Saturday, December 9, 2023

December 9-10, 2023: Crowd-sourced Board Game Studying

[On December 1, 1948, a Connecticut inventor named James Brunot copyrighted a new board game called Scrabble. Like many great games Scrabble has endured and grown ever since, so for the 75th anniversary of that pivotal moment I’ve AmericanStudied it and a handful of other board games. Leading up to this crowd-sourced post on those and other great games—add your thoughts in comments!]

Larry Rosenwald follows up Monday’s post on Scrabble, writing, “Not part of what you'll cover, but it's always puzzled me that I'm so bad at Scrabble - I mean, I'm good with words in lots of ways, but winning at Scrabble requires (and cultivates) very specific skills, which I don't have.”

Betsy Cazden adds, “I had no idea Scrabble was a brand new thing during my childhood! We played it a lot.”

Ashlee Rhodes follows up Tuesday’s post on Monopoly, highlighting this podcast episode on the game’s origins.

Other BoardGameStudying takes:

Katherine N. Yngve highlights, “Settlers of Catan, maybe from a post-colonial perspective?” On a different note, she adds, “I think I learned from playing the board game 1776 that defeating the British is hard. How does the USA event exist?????”

Paul T.  Miller goes with Masterpiece, “a game that ostensibly helps one learn about art but is really an exercise in unbridled capitalism with profiles of uber wealthy and social dilettantes acquiring paintings the rest of everyone couldn't imagine even traveling to see in a museum. the game has million dollar bills!”

And Dr. Captain Abraham Tweets that “card and board games that are all about feelings and interpersonal communication capture America in the early 1970s perfectly.”

Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other games you’d highlight?

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