Timeless classics

The games on this page existed before browsers did. Most of them existed before electricity. They are here because rules that survived a hundred years of people trying to break them tend to be good rules.

Why the old ones lasted

A game that spread by word of mouth had to be explainable in a minute and interesting for an hour. That filter was brutal and it left behind a small set of nearly perfect designs. Chess and backgammon are still argued about. A deck of cards supports a few hundred games and nobody has run out. The crossword is barely a century old and already feels permanent.

Nothing on this page needed a marketing budget. They are here because people kept teaching them to each other.

What is on this page

Board games covers the ones with a physical original: chess, checkers, backgammon, ludo, dominoes and their relatives.

Card games is solitaire and its many cousins, plus the games that need a second player and give you a computer instead.

Crossword is the newspaper puzzle, transplanted, with the advantage that the grid tells you when you are wrong.

Scrabble and the games built in its image reward a large vocabulary and punish a lazy one.

Neighbouring shelves

If it is specifically the words you are after rather than the history, word nerd is the better page. If you want the same unhurried pace with fewer rules to learn, try just relax. And train your brain collects everything here that makes you think hardest.