Tiffany Hanssen: This is All Of It. I'm Tiffany Hanssen, in for Alison Stewart today. From ancient games of dice to the advent of chess to the worldwide domination of Monopoly, throughout human history, humans have loved to play games. Why? A new book takes readers through the centuries-long history of games from Romans who cheated at dice all the way up to Settlers of Catan and Magic: The Gathering. The book is titled Across the Board: How Games Make Us Human. That book is by Tim Clare, who joins us now. Hi, Tim. Hi, Tim.

Tim Clare: Hi. Can you hear me?

Tiffany Hanssen: I can hear you.

Tim Clare: Great.

Tiffany Hanssen: Thanks so much for joining us. We want to invite the listeners to this conversation as well. Do you have a favorite tabletop game, maybe a lesser-known board game that you love, that you want to champion, a card game that you want to recommend? Talk to us about games you love. 212-433-9692. You can call us, you can text us at that number. Tim, what's the first board game that you fell in love with?

Tim Clare: Oh my goodness, that's such a good question. Well, there was a game that I used to play with my dad called Speed. It's a bit embarrassing, really, because on the one hand, it was more or less UNO. If anyone's ever played UNO, it's a genre of card game called shedding games where you're trying to get rid of all the cards in your hand. They're actually quite an old genre of card game that goes back decades and decades.

This game, Speed, it was very kind of British Empire, lots of old steam trains and motor cars. It was from the 1960s. It had been a car game my dad had played as a child, so it's not my usual fare. I remember just being absolutely in love with these lush color illustrations and this very, I think, almost nostalgic view of the world.

Tiffany Hanssen: You're drawn to that particular piece of this card game. I'm wondering, a little more broadly, what you think it is that draws people to games, period. Is it escapism? Is it the sense of community? Is it just the fun of the competition? Is it all of those things?

Tim Clare: The philosopher and historian, Johan Huizinga, [unintelligible 00:02:52], said that games take place within a magic circle. He said within this magic circle, a temporary perfection takes place. He had this idea that games are almost like an altered state, almost like a kind of a ritual state that you step into when you choose to play, and temporarily, the normal rules of the world are suspended, the normal cares, the normal social restrictions, and something else can take place. I think that that is the fundamental thing that attracts us to games, is there's something transgressive and weird and liberating about playing a game.

Tiffany Hanssen: We have a text that says simply, "Boggle."

[laughter]

Tim Clare: I'm a big fan of Boggle. That was a game that I used to play a lot with my mum and my grandma.

Tiffany Hanssen: Me too. I played that with my grandmother. Instantly, when I saw that word, that's exactly what I thought of, is playing Boggle with my grandmother. I guess my question is, to you, since we both went there, is some of what we love about games, nostalgia?

Tim Clare: I think it's can be a combination of nostalgia. I certainly think there is nothing that would be bringing people back to Monopoly after 90 years if there wasn't an element of generational nostalgia. People forgetting that it wasn't quite as enjoyable as they remember, and buying a copy, and then never playing it. I think also it's just you go where the love is in life, I think.

One thing that a lot of games can do is create a space where generations can sit together and play something. That's quite a rare thing for there to be an activity where a child, their mum, and their grandma, three generations, can sit around a table and find parity, can actually find a space where they're all equally engaged. That's beautiful, I think.

Tiffany Hanssen: We have a couple of texts here, Tim. "Love the game Farkle. All you need are six dice, a paper, and a pen. Similar to the concept of poker. My family's favorite game. It travels easy." Have you heard of Farkle?

Tim Clare: I have, yes. I think the existence of folk dice games and kind of push-your-luck style dice games where you're rolling a dice, keeping some, rolling the rest, people have played things like Yahtzee. I love the fact that that has become a family game. I can imagine that going on camping trips, going on holiday, and then, during a quiet moment, people may be starting to chant, "Farkle, Farkle." I'm sure that the family, maybe they're cooler than my family, but we would definitely have some very geeky games that there would be a call to bring it out.

Tiffany Hanssen: Another text we have. "I love the board game Stratego. There was a set left at my childhood house when we moved in, and I played it growing up. I still love playing it occasionally. A great two-player strategy game."

Tim Clare: I used to play that with my dad all the time.

Tiffany Hanssen: Wait, that's not the one where you put the little ships on the board? No.

Tim Clare: No. It's part of a genre called block games, where basically imagine that you're playing chess, but only I can see what my pieces are-

Tiffany: Oh, yes, I remember now.

Tim Clare: -and only you can see what your pieces are. Only when they come into contact that fog of war is broken, and you turn it around. It was made eventually with little plastic castles, and it's generally set as a kind of Napoleonic war era type of game. Yes, it's a game where you get to set up where your piece is, your beginning place, and the idea is to reach the enemy's flag.

Tiffany Hanssen: Another recommendation board game, Ransom Note. It's hilarious. Writers and word people will love it. Listeners, Tim and I would love you in this conversation with more of your recommendations. 212-433-9692. We are talking about games, board games, games that mean something in your family. A board game that you love, that you just want to champion. We'd love to hear from you. 212-433-9692. Let's talk with Charlotte in Jersey City. Hi, Charlotte.

Charlotte: Hey. It's not a board game. You just need a regular deck of cards, ideally two decks of cards. It's called I doubt It. You just sit in a big circle, you shuffle all the cards, you deal them out. Then you just go around the circle and you start with the ace or one and you say "Three aces," and you put it in the middle, maybe face down. They may be three aces or may not be three aces.

It's a bluffing game. You just keep going around the circle, and if somebody calls your bluff, you have to pick up all the cards in the middle, and then you've got thousands to get rid of. You can have as many as eight cards that you have to get rid of at any time of anything. 5-year-olds to 70-year-olds. We played it all summer long, all age groups. The circle could be 12 people, it could be 6 people, and all you need is a deck of cards or two decks of cards. It's a great game.

Tiffany Hanssen: Oh, Charlotte, thanks so much for the recommendation. Tim, what do we know about how games with playing cards got their start?

Tim Clare: Well, it's a funny story in that most of the time we can't trace the history of games, or they pop up all over the world, sometimes spontaneously. Cards is this rare case where we can trace the technology of cards pretty accurately. We think they probably started in China. One of the useful things about cards is you can't have cards without paper-making technology, so we can be pretty certain that they follow the growth of paper-making. In China, it looks like they started out as games that people were playing with paper money. In fact, the first four suits that we have today match denominations on old Chinese banknotes.

Start in China, move up through the Islamic world when they get paper-making. Then from there, they push into Portugal and Spain, up through Europe, and from there, to Britain. Actually, one of the last countries to get playing cards is Japan, even though they're right next to China. It's not until Portuguese traders take them there during the Edo period or just before the Edo period that Japan, oddly, despite having paper, gets them last. That's the spread of cards all over the world. That four-suit structure started in China over 1,000 years ago and was so successful that we've never got rid of it.

Tiffany Hanssen: One card game that I remember learning, that I've now completely forgotten the rules for, is Euchre. Go ahead.

Tim Clare: Well, I was just gonna say that's like-- Sorry. I mean, any game that you mention is just gonna trigger me a [unintelligible 00:09:56] of enthusiasm. What an amazing game. I believe that Euchre is distantly related to what Winston Churchill's favorite game was, which is Bezique. Again, an actually really tactically involved, quite sophisticated card game, Euchre.

Tiffany Hanssen: We have a text here, Tim. "I love playing, I'm going to say, Rummikub." The texter says, "Could you please confirm the correct pronunciation of the game? Is it Rummacub? Rummacube? Help out. Help out, Tim."

Tim Clare: My understanding is, whenever I've seen it advertised, it's Rummikub. I think it was originally designed in the 1930s. Comes from, it was a Hungarian designer, and it's passed through the world from there. Was very, very probably inspired by Mahjong and the popularity of Mahjong amongst the Jewish diaspora, where it had spread from Chinese and Japanese players. Yes, a really great game, Rummikub. I like it a lot.

Tiffany Hanssen: We have a call here from Roger in Manhattan. Roger, welcome.

Roger: How you doing?

Tiffany: Good.

Roger: Thank you. Some people might not consider this a board game, but it is. It's a competitive jigsaw puzzle. You get two of the same puzzle. You can't get a thousand-piece one or you'll never finish in the evening. A relatively small number of pieces divide into two teams. You set up on opposite tables and you solve the puzzles with each other, against each other.

Tiffany Hanssen: Thank you so much, Roger. Tim, I have seen online videos of huge conferences of this competitive jigsaw puzzle. I don't know, they must just be large conventions of people having contests around this. It's not really a board game, but I guess what I'm wondering is, do you have a definition of what fits as a board game?

Tim Clare: I would definitely grandfather puzzles, jigsaws into the games world. In fact, one of the oldest magazines about games in the UK was called Games and Puzzles because the two groups are so often-- I'm a big fan of puzzles. I would describe games. This is the definition that was used by the philosopher, Bernard suits, in the 1970s. He said a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.

Anything where you're choosing to take on the task, and it's unnecessary. I would say the other thing he added that isn't included in that definition is this idea of the lusory mode, which is just a complicated way of saying you're doing it with fun in mind because you want to be entertained. I'd say that makes it a game. I would define a puzzle as a solo game.

Tiffany Hanssen: Tim, we have a couple of many folks chiming in here about risk, of course. I want to take a call from Cheryl in Irvington on Hudson. Hi, Cheryl.

Cheryl: Yes, hi. I wanted to just talk about vintage board games and how different games have become. I noticed in particular with The Game of Life, that there used to be some bad things that would happen in The Game of Life, like you could exact revenge, and just certain of the pieces in the game think bad things could happen. In the new Game of Life, it's all been very sanitized, so that nothing bad ever happens. I've become a big collector of the vintage version of board games.

Tiffany Hanssen: Nice. Thank you, Cheryl. Tim, it's funny, I read something in The New York Times Magazine, I think it was a couple of weeks ago, about a grandmother who would take one of the cards out from the Monopoly game because, in her estimation, it led to something that she didn't want her kids, her grandkids to learn. She had some moral objection to one of the Monopoly cards. Talk to us a little bit about the sanitizing of board games and how, as Cheryl was saying, how games have evolved a little bit. Also, if you think that maybe some of that is unnecessary, is some of the point of these games to teach these moral lessons, or is that a bridge too far?

Tim Clare: It's a great question. The Game of Life is a great example. It's really, in many ways, the first truly American board game. It came out, was created by Milton Bradley in 1860. It's true, in the original edition, the checkered Game of Life, you could die, you could go to prison, you could do a lot of-- you could have misfortune. On the other hand, the point of that game, of the original Game of Life, was to achieve happiness, whereas in the new one, the winner is the person who ends with the most cash.

Tiffany Hanssen: There's an American outcome for you.

Tim Clare: Yes, absolutely. On the other hand, the original Game of Life didn't come with a dice because they were scared that the inclusion of the tools of the saloon into the nursery would encourage gambling, so they had a spinner, what's called a teetotum. On the other hand, quite a lot of the early Victorian and American games had these moral messages. Chutes and Ladders comes from an Indian game that was about morality, and you'd go down the snakes if you sinned and things like that.

I'd say games have actually often had a moral message to them in the past. I'd say sometimes I suspect that was a little bit of an excuse to get the games into houses because the other thing is the moral message can sometimes be hilariously funny because you roll a dice and grandma lands on drunkenness and is locked up in the jail. I don't think that the Victorian players who played those games were like, "Going there, you see," and they were taking it as a sober moral lesson. I suspect, like us today, when someone goes to jail in Monopoly, they found it really funny.

Tiffany Hanssen: Yes. We're going to talk more about the instruments of the saloon coming up. We are talking with Tim Clare, who's the author of Across the Board: How Games Make Us Human. Listeners, let us know your game recommendations. 212-433-9692. We'll get to more of them after a quick break. I'm Tiffany Hanssen, in for Alison Stewart.

[music]

This is All Of It here on WNYC. I'm Tiffany Hanssen, in for Alison Stewart. Allison will be back tomorrow. Right now we're talking with Tim Clare, the author of a book called Across the Board: How Games Make Us Human. Tim, I'm going to go right to our callers here. Graham in Milburn, good morning. Or not good morning. Good afternoon, Graham. Taking us back into [crosstalk]

Graham: Good morning, afternoon. How are you?

[laughter]

Tiffany Hanssen: Good, thank you.

Graham: I'm a game designer, and I'm very excited to hear you guys talking about this. In a previous life, I ran a couple of board game cafes. It was the peak enjoyment to just be teaching people all the time. Board games are the only kind of entertainment where you have to pass a reading comprehension test before you're allowed to have fun. The games that are of most interest to me are storytelling games and role-playing games. Is that anything that Tim has talked about?

Tiffany Hanssen: Yes, Tim.

Tim Clare: Yes. I am a massive tabletop role-playing nerd, and I cover it extensively in the book. I think all games, to an extent, are a role-playing game. When we play chess, we're pretending that we're leading two armies. When we play poker or something like that, we're pretending that we care about these cards and that the fall of the matter. Every game involves a certain degree of role play. Of course, there's been this huge explosion in the world of things like Dungeons and Dragons and similar tabletop role-playing games, especially with the rise of kind of online streaming services where people can watch these games, for the first time, being played by other people and see how it's done.

Tiffany Hanssen: Tim, let's go again to one of our callers, Jordan in Utah. Hi, Jordan.

Jordan: Hi, how are you?

Tiffany Hanssen: Good.

Jordan: I'm calling to actually let you guys know that since my husband and I are actually big video gamers, but since couch co-op has gone down, we've actually much more embraced our lovely board game collection. Once a week, we have a charcuterie board game night where we have a charcuterie board and we play a board game. We've recently been playing Scythe, which is awesome. I believe it was on Kickstarter, and it's a really good game.

Tiffany Hanssen: You said sights. Is that right, Jordan?

Speaker G: Scythe. S-Y-T-H-E.

Tiffany Hanssen: Oh, Scythe, like the thing you swing around. Okay. Tim, have you heard about Scythe?

Tim Clare: Yeah, Scythe is a really amazing setting. It's what's called dieselpunk. You have these amazing oil painting images of early 20th century, like Russia and Kazakh Steppe, but with gigantic robots in the background. The name Scythe is a deliberate play on words because a scythe can be a weapon, but it can also be a tool of agriculture. The idea is you can play the game building up your farms and factories, or you can play the game conquering and making war.

Tiffany Hanssen: Let's talk with Joe in Toms River, New Jersey. Hi, Joe.

Joe: Hi. How's it going?

Tiffany Hanssen: Good.

Joe: I am a fan of modern board games, but more specifically, cooperative board games. Games like Pandemic, Spirit Island, Forbidden Island, games that you can work together to achieve a common goal. I think that's better than beating people to evolve sometimes.

Tiffany Hanssen: Thanks for the recommendation. Tim, let's talk about cooperative games. What's top of your list for a cooperative game?

Tim Clare: I'm so glad you asked. There's a game called Dorfromantik, which is like you're working together to make a little puzzle that turns into a beautiful German rural landscape. You work together to build rivers, build forests, put together towns. It's very chilled out, very relaxing, and it's just like working as a team. It's genuinely challenging, as well, for anyone thinking that sounds dull, because essentially, you're working as a team against the game, to try and get the highest score. It's very lovely, and it's something that I've really enjoyed playing with friends.

Tiffany Hanssen: Nicole in Pelham. Nicole, you have a recommendation?

Nicole: Hi. Well, I have a recommendation, and I also have, I guess it's part recommendation, part question. When I was a kid, we played this game called Mille Bornes. I think it's M-I-L-L-E born. It was a card game, but it was a theme of cars and travel or something. It's very old. My mom still has it. It was a great game. I have never seen it since. I wonder if he could tell me the origin of it, if he's ever heard of it, and if it's still around.

Tim Clare: Tim.

Tim: I've never heard of that game before in my life. Do you say it's called Meal born?

Nicole: It's like M I L L E. I think it's a French spelling.

Tiffany Hanssen: Like Mille, like thousand, like Mille.

Nicole: Yes, and you had to travel. You had to travel, and you used cards to put obstacles for your opponent and all sorts of things. I mean, I'm 53. I'm remembering it from when I was a kid, so it's a long time.

Tim Clare: It sounds awesome. My recommendation to you is there's a great repository online called BoardGameGeek, which is a meticulously maintained archive of almost every game that's ever existed. There's just a team of nerds working-- I don't use that pejoratively by the way, I consider myself a nerd, but working like medieval monks to catalog and preserve every game that's ever existed. If there is anything on the internet that can tell you about it, I would go to BoardGameGeek.

Tiffany Hanssen: Sounds like one of the things the internet is actually good for.

Tim Clare: Absolutely.

Tiffany Hanssen: Let's talk, Tim. Let's talk with Elfie in Brooklyn. Hi, Elfie.

Elfie: Hi. How are you, guys?

Tiffany: Doing great. I'm good. We play Wizard up at our cottage on Keuka Lake. My whole family convenes there in the summertime, and everyone that comes there has to play it.

Tiffany Hanssen: All right, Tim?

Elfie: I am absolutely terrible at it, and my brother calls me the wiznot, but I still love it.

Tiffany Hanssen: Well, I love that for you, Elfie. Tim, two questions, I guess. One is if you've heard of it, and two, the point is not really to be good at it, is it?

Tim Clare: Well, Wizard, I believe, if it's the same game that I know, it's a trick-taking card game. If you've ever played Whist or Bridge or any games like that. Bridge, by the way, has the distinction of being the most hated card game according to Americans.

Tiffany Hanssen: I'm not a fan of Bridge.

Tim Clare: Wizard is simpler, definitely.

Tiffany Hanssen: Oh, okay.

Tim Clare: Is the point to win? I think the point is to try to win. I think that the game is most exciting when everybody is playing to give the other players a good game. To give that excitement. Do I remember after I've played a game, whether I won or not? Not often. Do I remember whether I had a good time? Absolutely. Of course, that the ultimate thing is to play a game where everybody has a terrific time.

Tiffany Hanssen: The name of the book is Across the Board: How Games Make Us Human. It is by Tim Clare, who we've been talking to this hour. Thanks so much for your time, Tim. We appreciate it, and happy gaming.

Tim Clare: Thank you so much.