A Gamut of Games

A Gamut of Games, written by Sid Sackson and first published in 1969, contains rules for a large number of pencil-and-paper, card, and board games; many of the games in the book had never before been published. It is considered by many to be an essential text for anyone into abstract strategy 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 and Property (which later became the popular Acquire); Richard Abbott expanded his game Crossings, published here, into the more-refined title Epaminondas. Many of the games covered in the book were creations of Sid Sackson himself, who was a prolific game designer. The sections of the book and the games covered therein are as follows:

• In Search of Big and Little Game\n**Mate, a card game by G. Capellen\n**Blue and Gray, a board game by Henry Busch and Arthur Jaeger\n**Le Truc, a revived French card game\n**Plank, a serious revamp of the concepts in Tic-Tac-Toe\n**Hekaton, a card game originally published along with "Yankee Notion Cards" from the 19th century\n*Game Inventors Are People Too\n**Lines of Action, a board game by Claude Soucie\n**Cups, a mancala variant by Arthur and Wald Amberstone\n**Crossings, a board game by Robert Abbot; later turned into Epaminondas by Abbot\n**Lap, a complex progeny of Battleships by Lech Pijanowsky\n**Three Musketeers, 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 software product.\n**Paks, a card game by Phil Laurence\n**Skedoodle, a pencil-and-paper game by Father Daniel\n**Knight Chase, a board game by Alex Randolph (inventor of games like TwixT)\n**Origins of World War I, a historical pencil-and-paper game by James Dunnigan which teaches players history\n*Those Protean Pieces of Pasteboard - All of the games in this section use a standard pack of cards.\n**All My Diamonds, an auctioning game by Sid Sackson\n**Osmosis, by Sid Sackson\n**Patterns, by Sid Sackson\n**Suit Yourself, by Sid Sackson\n**Bowling Solitaire, a one-player game by Sid Sackson\n**Card Baseball, by Sid Sackson\n**Slam, a two-handed takeoff of Bridge by Sid Sackson\n**Poke, a two-handed version of Poker by Sid Sackson\n**Color Gin, a two-handed modification of Hollywood Gin by Sid Sackson\n*New Battles on an Old Battlefield - All of the games in this section use a checkerboard.\n**Focus, by Sid Sackson; this game was later sold commercially\n**Network, by Sid Sackson\n**Take It Away, by Sid Sackson\n*Grab a Pencil - All of the games in this section are meant to be played with pencil and paper.\n**Hold That Line, by Sid Sackson; an attempt to move "boredom" games away from Tic-Tac-Toe\n**Cutting Corners, by Sid Sackson; another attempt to move gamers away from\n**Paper Boxing, by Sid Sackson\n**Last Word, a paper-based Scrabble-esque game by Sid Sackson\n**Patterns II, an inductive-reasoning game by Sid Sackson; see Eleusis for another game in this small genre\n**Property, the forerunner of Acquire, by Sid Sackson\n*A Miscellany of Games\n**Solitaire Dice, by Sid Sackson\n**Domino Bead Game, by Sid Sackson\n**Haggle, a deliciously confusing party game by Sid Sackson\n**The No Game, a classic and simple party game\n**Change Change, a simple solitaire utilizing coins by Sid Sackson

A second edition of the book was published in 1982; Dover Publications released an unabridged reprint, with an additional preface by Sackson, in 1992.

Reference

Sackson, Sid. A Gamut of Games. ISBN 0-486-27347-4