December 9-10, 2023: Crowd-sourced Board Game Studying

[On December1, 1948, a Connecticut inventor named James Brunot copyrighted a newboard game called Scrabble. Like many great games Scrabblehas endured and grown ever since, so for the 75thanniversary of that pivotal moment I’ve AmericanStudied it and a handful ofother board games. Leading up to this crowd-sourced post on those and othergreat games—add your thoughts in comments!]

LarryRosenwald follows up Monday’s post on Scrabble, writing, “Not part of what you'll cover, but it's always puzzled methat I'm so bad at Scrabble - I mean, I'm good with words in lots of ways, butwinning at Scrabble requires (and cultivates) very specific skills, which Idon't have.”

Betsy Cazden adds, “I had no ideaScrabble was a brand new thing during my childhood! We played it a lot.”

AshleeRhodes follows up Tuesday’s post on Monopoly, highlighting thispodcast episode on the game’s origins.

OtherBoardGameStudying takes:

Katherine N. Yngvehighlights, “Settlers of Catan,maybe from a post-colonial perspective?” On a different note, she adds, “Ithink I learned from playing the board game1776 that defeating the British is hard. How does theUSA event exist?????”

Paul T.  Miller goes with Masterpiece,“a game that ostensibly helps one learn aboutart but is really an exercise in unbridled capitalism with profiles of uberwealthy and social dilettantes acquiring paintings the rest of everyonecouldn't imagine even traveling to see in a museum. the game has million dollarbills!”

And Dr. Captain Abraham Tweets that “card andboard games that are all about feelings and interpersonal communication captureAmerica in the early 1970s perfectly.”

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other games you’d highlight?