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
  • 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 Pijanowsky
  • 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