Joli Quentin Kansil (born Joel Dennis Gaines January 27, 1943 – March 27, 2023), was a
games inventor of 36 card games, word games, board games, and dice games, and the author of five books. His most famous game is
Bridgette, a two-player bridge game. He was also a teacher in
Hawaii
Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...
, Thailand, Vietnam, and Singapore.
Early years
Kansil was born in
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
and lived much of his childhood at the
Jersey Shore
The Jersey Shore (known by locals simply as the Shore) is the coastal region of the U.S. state of New Jersey. Geographically, the term encompasses about of oceanfront bordering the Atlantic Ocean, from Perth Amboy in the north to Cape May Po ...
, graduating
Asbury Park High School in 1960 and
Rutgers University
Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...
in 1964. His first job was as personal assistant to
Albert Hodges Morehead
Albert Hodges Morehead, Jr. (August 7, 1909 – October 5, 1966) was a writer for ''The New York Times'', a bridge player, a lexicographer, and an author and editor of reference works.
Early years
Morehead was born in Flintstone, Taylor County, ...
, a writer,
lexicographer, and the first
bridge
A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or rail) without blocking the way underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually somethi ...
editor of
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
. In 1965 Kansil moved to Mexico City, where . After Mexico, he moved to Honolulu, Hawaii and worked as a full-time English teacher at
Punahou School
Punahou School (known as Oahu College until 1934) is a private, co-educational, college preparatory school in Honolulu, Hawaii. More than 3,700 students attend the school from kindergarten through twelfth grade, 12th grade. Protestant missionar ...
. During these years, he began his many travels to Central America, the Caribbean, South Pacific, South East Asia, and other places including Mongolia, Wallis and Futuna Islands, Antarctica and Greenland. .
Games career
In 1969, Kansil founded Gamut of Games, Inc. (later Xanadu Leisure, Ltd.) to produce and distribute the games that he and his associate,
Philip Orbanes
Philip E. Orbanes is an American board game designer, author, founding partner and former president of Winning Moves Games in Danvers, Massachusetts. Orbanes is a graduate of the Case Institute of Technology (now Case Western Reserve University). ...
, designed; the games included Bridgette, My Word, Marrakesh, Itinerary, Krakatoa, Knock-on-Word, Montage and others. Through Morehead, Kansil met many famous bridge players including Waldemar von Zedtwitz, a former business partner of Morehead, who played over 30,000 deals of Bridgette and who contributed the funds needed to start Gamut of Games, Inc.
Kansil was honored as Game Inventor of the Year in 1992 at the annual Game Fair in Essen, Germany, and earlier, in 1986, Bridgette was added to
GAMES Magazine
''GAMES World of Puzzles'' is a puzzle magazine formed from the merger of Games and World of Puzzles in October 2014.
The entire magazine interior is now newsprint (as opposed to the part-glossy/part-newsprint format of the original ''Games'') an ...
's Hall of Fame.
In 1973, Kansil co-founded the Hawaii Backgammon Club (now called the Aloha State Backgammon Club), and he promoted this game by organizing many tournaments. He won the Hawaii State Backgammon Championships twice (1973, 2000), and he placed in the top 16 bracket in Macau (1977), Monte Carlo (1979), St. Moritz, Switzerland (1986) and Tokyo, Japan (also 1986). Another famous bridge player,
Oswald Jacoby
Oswald "Ozzie", "Jake" Jacoby (December 8, 1902 – June 27, 1984) was an American contract bridge player and author, considered one of the greatest bridge players of all time and a key innovator in the game, having helped popularize widely used bi ...
, called Joli Quentin Kansil 'the best combination game inventor/game player in the world'.
[Speech to Hawaii Backgammon Club, December 6, 1980]
Author
Kansil is the author of ''The Backgammon Quiz Book'' (Playboy Press, 1979), and he is the editor of the ''Official Rules of Card Games'' (U. S. Playing Card Co., 1999). His MA thesis on John Quincy Adams was published in 1983. In 2012 ''Conversations with Opa'' was published in New York by Prometheus Books. 'The book covers a wide range of topics, notably the origin of the Universe and life on Earth, the conflict between science and religion, the 10 greatest human accomplishments, contentment, and forecasts for the future.
In the 1970s, Kansil wrote many crossword puzzles for The New York Times, and he was the backgammon editor for ''
Games Magazine
''GAMES World of Puzzles'' is a puzzle magazine formed from the merger of Games and World of Puzzles in October 2014.
The entire magazine interior is now newsprint (as opposed to the part-glossy/part-newsprint format of the original ''Games'') an ...
'' (1978 to 1983). A member of the Explorers Club, he was the journalist on the Zancudo-Cocha expedition in Ecuador in 1987, and he made a rare visit to Pitcairn Island in the South Seas that same year. He wrote articles about both trips for the Explorers Club Journal magazine.
Later years
Kansil had three children and was residing in
Makati
Makati ( ), officially the City of Makati ( fil, Lungsod ng Makati), is a 1st class highly urbanized city in the National Capital Region of the Philippines.
Makati is the financial center of the Philippines; it has the highest concentration ...
, a prominent city near
Manila
Manila ( , ; fil, Maynila, ), officially the City of Manila ( fil, Lungsod ng Maynila, ), is the capital of the Philippines, and its second-most populous city. It is highly urbanized and, as of 2019, was the world's most densely populate ...
, in the Philippines, where he was a writer and frequent tournament bridge player. Besides his work in the field of games, he was active as a member of the board of directors of ASH (Action on Smoking and Health) for 17 years, and he designed a modernized spelling system and a reform calendar.
In April 2023 Kansil's daughter Melanie announced that her father had passed away on March 27.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kansil, Joli Quentin
1943 births
2023 deaths
Asbury Park High School alumni
People from Monmouth County, New Jersey