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