grandchildren to those same games.

HISTORY OF GAMES

Are you familiar with a game called Mancala? Some historians believe that mancala is the oldest game in the world based on archaeological evidence found in Jordan that dates around 6000 BC. The game might have been played by ancient Nabataeans and appears to have been an early version of the modern mancala game. The Mancala board is made up of two rows of six small holes, or pits, and two larger holes, or mancalas, one at each end of the board. Seeds or pebbles were dropped into the holes and then taken out and captured by the players.

Another ancient game was known as knucklebones. This game utilized the ankle bones of a sheep. It was a game of dexterity and is the predecessor of our current game of Jacks. Though a rubber ball wasn’t available to ancient children, the bones were thrown up, caught, and manipulated in various manners.

In 1922 the famous Egyptologist Howard Carter announced the incredible discovery of King Tut’s Tomb. Among the fabulous treasures located in the tomb were three full-sized sets and a small travel set of a popular game called senet. There was also a painting of Tut playing senet with his wife. The game’s full ancient name was senet net hab, which means ‘game of passing through’; this is because the aim of the game is to get from one end of the board to the other. It appears that the game was enjoyed by ordinary people as well as royalty, the only difference was the cost of the materials. One of the Senet games in Tut’s tomb was constructed of ivory and expensive ebony wood. There is evidence of Egyptians playing this game as early as 2600 BC. Initially it was just a fun game to play, but by the 1200s BC it took on a special religious significance. The ancient Egyptians thought that the pieces journeying across the board was like the soul passing through the underworld to get to the afterlife. According to otegamuseum.nz, the rules of this game have not survived, and we can only make educated guesses about how it was played.

CHESS

Now let’s travel to India and the 7th Century AD to learn about an interesting game called Chaturanga (chat ur on ga). The word Chaturanga comes from the Sanskrit language, and it means battle formations. It is uncertain how this game developed, but it was mentioned in prominent Indian manuscripts as being quite popular in Northwest India as well as Pakistan and Afghanistan. It was played on a 64 square board. Different pieces had different powers, and victory was based on capturing one main piece. Does this sound familiar? It might as Chaturanga is believed to be the predecessor of chess.

According to britanica.com, Chaturanga spread from India to the east, north, and west. As the game spread it took on different regional variations. Carried east by Buddhist pilgrims and Silk Road traders the game had spread to China, Korea, and Japan by the 11th Century. The Chinese version includes a river running through sections of the board making it more difficult to capture the king.

To the north and west of India the game spread through Persia and into the Arabian empire. There is a written record of the game being played in the 10th Century in Baghdad. Muslim travelers carried the game to the Mediterranean region including Northern Africa, Italy, and Spain. From there Slavic travelers brought the game to Eastern Europe and Russia. The Vikings then spread it to Iceland and England. It is believed that the Vikings are responsible for a very old set of chess pieces which was found in Scotland in 1831. They were made from walrus tusks and are believed to date from the 11th or 12th century.

Chess increased in popularity throughout the Middle Ages. Peter the Great of Russia had a special leather travel set made so that he could carry it with him while engaged in military endeavors. As the game was a favorite of many royal rulers including Kings Henry I and Henry II of England, Alphonse of Spain, and Ivan the Terrible of Russia, chess became known as The Game of Kings. Oddly King Louis IX (9th) of France hated the game and made chess illegal in that country during his reign.

The rules for chess gradually evolved over time but had become well established by the 1700s. The first known international chess competition occurred in 1834 between teams of French and British players. The French won, so I guess they had gotten over Louis IX by then. An international invitational event was held in London in 1851 and was won by a German named Karl Anderssen. A few years later the American Chess Congress was established in New York which fueled a chess craze in the U.S. The first American winner was Paul Morphy of New Orleans. In 1858 he defeated Karl Anderson the European champion and was recognized as unofficial world champion.

Just one hundred years ago in 1924 members of fifteen nations met in Paris to establish the first permanent international chess federation. The organization became known as FIDE which was a French acronym of Fédération Internationale des Échecs. Happy anniversary FIDE. Today they are responsible for overseeing chess competitions worldwide. [chess song]

--EARLY BREAK ----------------------

MILTON BRADLEY

If you grew up playing board games like I did, then perhaps you can guess the name of the person I am going to describe to you. Our gentleman was born in Maine in 1836 to working class parents. He graduated from high school in 1854 and then moved to Springfield, Massachusetts where he found work as a draftsman. He studied lithography along the way and in 1860 he set up the first color lithograph shop in Springfield. At first, he found success by printing color images of the Republican presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln. But then Lincoln grew out his beard and customers stopped purchasing his beardless Lincoln images. Some even asked for their money back.

One night a friend named George Tapley invited him to dinner at his home. After dinner they played a board game that Tapley had purchased on a recent trip to Europe. This sparked an idea in our gentleman to create a truly American game. The next day he went back to his shop and began experimenting with ideas. Within a week he had developed what he called the Checkered Game of Life. This game involved people moving their tokens through life situations by spinning a dial (dice were frowned upon in New England at the time). The spaces where they landed would require decisions that would impact what would happen to them. The goal was to achieve “Happy Old Age” rather than “Ruin”. He believed that this game could provide both factual instruction and moral advice to young people.

The Checkered Game of Life proved immensely popular and by the end of the year 1860 had sold 45,000 copies. The following year when the Civil War began our gentleman thought about suspending his game production, but then changed his mind as he watched bored soldiers who were stationed nearby. Instead, he decided to produce travel kits containing game pieces that the soldiers could take with them. These included checkers, chess, backgammon, and the Checkered Game of Life. The travel kits proved immensely popular with soldiers and other Americans too. Our gentleman and the company that he started became a household name.

If you haven’t guessed it yet, we are talking about none other than Milton Bradley. The Checkered Game of Life or just Life as it is known today became America’s first popular parlor game.

In addition to being America’s first major game manufacturer, Milton Bradley (the man) also became a strong advocate for kindergarten. He attended a lecture in 1869 by an early education pioneer named Elizabeth Peabody who touted the benefits of early education for children. In addition to producing board games, the Milton Bradley Company also began producing educational materials for children including colored paints, paper, toy money, multiplication sticks, puzzles, and movable clock dials as well as learning games.

When Milton Bradley (the man) died in 1911 the Milton Bradley Company was worth more than $3,000,000. That would be equal to $600 million today. The management of the company passed to his old friend George Tapley’s son. The company saw harder times in the 1930s as the Great Depression severely limited the public’s ability to spend money on a board game. But with the outbreak of WWII, MB again marketed travel sized game kits to soldiers and sailors going off to war.

After WWII with the advent of the Baby Boom the nation was ripe for a new era of board games. Introduced in 1949, Candy Land became the hottest new must have for parents raising the new generation of children. The next thirty-five years have been called the Golden Age of Board Games. Here is just a partial list of Milton Bradley’s best sellers from that era. How many of these have you played?

Yahtzee, Concentration (Based on a popular TV Game Show), Mouse Trap, Operation, Twister, Trouble, Kerplunk, Battleship, Connect Four, Family Feud, Hungry Hungry Hippos, Simon, Guess Who?, and Jenga. And of course, we can’t forget the original Game of Life which continues to be a big seller to this day. In 2006 Milton Bradley (the man) was posthumously inducted in the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

In 2009 MB and their archrival Parker Brothers were acquired by the Hasbro Toy Company. MBs games are still being produced under the Hasbro name. The vast number of Milton Bradley board games still available proves the timeless quality to the gentleman and his company's creative vision.

--ODDITY DU JOUR ----------------------

PARKER BROTHERS

Well now not too far from the Milton Bradley Co. in Springfield, we find the famous city of Salem, Massachusetts. Mostly known for those witch trials back in the late 1600s Salem also has a more positive claim to fame. In 1883 a bored teenager named George Parker was playing a game called Everlasting which was designed to teach moral lessons to young people. George thought the game was dumb. He began to think of ways to improve the game and make it more fun. He devised a set of printed cards and wrote out detailed rules. He called his new game Banking.

Banking was a game in which players borrow money from the bank and try to generate wealth by guessing how well they could do. The game included 160 cards which foretell the player’s failure or success. George and his brothers and their friends enjoyed playing Banking so much that he scraped together $40 and had 500 copies of the game printed. He sold the games to Boston area retailers and made a profit of nearly $100. Thus encouraged, our sixteen-year-old bored teenager established the George Parker Company and set about manufacturing Banking in larger quantities. Five years later in 1888 his brother Charles joined the firm as its business manager and the company name was changed to Parker Brothers. A third brother Edward joined in 1898. This afforded George the time to develop new games.

The earliest Parker Brothers games had a definite New England feel with names like Billy Bumps Goes to Boston and The Yale-Harvard Game. Then in the 1890s Parker Brothers began reaching out to a more national audience with games that were based on current events. The Alaska Gold Rush in 1893 led to a popular game called Klondike. Then the Spanish American War in 1898 fostered a game called War in Cuba. In 1906 Parker Brothers developed a game called Rook. This game utilized a special set of playing cards different from the typical deck of cards which had developed somewhat of a negative image due to their association with gambling. Rook became the best-selling game in the country in the early 1900s.

MONOPOLY

Meanwhile according to an article in theguardian.com an obscure woman named Elizabeth Magie (pronounced with a soft G as in magic) who lived just outside Washington D.C. was becoming frustrated with the nature of greedy capitalistic landgrabbers. She was looking for an outlet to share her left-leaning socialist views with a larger audience. As board games were so popular at the time, Lizzy, as her friends called her, put her mind to developing a game that would expose the nature of the money-grubbing land barons. In 1903 she received a patent for The Landlord Game. “It is a practical demonstration of the present system of land-grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences,” she wrote in a political magazine. Lizzie’s game featured play money and deeds and properties that could be bought and sold. Players borrowed money, either from the bank or from each other, and they had to pay taxes. It also included a poor house and a space that has a very well-known saying, “Go to Jail!”

The Landlord Game became popular with left leaning intellectuals and over the next three decades was a fixture on many college campuses. It also became popular with a community of Quakers in Atlantic City, New Jersey who customized versions of the game with local neighborhoods. One of these versions found its way into the hands of a man named Charles Darrow.

One night in 1932 Darrow and his wife Esther were invited to dinner at the home of their friends Charles and Olivia Todd. Afterward the Todds introduced the Darrows to the Landlord Game. Charles Darrow was transfixed. He couldn’t get the game out of his mind. By this point in the story of The Landlord Game it wasn’t sold in a box but was passed along from friend to friend. While Lizzy Magie had originally included a set of rules, those had either been lost or modified by each community of players.

Charles Darrow was an unemployed engineer at the time and was desperate to find a way to support his family. He decided to do a refresh of the Landlord Game with a codified set of rules and a bright and colorful game board. He approached Parker Brothers with the idea in 1934 and they loved it. The name was changed to Monopoly and has since sold hundreds of millions of copies worldwide. Charles Darrow became a multi-millionaire on the royalties that he received from sales of the game.

But what about Lizzy Magie? When Monopoly started to take off Parker Brothers paid Lizzy $500 for the patent to the Landlord Game, but no royalties. Of course, in 1935 $500 was a lot of money, equal to about $11,400 today. At first Lizzy was overjoyed. But then it began to dawn on her that Charles Darrow and Parker Brothers were making a fortune on her idea. She angrily protested in an interview with the Washington Post, but as she had already sold the rights to her patent, there was nothing she could do. It is quite an ironic twist that the woman who invented a game to expose the evils of capitalism was herself caught up in a controversy over the overwhelming success of a capitalistic game based on her idea.

MONOPOLY MAPS

I’m not a huge fan of Monopoly but I love this next story about it… in the decade after Parker Brothers first produced the game, Monopoly actually had a real-life role in helping some folks get out of jail free. Articles from abcnews.com and owlcation.com detail how Monopoly boards were used to help Allied prisoners of war escape from the Nazis.

Large numbers of British and later American airmen were shot down while conducting bombing raids over Germany and German held territory. The POW camps were nowhere near as horrid as the slave labor camps and concentration camps where the Nazis killed millions. By and large the Germans treated Allied prisoners humanely. Part of this humane treatment allowed them to receive care packages from the Red Cross and other relief agencies. These packages contained food, clothing, medical supplies, and in some cases leisure entertainment like books and games.

M19 was the British Secret Service Agency charged with aiding Allied prisoners with the means to escape. They cooperated with a British company named John Waddington Limited to print maps on silk. It just so happened that the John Waddington Company was also the British licensee for the Parker Brothers game Monopoly. Together M19 and John Waddington Limited created silk escape maps that fit perfectly beneath the glued-on paper facing of the Monopoly board. Some parts of the board were hollowed out so that they could contain small metal files, saws, and compasses. In addition, local currencies were hidden under the Monopoly money. Some sets even contained tokens made of pure gold so that escaping prisoners could use them to pay for assistance and supplies during their escapes. Before leaving England, the airmen were told to look for the Monopoly boards if they were taken captive.

To protect the Red Cross from falling under suspicion M19 created phony relief agencies. One was called the Prisoners Leisure Hours Fund. At first legitimate relief supplies were channeled to the POW camps in Germany. When these initial shipments passed through without raising the interest of the guards the altered packages were then slipped in.

It is believed that over 700 prisoners escaped from German POW camps and made their way back to England using the altered Monopoly sets.

CLUE

Now speaking of WWII, another popular game developed during the war. A British musician and factory worker named Anthony Pratt was holed up in his home in Birmingham, England during the air raids. Seeing as he had some time on his hands Pratt began musing about the murder mystery parlor games that were popular in his parent’s generation. He was also fond of murder mystery books by Agatha Christie and others. He and his wife began to map out an idea for a game involving a mystery in a mansion. It is said that his wife designed the playing board based on a nearby location called the Tudor Close Hotel in Rottingdean, England. Once he had formalized a set of rules Pratt applied for and finally received a patent in 1947. He then approached none other than John Waddington Limited who enthusiastically purchased the rights to the game and selected the name Cluedo which was a play on the Latin word Ludo which means I play.

In 1949 Parker Brothers purchased the rights to distribute the game in North America and changed the name to Clue. At first, they marketed it as The Great Sherlock Holmes Detective Game. Over the years they have adapted the title to where it now reads The Great Classic Detective Game. Today Clue / Cluedo is the second most popular game in the world behind Monopoly. It has sold over 150 million sets. It was also the inspiration for the Clue Movie which was released in 1985 and had three different endings. We will talk more about the Clue Movie toward the end of this episode.

George Parker died in 1952 but the company was still operated by his family until 1968 when they were purchased by General Foods. Other popular games produced by Parker Brothers include Tiddlywinks, Sorry, Scrabble, and Risk. They also helped to popularize Ping Pong in the United States after George Parker saw the game being played on one of his trips to Europe.

Today, like their old rival Milton Bradley, Parker Brothers is owned by the Hasbro Toy Company.

--LATE BREAK -------------------------------

PLAYING CARDS

Well now let’s talk a bit about playing cards. Most historians agree that a form of playing cards developed in China about 1,000 years ago. It appears that traders on the Silk Road brought the concept of playing cards with them to the Middle East. By 1360 playing cards with four distinct suits were known to exist in Egypt. The four suits on the Egyptian cards were goblets, gold coins, swords, and polo mallets. From Egypt the cards spread across northern Africa and then to southern Europe. Even today traditional playing cards in Italy and Spain depict batons, swords, cups, and coins. The French are responsible for the suits we have today as batons became clubs, swords became spades, coins became diamonds, and the cups became hearts.

By the 1400s playing cards were found throughout Europe but were expensive and usually only owned by the wealthier class. Each set had to be hand painted. That all changed with the advent of woodblock printing which made mass production possible. By the 1500s card playing became a widespread leisure activity.

The library at New York University contains a large collection of historic playing card sets. Their website nyu.edu states that in the 1700s French playing cards depicted their kings and queens clothed in splendid regalia. But after the French Revolution in 1789 the monarchs were replaced with figures representing egalitarian ideals like equality, brotherhood, and liberty.

Now history buffs might recall the Boston Tea Party in 1773 when enraged American colonists stormed onto a British ship and dumped the tea cargo into the harbor. One of the things that had angered the Yankees was that the British had placed a large tax on imported playing cards. At the time there were no manufacturers of playing cards in North America, they were imported from England. Of course, other items were taxed also, but it gives us some insight into the popularity of card playing in the colonies.

CARD GAMES

The idea of playing card games just for fun is a fairly recent development. Most early card games were played for money. The advent of affordable decks of playing cards led to a rise in gambling across all segments of society – from the wealthy to the poor. Indeed, for most of its history, card playing has been a means to riches or to ruin for those who could not resist one more turn at the table. I am familiar with an enormous ranch in the Texas Panhandle called the Four Sixes. Legend has it that this 260,000-acre ranch was won in a poker game with four sixes being the winning hand. Their website claims that this legend is not true. Nevertheless, we are all familiar with the image of riverboat gamblers or shady card games being played in an Old West saloon.

Along with the rise of gambling, playing cards became popular tools of magicians and fortune tellers in the 1800s. Dexterous card dealers no doubt learned how to manipulate cards in such a way that would guarantee a favorable outcome for themselves. But getting caught while “dealing off the bottom of the deck” could have potentially disastrous results. Thus, many card dealers found a profitable and safer way to utilize their skill by performing magic tricks. Fortune tellers had long used tarot cards to perform their acts of divination. It was an easy conversion for them to substitute an ordinary deck of playing cards to enact (ply?) their fabled craft.

The association of playing cards with gambling and magic led to many social and religious organizations shunning their use. Carry Nation’s late 19th Century Temperance Movement not only fought against the evils of alcohol, but also of gambling establishments. In the first half of the 1900s Baptist ministers In Texas and throughout the South referred to playing cards as, “The Tools of the Devil.” Church folk would play dominoes for hours on end, but playing cards was strongly frowned upon.

Now you might be curious as to what the oldest known card game is. According to oldest.com a German game called Karnoffel is known to date to 1426 and is still played in Bavaria today. Some other games that you might be familiar with are also quite old. Black Jack or 21 was referenced in Cervantes’ Don Quixote which was written in 1700, so the game is at least that old. Whist which is a forerunner of Bridge was developed in France in the 1760s. Euchre (Uker) emerged in the early 1800s and was a favorite of those Mississippi Riverboat gamblers. Poker was invented in New Orleans in 1829, and Gin Rummy emerged in America around 1900. Those are the oldest card games known to exist.

Playing Card Fun Facts:

The longest continuously played poker game occurred at the Bird Cage Theater in Tombstone, Arizona. It began in 1881 and lasted for eight years and five months.

The United States Playing Card Company of Erlanger, Kentucky produces over 100 million decks of cards per year. These include the famous Bicycle brand which was also used during WWII to hide maps similar to the Monopoly boards mentioned earlier.

Casinos in Las Vegas generally toss out a deck of cards from use after one hour of play. This is due to the fact that players may tend to try to mark certain cards with bends or smudges.

And the most popular card game in the world? Solitaire!

GAMES IN POPULAR CULTURE

As we mentioned earlier Clue is the second most popular board game in the world, only behind Monopoly, and it inspired a popular 1985 movie. The movie didn’t do particularly well at the box office because people were confused by the three endings; they didn’t know which theater to go to. But Clue the Movie has enjoyed a long and happy life in home theaters. The movie does a terrific job of balancing mystery and folly. I’ve never seen it but looking at the cast (Madeline Khan, Tim Curry, Christopher Lloyd), I think I’m going to have to make time for a movie night. Now I have seen the 2019 movie Knives Out starring Daniel Craig, Jamie Lee Curtis and other big names. I loved it and it was inspired by the movie Clue and is similar.

The extended popularity of the movie Clue inspired other movies that took their inspiration from games. A few of these include Candyland, the Great Lollypop Adventure in 2005, Under the Boardwalk – The Monopoly Story in 2012, Battleship in 2012, and Ouija – Origin of Evil 2016. I should say here that I fully intended to get into the weird history of the Ouija board but we simply ran out of time and it’s not really a board game. We will discuss it at some point though! None of these games inspired movies achieved the popularity of Clue.

But that doesn't mean that board games don’t show up in movies and TV. A website called boardgamegeek.com lists several occurrences of some of your favorite games showing up on either the big screen or television. Here are some of our favorites.

On the Carol Burnett Show during the Mama’s Family sketch, board games made a frequent appearance. In one episode while playing Monopoly Eunice, Ed, and Mama wind up in a huge fight, as Eunice, sensing her first-ever victory in anything, tries to force them to finish the game. In another episode during a game of Sorry Eunice and Ed shout SLIDE SLIDE SLIDE and SORRRRRRY as they capture each other’s men before another fight breaks out.

Board games were also featured on The Simpsons. In one episode the family is playing Scrabble. Homer draws the letters 0-X-I-D-I-Z-E but he plays the word id, “As in stup-id,” he explains. (ID - a word in psychology coined by Freud and defined as “the part of the mind in which innate instinctive impulses and primary processes are manifest.”It’s the primitive part of the psyche and so it’s appropriate that it’s linked to Homer Simpson) Then for Christmas one year Lisa wanted a Hungry Hungry Hippos game, but Homer presented her with a cheap knock-off called Ravenous Ravenous Rhinos. In another episode Homer tries to teach the family to play Scrabbleship. Lisa says, “I don’t understand the rules.” I wonder why.

Remember the TV show Happy Days? It aired in the 70s but was set in 1950s and 60s era America. The show inspired a board game called Happy Days (same as the show) and was featured in an episode of the popular 90s era TV

show Friends. How’s that for a mishmash of cultural references? On a beach trip Ross and his girlfriend were going to play strip poker, but they couldn’t find any cards, so they played Strip Happy Days instead.

Of course, chess has been featured in several prominent movies. Among our favorites are Searching for Bobby Fisher 1993, Brooklyn Castle 2012, and the 2019 Netflix series Queen’s Gambit. And we can’t forget the original Star Trek where Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock enjoy playing tri-dimensional or 3D chess. Then there’s Wizarding Chess played by Ron in the Harry Potter series.

It is interesting that, though almost all aspects of our lives rely on technology, the board game is experiencing a renaissance. According to researchers at the University of Pittsburgh (pitt.edu) board games are making a huge resurgence in popularity among all age ranges.

Zach Horton, an associate professor at Pitt relates the rise in popularity of board games with the emergence of smartphones. “The interest in board games is a retaliation against the ubiquity of digital media. People are looking for more engaged and social activities as they become more isolated by technology,” said Horton. “People crave that social connection—which makes this genre completely different from social media or video games.”

So put down that phone and let’s break out a board game!

O U T R O

Phil here reminding you to check out our Facebook and Instagram pages @RemnantStewPodcast. Drop us an email at StayCurious@RemnantStew.com just to say hi or to let us know about any topics you would like to hear us cover in an upcoming episode.

Remnant Stew is part of Rook & Raven Ventures and is created by me, Leah Lamp. Steve Meeker researches and writes each episode that we then host together. Our audio producer is Phillip Sinquefield. The Oddity Du Jour is brought to you by Sam Lamp. Theme music is by Kevin MacLeod with voiceover by Morgan Hughes. Special thanks goes out to Judy Meeker. For a complete list of sources for this episode please see this episode’s transcript, there’s a link in the show notes.

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Until next time remember to choose to be kind…AND ALWAYS STAY CURIOUS!

--SOURCES ----------------------

https://www.mensamindgames.com/about/winning-games/

https://historicjamestowne.org/shop/toys/games/mancala-1/#:~:text=Mancala%20is%20a%20game%20that,Angola%20it%20is%20called%20Kiela

https://otagomuseum.nz/athome/how-to-play-senet

https://www.britannica.com/topic/chess/History

https://www.invent.org/inductees/milton-bradley

https://www.lovetoknow.com/home/antiques-collectibles/old-milton-bradley-board-games

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Bradley_Company

https://www.encyclopedia.com/media/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/parker-brothers

https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/parker-brothers-of-salem-mass-build-game-empire/