Xadrez
Western chess, international chess
Seis peças, um rei e quinze séculos de gente tentando resolver o jogo. As regras levam dez minutos; o resto leva a vida toda.
Blinky Games
Cada jogo tem quatro páginas: um guia completo, as regras, a história que as produziu e a estratégia que vence, com diagramas para o que as palavras sozinhas não explicam.
Western chess, international chess
Seis peças, um rei e quinze séculos de gente tentando resolver o jogo. As regras levam dez minutos; o resto leva a vida toda.
象棋 Xiàngqí
Cannons that capture by jumping, a river across the middle, and generals who may never leave their palace. Chinese chess is sharper than the game it shares an ancestor with.
将棋 Shōgi
Captured pieces change sides and come back. That one rule makes shogi the sharpest member of the chess family, with almost no draws and no safe simplification.
鬥獸棋 Dòu Shòu Qí
O elefante vence o leão e o leão vence o tigre — mas o rato derruba o elefante. Oito animais com patente, dois rios e três armadilhas diante de cada toca.
圍棋 Wéiqí · 囲碁 Igo · 바둑 Baduk
O jogo de tabuleiro mais antigo ainda jogado com as regras originais e, provavelmente, o mais profundo. Cinco regras, sem exceções, e mais posições possíveis do que átomos no universo.
五目並べ Gomoku · 連珠 Renju
Five stones in a line on a Go board. Simple enough for a child, and so favourable to the first player that two separate rule systems exist to fix it.
Roundabouts
Two rules and one extraordinary idea: pieces capture by racing around the board's corner loops — a mechanism found in no other traditional board game.
congkak · congklak · dakon
Scoop the seeds, sow them one by one, and chain your free turns. The Malay world's branch of mancala, and a game of pure arithmetic.
Kepung Titik
Squared paper, two colours, and one idea: ring your rival's dots and the territory is yours. Known as Точки in Russia and Kropki in Poland.
Draughts, English draughts
Movimentos na diagonal, saltos obrigatórios e damas coroadas. Simples o bastante para uma criança e profundo o bastante para que provar que o jogo é empatado levasse dezoito anos de computação.
Tables, tavli, nard
A 5,000-year-old race where every roll is luck and every choice is skill — and the doubling cube turns the whole thing into a question of nerve.
Othello
A minute to learn, a lifetime to master. Outflank to flip — and discover that having more discs in the middlegame usually means you are losing.
Mills, Merels, Mühle, Nine Man Morris
Place nine men, line three in a row, and take an enemy man each time you do. A game carved into Roman stone, Viking ships and cathedral cloisters.
Twenty Squares, the Game of Twenty Squares
Buried in a Mesopotamian royal tomb 4,500 years ago, dug up with no instructions, and brought back to life by a cuneiform tablet. It is also a genuinely good game.
Parcheesi, Parchís, Mensch ärgere Dich nicht, Pachisi
Tire um seis para sair, corra quatro peões à volta da cruz e mande os rivais de volta ao início. O jogo de corrida mais jogado do mundo.
Sternhalma
Hop your marbles across a six-pointed star. Neither Chinese nor checkers — a German star board for an American game, renamed in New York in 1928.
La Pipopipette, Squares, Paddocks
A children's doodle invented by a French mathematician in 1889 — with a rigorous theory of chains, loops and sacrifices that most players never suspect exists.
Contract Bridge
An auction, a contract and thirteen tricks to prove it. The deepest card game there is, and the bidding is a language you can spend a lifetime learning.
Black Maria, Black Lady
Every heart costs a point and the queen of spades costs thirteen. A trick-taking game where winning tricks is the last thing you want — unless you take all of them.
Gin
Ten cards, two piles and one decision every hand: cash a small win now, or hold out for gin and risk the undercut.
鋤大弟 · 大老二
Thirteen cards each, the 2 above the ace, and poker hands played as single units. Shed everything before the other three do.
Klondike, Patience
The game that taught the world to drag and drop — and a card puzzle where the deal matters more than anything, but careful play still decides most winnable hands.
L'Attaque
Forty pieces, all face down. A French battle game patented by a woman in 1908, and one of the last classic games artificial intelligence managed to crack.
Sea Battle, Salvo
Hide a fleet, call your shots, and learn how much better a good search is than a lucky one — about fifty shots a game.
Four in a Row, Captain's Mistress
Solte uma ficha, faça quatro em linha. Resolvido duas vezes no mesmo mês de 1988 — e quem começa vence, mas só a partir do centro.
数独 Sūdoku
Uma regra dita de três maneiras, nada de contas e nunca é preciso chutar. Inventado em 1979 por um arquiteto americano que ninguém creditou.
Crossword puzzle, cryptic crossword
A grid, some numbers, and clues that cross. Invented to fill space in a newspaper in 1913 and still the most played word puzzle in the world.
Mine Sweeper
Every number is a constraint. Flags are optional, deduction is not — and the puzzle is formally as hard as any problem in NP.
Labyrinth, marble maze, ball maze
Tip the board and let gravity do the moving. The hard part is not finding the route — it is stopping.