''A Gamut of Games'' is an innovative book of games written by

Sid Sackson Sid Sackson (February 4, 1920 in Chicago – November 6, 2002) was an American board game designer and collector, best known as the creator of the business game ''Acquire''. Career Sackson's most popular creation is probably the business game ''Ac ...

and first published in 1969. It contains rules for a large number of paper and pencil,

card Card or The Card may refer to: * Various types of plastic cards: **By type ***Magnetic stripe card *** Chip card *** Digital card **By function ***Payment card ****Credit card **** Debit card ****EC-card ****Identity card ****European Health Insur ...

, and board

game A game is a structured form of play (activity), play, usually undertaken for enjoyment, entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator s ...

s. Many of the games in the book had never before been published. It is considered by many hobbyist gamers to be an essential text for anyone interested in

abstract strategy Abstract strategy games admit a number of definitions which distinguish these from strategy games in general, mostly involving no or minimal narrative theme, outcomes determined only by player choice (with no randomness), and perfect information ...

games, and a number of the rules were later expanded into full-fledged published board games. Some of the games which were later sold separately include

Focus Focus, or its plural form foci may refer to: Arts * Focus or Focus Festival, former name of the Adelaide Fringe arts festival in South Australia Film *''Focus'', a 1962 TV film starring James Whitmore * ''Focus'' (2001 film), a 2001 film based ...

Property Property is a system of rights that gives people legal control of valuable things, and also refers to the valuable things themselves. Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property may have the right to consume, alter, share, r ...

and Origins of World War I; Robert Abbott expanded his game Crossings, published here, into the more-refined title

Epaminondas Epaminondas (; grc-gre, Ἐπαμεινώνδας; 419/411–362 BC) was a Greek general of Thebes and statesman of the 4th century BC who transformed the Ancient Greek city-state, leading it out of Spartan subjugation into a pre-eminent posit ...

. Many of the games covered in the book were creations of Sid Sackson himself, who was a prolific game designer.

Book Sections

The sections of the book and the games covered therein are as follows:

In Search of Big and Little Games

*''

Blue and Gray ''Blue and Gray'' is the thirteenth studio album by the American country rock band Poco, released in 1981. The album is a theme-based record, similar to ''Desperado (Eagles album), Desperado'' by The Eagles, only the theme on this record is the Am ...

'', a board game by Henry Busch and Arthur Jaeger *'' Hekaton'', a card game originally published along with "Yankee Notion Cards" from the 19th century *'' Le Truc'', a revived French card game *''

Mate Mate may refer to: Science * Mate, one of a pair of animals involved in: ** Mate choice, intersexual selection ** Mating * Multi-antimicrobial extrusion protein, or MATE, an efflux transporter family of proteins Person or title * Friendship ...

'', a card game by G. Capellen *''

Plank Plank may refer to: *Plank (wood), flat, elongated, and rectangular timber with parallel faces *Plank (exercise), an isometric exercise for the abdominal muscles * Martins Creek (Kentucky), the location of Plank post office * ''The Plank'' (1967 fi ...

'', a serious revamp of the concepts in Tic-Tac-Toe *Zetema, a Victorian card game similar to

Bezique Bezique () or Bésigue () is a 19th-century French melding and trick-taking card game for two players that came to Britain and is still played today. The game is derived from Piquet,''Transactions of the Philological Society'', Philological Soc ...

Game Inventors Are People Too

*'' Crossings'', a board game by Robert Abbott; later turned into

*''

Cups CUPS (formerly an acronym for Common UNIX Printing System) is a modular printing system for Unix-like computer operating systems which allows a computer to act as a print server. A computer running CUPS is a host that can accept print jobs ...

'', a mancala variant by Arthur and Wald Amberstone *'' Knight Chase'', a board game by Alex Randolph (inventor of games like

TwixT TwixT is a two-player strategy board game, an early entrant in the 1960s 3M bookshelf game series. It became one of the most popular and enduring games in the series. It is a connection game where players alternate turns placing pegs and ...

) *''

Lap A lap is a surface (usually horizontal) created between the knee and hips of a biped when it is in a seated or lying down position. The lap of a parent or loved one is seen as a physically and psychologically comfortable place for a child to ...

'', a complex progeny of

Battleships A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of large caliber guns. It dominated naval warfare in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The term ''battleship'' came into use in the late 1880s to describe a type o ...

Lech Pijanowski Lech Andrzej Pijanowski (; 26 July 1928 – 6 January 1974) was a Polish film critic, broadcaster, director, screenwriter and populiser of games. Personal life Pijanowski was born on 26 July 1928 in Warsaw and died 6 January 1974 aged 45 in Warsaw ...

*''

Lines of Action Lines of Action (or LOA) is an abstract strategy board game for two players invented by Claude Soucie. The objective is to connect all of one's pieces into a single group. The game was recommended by the Spiel des Jahres in 1988. Rules Goal The ...

'', a board game by Claude Soucie *''

Origins of World War I The identification of the causes of World War I remains controversial. World War I began in the Balkans on July 28, 1914, and hostilities ended on November 11, 1918, leaving 17 million dead and 25 million wounded. Moreover, the Russian Civil ...

'', a historical pencil-and-paper game by

Jim Dunnigan James F. Dunnigan (born 8 August 1943) is an author, military-political analyst, Defense and State Department consultant, and wargame designer currently living in New York City. Career Dunnigan was born in Rockland County, New York. After high s ...

which teaches players history *''

Paks Paks is a small town in Tolna county, in the south of Hungary, on the right bank of the Danube River, 100 km south of Budapest. Paks as a former agricultural settlement is now the home of the only Hungarian nuclear power plant, which provi ...

'', a playing card game by Phil Laurence *'' Skedoodle'', a pencil-and-paper game by Father Daniel *''

Three Musketeers 3 is a number, numeral, and glyph. 3, three, or III may also refer to: * AD 3, the third year of the AD era * 3 BC, the third year before the AD era * March, the third month Books * '' Three of Them'' (Russian: ', literally, "three"), a 1901 ...

'', a board game by Haar Hoolim; notably, this game and the character in it was once used as the mascot for the

Zillions of Games Zillions of GamesSearch-based Procedural Content Generation: A Taxonomy and Survey', Julian Togelius, Georgios N. Yannakakis, Kenneth O. Stanley, Cameron Browne, '' IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games'' 3(3):172 - 18 ...

software product

Those Protean Pieces of Pasteboard

''All of the games in this section use a standard pack of cards.'' *''

All My Diamonds All or ALL may refer to: Language * All, an indefinite pronoun in English * All, one of the English determiners * Allar language (ISO 639-3 code) * Allative case (abbreviated ALL) Music * All (band), an American punk rock band * ''All'' (All al ...

'', an auctioning game by Sid Sackson *''

Bowling Solitaire ''A Gamut of Games'' is an innovative book of games written by Sid Sackson and first published in 1969. It contains rules for a large number of paper and pencil game, paper and pencil, card game, card, and board games, board games. Many of the game ...

'', a one-player game by Sid Sackson that simulates

ten-pin bowling Ten-pin bowling is a type of bowling in which a bowler rolls a bowling ball down a wood or synthetic lane toward ten pins positioned evenly in four rows in an equilateral triangle. The objective is to knock down all ten pins on the first roll ...

. *'' Card Baseball'', by Sid Sackson *'' Color Gin'', a two-handed modification of Hollywood Gin by Sid Sackson *''

Osmosis Osmosis (, ) is the spontaneous net movement or diffusion of solvent molecules through a selectively-permeable membrane from a region of high water potential (region of lower solute concentration) to a region of low water potential (region of ...

'', by Sid Sackson *''

Patterns A pattern is a regularity in the world, in human-made design, or in abstract ideas. As such, the elements of a pattern repeat in a predictable manner. A geometric pattern is a kind of pattern formed of geometric shapes and typically repeated li ...

'', by Sid Sackson *''

Poke Poke may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * Poke (''Ender's Game''), a fictional character * Poke (game), a two-player card game * Poke, a fictional bar owner in the television series '' Treme'' * The Poke, a British satirical website Fo ...

'', a two-player multi-genre card game that combines strong elements of Poker with trick-taking games *''

Slam Slam, SLAM or SLAMS may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional elements * S.L.A.M. (Strategic Long-Range Artillery Machine), a fictional weapon in the ''G.I. Joe'' universe * SLAMS (Space-Land-Air Missile Shield), a fictional anti-ball ...

'', a two-handed takeoff of

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 ...

by Sid Sackson *'' Suit Yourself'', by Sid Sackson

New Battles on an Old Battlefield

''All of the games in this section use a checkerboard.'' *''

'', by Sid Sackson; this game was later sold commercially *''

Network Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematics ...

'', by Sid Sackson *'' Take It Away'', by Sid Sackson

Grab a Pencil

''All of the games in this section are meant to be played with pencil and paper.'' *'' Cutting Corners'', by Sid Sackson; another attempt at a "boredom" game *''

Hold That Line ''Hold That Line'' is a 1952 comedy film starring the Bowery Boys. The film was released on March 23, 1952 by Monogram Pictures and is the 25th film in the series. Plot The members of the local university's trust make a wager that anyone can s ...

'', by Sid Sackson; an attempt to move "boredom" games away from

Tic-Tac-Toe Tic-tac-toe (American English), noughts and crosses (Commonwealth English), or Xs and Os (Canadian or Irish English) is a paper-and-pencil game for two players who take turns marking the spaces in a three-by-three grid with ''X'' or ''O''. ...

*''

Last Word ''Last Word'' is an obituary BBC radio series broadcast weekly on Radio 4. Each week the lives of several famous people who have recently died are summarised with narration, and interviews with people who knew them. The programme is normally p ...

'', a paper-based

Scrabble ''Scrabble'' is a word game in which two to four players score points by placing tiles, each bearing a single letter, onto a game board divided into a 15×15 grid of squares. The tiles must form words that, in crossword fashion, read left t ...

-esque game by Sid Sackson *'' Paper Boxing'', by Sid Sackson *'' Patterns II'', an inductive-reasoning game by Sid Sackson; see

Eleusis Elefsina ( el, Ελευσίνα ''Elefsina''), or Eleusis (; Ancient Greek: ''Eleusis'') is a suburban city and Communities and Municipalities of Greece, municipality in the West Attica regional unit of Greece. It is situated about northwest ...

for another game in this small genre *''

'', later republished as New York, by Sid Sackson

A Miscellany of Games

*'' Change Change'', a simple solitaire utilizing coins by Sid Sackson *'' Domino Bead Game'', by Sid Sackson *'' Haggle'', a deliciously confusing party game by Sid Sackson *
Solitaire Dice
', by Sid Sackson; published commercially under the names Choice, Einstein, and Can't Stop Express *'' The No Game'', a classic and simple party game A second edition of the book was published in 1982;

Dover Publications Dover Publications, also known as Dover Books, is an American book publisher founded in 1941 by Hayward and Blanche Cirker. It primarily reissues books that are out of print from their original publishers. These are often, but not always, books ...

released an unabridged reprint, with an additional preface by Sackson, in 1992.

Reviews

*'' Games'' *''Games and Puzzles''https://archive.org/details/sim_games-and-puzzles_1973-05_13/page/22/mode/2up

References

*Sackson, Sid. ''A Gamut of Games''.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gamut Of Games, A 1969 books Books about board games