Not far from my house there is a dive bar, with scary red lighting that hosts bingo on Monday nights.  It’s really not all that exciting; you win a brown paper lunch bag filled with random odd items.  I was lucky enough to win the first round Monday night and my winnings included some Cheez-It snacks, baby food, a bunny sucker and Chicklets.  By the end of the night our table had a skull candle, a bible card game and three colors of “fun dough.”  But before the bingo festivities began, we played quite a few rounds of the classic, but somehow not super well known, game Shut The Box.

Surprising to me, no one at my table had ever played Shut The Box before but by the end of the night everyone was addicted.  There are lots of variations of this game but traditionally it’s a box with tiles numbered 1-9 that you can flip forward and backward, which allows players to “check them off” as they use them.  The game is simple; you roll two standard dice and total them up.  Then you flip forward any available tile combination that equals the number you rolled.  So if you roll an 11 and it’s your first turn, you can flip forward a 9 and a 2 or a 1, 4 and 6.  It’s totally up to you, but once you flip forward a number you can’t use it again.  Your turn ends when you roll and you don’t have the right combination of tiles to equal your dice total.   You get your score for the round by totaling up the unused tiles.

There are a couple ways to score.  We played that whoever had the lowest number each round got one point.  You can then play until someone reaches a certain number of wins or until you run out of time.  Keeping a running tally of each player’s actual score is another way to play, just make sure you have a pencil and paper handy.  Play a certain number of rounds or until one player reaches a set number, and then the player with the lowest score is the winner.

Other versions of the game include boxes with tiles numbered 1-10 or 1-12.  There are also 2-player versions and 4-player versions.  Blue Orange games also has a game called Double Shutter that has two levels of tiles numbered 1-9 so you can flip two 5s if you roll a 10.  I also own a dice game named The Game of Chips by Jax that is essentially Shut The Box, with no box.  It uses poker chips numbered 1-10 and you flip them over as you use them.  This is a great low-priced travel alternative; it comes in a nice fabric pouch and can be purchased for ~$5.

Fun bit of trivia for you too, there was a TV show back in the mid-1970s called High Roller that was based on the game Shut The Box.  It was hosted by Alex Trebek and players answered “toss up” questions to gain control of the dice and the option of rolling or passing to their opponent.  It was on for a couple years and then again in the late 80s with Wink Martindale, but the new show wasn’t as successful.

Shut The Box stats:
$15 – $65+ at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Toys R Us,  some mass market retailers, specialty retailers
Shown at top: Melissa & Doug Shut The Box retails for ~$19-$25
Article preview: Front Porch Classics Shut the Box Signature Edition retails for ~$45-$53
1 or more players
Any amount of time
Ages 6 and up

Double Shutter stats:
~$19 at Amazon.com, Toys ‘R Us, Target, specialty retailers
1 or more players
Any amount of time
Ages 8 and up (it’s a bit more complex)

The Game of Chips stats:
~$5 Amazon.com, online game retailers, some specialty stores
1 or more players
Any amount of time, ~15 if you play by their rules
Ages 6 and up

In EXCAPE each player has 2 special EXCAPE dice and a matching X-shaped mover.  While the goal of the game, getting your mover from start to finish, is pretty standard, how you get your piece to move is the fun part.  The EXCAPE dice are unique because each die has a 1, 2, 3 and X but then one die has 4 and 7 and the other 5 and 6.  On each turn, players try to get the highest number when the two dice are combined.  So if you roll a 4 and a 3 you’ve rolled a “43.”  Easy, right?  Once you’ve rolled you can either re-roll for a higher number OR you place your dice on the board (which I’ll get to in a second).  76 is the highest number possible and the Xs count as zeros on your first roll only.  If you roll and X after your first roll, you have to move your mover back one space and you’re turn is over so you don’t get to place your dice on the board.

Placing your dice on the board is how you get your mover to advance towards “finish.”  In the center of the board, there are spaces numbered 0-5 and if you’re dice stay on one of those spaces until your next turn, you get to advance your mover that number.  On your turn, you can place your dice on any one of those spaces provided your dice total isn’t less than a dice pair on a lower numbered space.  So if there is a 65 on space 2, you can’t place your 43 above it on space 3.  If, however, there is a 32 on space 4 and you place your 43 on the space below them, you get to remove those dice from the board because they are lower than you.  See how keeping your dice on the board can be somewhat of a challenge?  The dice placing requires a bit of strategy because you want to remove other players so you may choose a lower number, but you also need to advance your mover so you may what to leave your opponents on the board and go for the 5!

There are also a couple of fun catch up factors in EXCAPE like if you roll doubles (1, 2 or 3) you get to move that number of spaces forward automatically.  If you roll double Xs on your first roll, you wipe everyone from the centerboard and can place your dice wherever you choose.  If you roll two Xs after that, your mover goes back two spaces.  Ouch!

This is a great add to any dice-addict’s collection.  It’s not going to be easy to find, because it’s not published here in the US, but I was able to find my copy at Amazon.com.  (Don’t worry, the directions are in English.)  You can also look for it under the name “EXXTRA” but the box art isn’t quite as nice.

*Board Games With Scott is a great site because it has videos explaining how to play the games, but he focuses mostly on “German style” games (which typically take longer than the games reviewed at The Game Aisle).  Unfortunately Scott is currently on a hiatus and isn’t reviewing new games.

EXCAPE Stats:
~$25 at Amazon.com, Fun Again Games and possibly specialty retailers
3-6 Players (for 3 players you may want to omit center space 5)
10-30 Minutes (dependent on number of players)
Ages 8 and up

Like I said, backgammon is old.  Some estimate that it’s has been around close to 5000 years – at least in some form.  It has evolved over time, but by the early in the fourteenth century it looked much as it does today.  Check out this illustration from the Codex Manesse (at left, c. 1304).  The codex is a small illuminated manuscript of love poetry that was made in Zurich for the wealthy Manesse family and that looks identical to the backgammon sets of today!

Between the twelfth century and the sixteenth century views on backgammon changed a bit – in fact, the church even tried to ban the game a couple times.   (How many games can say that?!)  The last attempt was in the early sixteenth century right about the time Hieronymus Bosch completed his work, “The Garden of Earthy Delights. ” (at right, c. 1503)  If youlook at the right panel of the triptych, it depicts hell (whereas the left panel is heaven and the center is Earth – click to enlarge).   This right panel is brimming with people who have succumbed to temptations – like backgammon — and are facing eternal damnation for it.  You can see the backgammon board in the lower left corner of the panel being held up by some crazy looking creature. (below at right, click to enlarge)  It is similarly used in “The Triumph of Death” By Pieter Bruegel the Elder (below left, click to enlarge).   The board is in the lower right corner of the painting and it looks like a jester is stepping over it to hide under a table from the legions of dead that have invaded.

So it hasn’t always been an easy road for backgammon, but yet the game survived.  Guess that says something aboutits playability!

In much more modern times it came back into favor when Hugh Hefner started holding backgammon parties at the Playboy Mansion in the late 1960s and 70s.  (It’s rumored that Lucille Ball was a huge fan!) And actually there is a book called Playboy’s Book of Backgammon with the forward written by Hugh Hefner and backgammon was featured in the magazine from time to time.

But really, you don’t need a book to learn to play backgammon.  The game is simple, each player has fifteen “checkers” (also called “tokens,” “chips,” “pawns” and a ton of other things…) and the goal is to get all of their pieces back into their side of the board and then to remove them from the board.  To start, pieces are setup laid out in a specific form on the board and each player will be moving their checkers in a u-shape in the opposite direction of each other.  Using 2 dice, players roll and may move 1 or 2 checkers the numbers shown on the dice.  Rolling doubles gets you twice the amount shown on the dice!  You can’t land on a space occupied by 2 or more of your opponents checkers – but if there’s only one, you can land on them and move them to the “bar” which essentially means they are starting over from the section of the board furthest from their finish.   Once you successfully move all of your pieces into the area of the board closest to your finish, you can start to remove your pieces from the board.  This is called “bearing off” and it’s like the final race to the finish!

Games can be quick and fast – so unlike chess, there’s not a lot of mulling over your move.  There are also ways to bet and use a “doubling cube” to increase the dimensions of the game, but it’s not necessary to enjoy the game.  You also don’t need a fancy set to play.  If you have a set of checkers – or two colors of poker chips, you can draw your own board on a sheet of paper.  Sounds really low budget, but it’s how it was played during medieval times.  Players would have dice (made of bone) and stones and they’d draw a board in the dirt.  Guess you could call that the first “travel” version of the game!

Backgammon Stats:
From dirt cheap to very expensive
2 players
~5-15 minutes
Ages 8 and up

A while back I wrote an article about taking games with you when you travel (see here) and Nate Scheidler, Organizer of Chicago Boardgames Meetup Group, said that he packs a game called Pickomino.  Well, at the time I’d never played Pickomino and although I’d heard of it, I hadn’t heard anything about it.  This is really the reason I started The Game Aisle; I know how hard it is to decide which game to purchase when all you’ve got to go on is the box art.  So when a game junkie like Nate says that he takes Pickomino with him on a trip where he may be stuck playing it over and over, I took that as a pretty good sign.  Now I just had to get my hands on a copy!

Pickomino is a dice and tile game published by Rio Grande Games here in the US which has a knack for finding great German-style family strategy games and publishing them in English for the game-loving American public.  They work closely with the German publishers to ensure the essence of the game is carefully translated into English and have produce such games as Puerto Rico, Carcassonne and Lost Cities.  Haven’t heard of these?  You’ll probably only find them in specialty game stores or on the game shelf of your true “gamer” friends.  Personally, I’m not a huge fan of city building, area control or abstract strategy games and my attention usually wanes after about 20 minutes of playing a game so I’m not a big purchaser of Rio Grande Games (although I have a great deal of respect for what they do).  And from people who like these kinds of games – I hear that Puerto Rico and Lost Cities are AMAZING.  Just FYI.

Back to Pickomino, I don’t feel that it is a typical Rio Grande game EXCEPT its inventor is the prolific German game inventor Reiner Knizia (he also invented Easy Come, Easy Go).  And he’s done a great job of adding in a little strategy and some interesting twists to a familiar-feeling dice game.  The goal of Pickomino is to collect as many roast worms as possible (apparently they are all the rage amongst the chickens).  You do this by rolling eight dice and collecting the highest possible point total — without busting.  The eight dice are numbered 1-5 plus one red worm, which is worth five points.  You bust when you’ve used up all the dice and haven’t rolled at least one worm or you don’t roll any new numbers on your turn.  If you don’t bust on your turn, you collect the tile that is the same number, or the next available one down, from the total you’ve rolled.  (If you don’t roll a high enough number for an available tile, this is also considered a bust.)  The tile will have 1-4 worms on it and the winner is whoever has collected the most worms on their tiles at the end of the game!  There’s also a little bit of stealing and you have to return worms if you bust so there’s a bit going on but it’s easy to grasp and explain to others once you’ve sifted through the directions – which took us two reads, but was well worth the effort.

Ironically, I like this game but I’m terrible at it.  I have the worst rolling luck – yet with it’s great catch-up factor I was able to come back from a 12 worms deficit to win last night!  A little stellar rolling by me and some poor rolling by my opponent and I was back in the game!

The Game Aisle game testers found Pickomino fun with 2 players as well as 4-5 (we didn’t try more than that).   There is a bit of adding so this is a great game to play with kids so they learn quick addition without the assistance of their iPhone’s calculator function!

Pickomino Stats:
~$20-$25 at Amazon.com and specialty game retailers
2 – 7 Players
15-30 Minutes
Ages 8 and up

Today’s pick is Can’t Stop by Sid Sackson.  Currently this dice games tops tall the others because I’m just so addicted to it and it’s an oldie but a goodie.  It was originally published in 1980 by Parker Brothers but was reprinted by Face 2 Face games back in 2007 and that’s when I got my copy.

The game is so easy to learn and play.  You’re trying to move your pieces from the bottom of the board to the top in columns numbered 2-12.  There are only 3 spaces in the 2 and 12 columns and 13 in the 7 column and since 7s are the easiest to roll using a pair of standard dice, it makes sense. The board is shaped like a giant stop sign which is a little ugly, but the shape easily lends itself to the bell curve that defines the odds in rolling dice.  So on a turn, you get 4 dice to roll and once rolled, you choose how to pair up the dice so it’s most advantageous to you.  Then you use 3 “runners” to move your pieces up the columns towards the top of the board.  And since there are only 3 runners you can only attempt 3 columns per turn.  The “Can’t Stop” part of the game comes in when you are holding the dice saying “I can roll just one more time, just once more, I can get a 2,7 or 9…then I’ll stop.”  You end up saying the same thing turn after turn until you gain some willpower to actually stop and move your pieces to where your runners are or you bust and don’t roll a 2,7,9 and the runners are removed from the board and without any advancement of your pieces, you pass the four dice to the next player and say “why did I keep going?!”

As the game progresses people who are really lucky or have the “slow and steady” mentality start to close out columns by reaching the top first.  Once a player closes out a pre-determined number of columns they win.  (The number of columns depends on the number of players.)

The thing about this game that I love isn’t that I have to fight my dice addiction to have a chance of winning – no, it’s that there is some luck mixed with a little mental game too.  The question becomes, how far in the lead do I have to be in a column before I should start working in other columns?  It kind of depends on how if your opponents are lucky, but also how gutsy they are.  It really makes me kind of antsy for my turn – and if I lose I want to play again…right away…because I just can’t stop playing.

So I guess Sid Sackson knew what he was doing when he created this game.  Addictive + fun is always a good combination in my mind.  Somewhere I read a quote from Sid that said something like “games should be easy to learn, give lots of strategic possibilities, include interaction amongst players and be played within 90 minutes.”  He had me until the last part.  I hate long games (which is why you won’t find a review for Monopoly on this site).  I think games should be played in 30 minutes or less and then if I have time to play it again, great.  Besides, it keeps people who want…er need… to win interested in the game even if they are getting killed because they know they have a chance of starting over in a couple minutes.  Ha!

So if you can find it get, yourself a copy of Can’t Stop.  It may be a bit of a hunt to find – try little mom & pop online retailers and eBay, though why someone would want to give up their copy of this classic is beyond me.  Maybe they don’t know what kind of fun they’re missing.

Can’t Stop stats:
~$25 and up, if you can find it!
2-4 players
~15-30 minutes
Ages 7 and up (but I think the box says 10)

Another dice game that I just love is Cinq-O, from Mattel.  One of the best things about it is that it comes in a handy carrying case that easily clips to your backpack for on-the-go play.  Surprise, surprise, this can also be found in my car, neatly tucked within the Yahtzee box.  This game is a slightly similar to the style of Yahtzee because all players are taking turns with very little player interaction (versus Easy Come, Easy Go which has lots of stealing and retaliation).  In Cinq-O you’re rolling five dice trying to get the lowest or highest possible dice total which earns you points and the first one to 100 wins.  There is also a multiplier die which keeps things interesting and provides a great catch-up factor.  Overall, it’s simple to learn, easy to take with you and it definitely satisfies my dice craving in a pinch.

Now here’s where the product becomes a bit more interesting, it was invented by Reyn Guyer who also invented some products you may have heard of: Twister and Nerf.  Crazy right?  Well initially Cinq-O was going to be a Milton Bradley product but it fell out of the line at the last minute because they didn’t want to market two dice games.  But good for Reyn and for us dice lovers, a couple years later Mattel decided it was a good fit for it’s line.

And then there is the bad news…I don’t think this game is on the market anymore.  I didn’t see it at my last trip to Target and it’s not online at Amazon.com either.  So then, where to find it…eBay?

Cinq-O stats:

• $10 and (up if you can snag a copy)
• 2 or more players
• ~10 minutes
• Ages 7 and up

There’s just something addictive about throwing dice.  It’s the mixture of calculated odds and luck that makes you want to pick up a handful and get playing.  The best thing is there are lots of games beyond Yahtzee that are based around a handful – or cupful – of dice.  A good one is Easy Come, Easy Go.  It combines throwing four dice with collecting and stealing fantastic prize cards.  The game includes nine cards that can be earned (or stolen) by rolling a particular combination like “exactly 13” or “3 or less.”  And although rolling a “3 or less” sounds impossible when you’re playing with four dice, it’s not since the dice are numbered from 0-5 instead of the traditional 1-6.   What makes this game so great is that unlike Yahtzee where everyone is competing for a top score, you’re interacting with other players by stealing their cards so there’s quite a bit of competition and revenge.  It’s really a fun game to play with 3-4 other players.

Easy Come, Easy Go is the brainchild of the famous Reiner Knizia.  Haven’t heard of him?  Not many Americans outside of the game industry have.  He’s a very prolific game inventor who has licensed over 500 games so far.  So why then haven’t you heard of him?  Well, most of his titles are games that can only be found in Europe, but a couple have made their way to the United States via the Out of the Box game company which manufacturers Easy Come, Easy Go and also Reiner’s Fish Eat Fish and Tutankhamen.  Impressive, right?  I really want to know where he finds the time to invent so many games! (He probably doesn’t spend a chunk of time reviewing them – ha!)

Easy Come, Easy Go stats:

• ~$15, Amazon.com and online retailers
• 2-4 players (I think it’s best with 3-4)
• ~25-30 minutes (This maybe the biggest downfall of this game – it sometimes takes a little while for someone to win.)
• Ages 8 and up

Thankfully, it’s not just me; I think my entire family has a weakness for dice games. Every one of us has at least one well-loved copy of Yahtzee and if you asked, I’d say we probably all have a copy tucked away in our cars “in case of an emergency.” I’m not kidding. Two winters ago, I was riding through the middle of nowhere Wisconsin in a blizzard with my father heading to my aunt’s 50th birthday party when we slid off the road. As we waited for the tow truck to arrive, I climbed into the back of his van to fish out Yahtzee. We played about ten games before the tow truck arrived. Unfortunately, I lost almost all of them, which seems totally unfair since he was the one who drove us off the road. Guess luck had to roll his way at some point!

Yahtzee is really a well-loved classic and if you haven’t played in a while, it’s worth another look. There were tons of similar poker-dice style games that are probably quite a bit older than Yahtzee, like Yacht and Cheerio. But Yahtzee showed up on store shelves in the mid-1950s and beat out other similar dice games like Kismet to become probably the best-known dice game of all time. And since the mid-1970s it’s been a strong dice-game brand with more than ten line line extensions, although classic Yahtzee is still my favorite.

As a note to parents, Yahtzee is a great way to teach your kids math (adding & multiplying) and probability. Take the time to let them add up their dice, and explain why they’d have better odds rolling for one thing over the other. Unfortunately they may start beating you, but it’s still a heck of a lot more fun than insisting they do math workbooks.

Yahtzee stats:

• $10 and up at all major retailers
• 2 or more players
• ~5-30 minutes (Depends on how quick the players are)
• Ages 8 and up