Twenty-nine classics · one table
Board games, card games and puzzles from across the world — play against the computer or pass the device to a friend. No sign-up, nothing to install — or download any game as a single file and play offline.
The game everything else on this table is measured against. Six computer levels, from a beginner who will hand you a piece to a master that will not — and a coach beside the board naming the principle your position is actually asking for: take the centre, get the knights out before the bishops, castle, find your worst piece a better square, push the passed pawn.
Chinese chess. Cannons that jump, a river that divides, and generals confined to their palace.
A minute to learn, a lifetime to master. Outflank to flip — the board can turn in a single move.
Elephant beats lion, lion beats tiger — but the tiny rat topples the elephant. Leap rivers, dodge traps, and march an animal into your opponent's den.
Deploy forty pieces in secret. Bluff, scout, and hunt down the enemy flag before they find yours.
Hop, chain, and race your marbles across the star. Fill seats with friends or computer rivals.
Jump, capture, and crown your men into kings. Play American rules or Russian rules with flying kings.
Hide five ships on your ocean grid, then call your shots. Red peg for a hit, white for a miss — sink the fleet first.
Five thousand years of dice and daring. Race fifteen men home, hit blots, and turn the doubling cube at the right moment.
The exercise-book classic from Malaysian and Indonesian classrooms. Take turns inking dots on graph paper, then close a ring around your opponent's dots to capture them.
Scoop up a house of marbles and sow them round the carved boat. Land in an occupied house and keep going — relay laps, free turns and sudden captures decide who fills their storehouse first.
Played for over 2,500 years and still unsolved. Place black and white stones to surround territory, capture groups with no liberties left, and outcount your opponent on a 9×9, 13×13 or 19×19 board.
Drop red and yellow discs into the upright grid and be first to line up four — across, down or diagonally. Set traps, block threats, and never fill the space under your opponent's winning square.
Black and white take turns on a Go board, and the first to line up five wins. Block every open three, force your opponent with fours, and win with a double threat that can't be stopped.
A capture game from Java, played on a board with looping corners. Pieces step one point at a time, but to capture they race along a circuit and swing round at least one loop to strike from across the board.
Roll a six to bring your tokens out, race them round the board and send rivals back to their yard. The family favourite for up to four — friends, computers or both.
The oldest playable board game, dug up in a royal tomb in Mesopotamia. Throw four pyramid dice, race seven pieces round the board, land on rosettes to roll again and knock rivals off the shared middle lane.
Thirteen cards each, and one question every turn: can you beat what's on the table? Singles, pairs and poker hands go down in turn, the two of spades tops the lot, and the first player to empty their hand wins the round.
The greatest of the card games. Bid with your partner to name a contract, then play the thirteen tricks out — with a computer partner and opponents, or a friend online. Full auction with a bidding box, duplicate or rubber scoring, and every bid explained.
The trick you don’t want to win. Pass three cards, duck under the hearts, slip the Queen of Spades to somebody else — or take all twenty-six and shoot the moon.
Every number tells you how many mines touch that square. Flag them, clear the rest — and never guess: each field is laid out so it can be reasoned right through. Three sizes, three levels of danger, or a field of your own.
Japanese chess, and the reason it never simplifies: every piece you capture changes sides and comes back in your hand, dropped wherever you like. Castle your king behind three generals, then break through. Handicaps from a lance to eight pieces.
Older than chess and carved into cathedral benches all over Europe. Place nine men, line three up to make a mill and take one of theirs, then slide along the lines until they are down to two. Six and Twelve Men's Morris too.
Tip the board and let a steel ball roll. On a phone you tilt the phone itself; on a computer the arrow keys do it. Twelve mazes, each in colours of its own, with dark pits that send you back to the start and a clock that never stops.
The margin-of-the-exercise-book classic. Join two dots with a line; close the fourth side of a square and it is yours, and you go again. Boards from 2×2 to 5×5, and a computer that knows the double-cross.
Ten cards each, one drawn and one thrown away every turn. Line them up into sets and runs, knock when what's left adds up to ten or less, and take the difference — or lay the whole hand down for gin.
The one everybody knows — seven piles, four aces to find, and the stock to turn over. A solver deals only games that can be won, so no evening is wasted on a hand that never had a chance, and the hint knows the way through. Or race a friend on the very same deal.
One to nine in every row, every column and every box. Four levels from Gentle to Fiendish, each puzzle made fresh with exactly one answer and never a guess in it — pencil marks, mistake checking, and a hint that tells you which rule finds the next square rather than just filling it in.
A fresh quick crossword every time, put together on your own machine from a book of a few thousand words, each with a clue written for it. Three sizes, a check when you doubt yourself and a letter when you are stuck — and the grid is a proper one, the same upside down.
Illustrated guides to every game here — the complete rules, the real history, and strategy from your first game to advanced play.