SNAKES AND LADDERS // You’d think Snakes and Ladders was
made purely for kids’ entertainment, what with its simple premise
of moving across a board and zooming upwards if you land on a
ladder, or downwards if you land on the head of a snake. But this
perennially popular board game, which goes all the way back to
ancient India (board game historians estimate it emerged in the
2nd century CE), was actually intended as an educational tool based
on traditional Jain and Hindu philosophies. Yep, we’re talking karma,
folks. Those snakes and those ladders? They represent the good
and bad paths you can take in life. Good: faith, generosity, reliability,
knowledge. Bad: disobedience, debt, drunkenness, greed. Each was
labelled in little squares on the board – which was once made of
painted cloth – just in case the symbolism was lost. Oh, and those
dice you throw? They represent life’s randomness. Fun fact: there
were originally more snakes than ladders – a reminder to children
that fuck-ups are easier to commit than good deeds – but when
the game made it to Victorian England (where they replaced Indian
virtues and vices with Anglican and Protestant moral principles), they
evened out the numbers so your chance of redemption was equal
to your chance of going to hell. Eventually, the moral and religious
aspects were stripped from the game altogether.
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CHESS // Chess – a game of warfare involving bishops, knights,
castles and pawns – has been around since 600 CE, and is thought
to be based on the Arabic game shatranj. But even that was based
on the Indian game chaturanga, and some people speculate it
goes back to the ancient Egyptians, so who really knows when the
64-square beast got its start. Nobility in the Middle Ages supposedly
dug chess for its practical help with battle strategy, and during the
Age of Enlightenment it was viewed as a means of self-improvement.
The rules have certainly changed over the centuries – and it really
got a kick up the bum in 1450, when folks introduced a queen
piece that could move in any direction. They hoped it would make
chess quicker and more fun, which it did – but the queen was so
mind-blowing that the French changed the game’s name to ‘chess
of the enraged lady’ (because a woman who can move in all
directions is insane? Oh, whatever). Playing chess became the
cool thing to do in coffee houses across Europe in the 1700s, and
one guy, the Hungarian inventor Wolfgang von Kempelen, became
famous with his ‘automatic chess-playing machine’ (it actually
contained a human chess player who moved pieces with magnets).
It took yonks for a computer to be able to beat a human (IBM
fi nally did it with Deep Blue in 1996), but now your phone chess
app can easily beat you....................
MONOPOLY // Monopoly is ironic. The real estate game was
invented in 1903 by left-wing super-brain Elizabeth Magie, who
worked by day as a stenographer (aka someone who transcribes
speech in court), then would go home to work on her board game,
which was supposed to demonstrate how crazy income inequality
had become thanks to land-grabbing monopolists. She called it
‘The Landlord’s Game’ and based it on the economic principles
of Georgism (interestingly, she also created an anti-monopolist
version where everyone was rewarded when wealth was created- but no one gave a shit about that). So, what happened next?
Presumably, Magie sold the game for a tidy profi t. We all have
Monopoly, right? Well, no. A dude by the name of Charles Darrow
got his mitts on it in the 1930s (it was circulating on college
campuses), then sold it to Parker Brothers game manufacturers,
claiming he’d invented it! Then they sold it to the world and Darrow,
that game thief, made millions! Oh, and when a journo asked
him how he came up with it out of thin air, he said, “It’s a freak –
entirely unexpected and illogical.” Parker Brothers did eventually
shell out $500 to Magie, but all the Monopoly royalties went to
Darrow. In the last census she participated in, Magie listed her
occupation as ‘maker of games’ and her income as ‘0’.
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