A friend of ours held up a worn timber board.
"Is it any use?"
This is all part of slowly clearing out the Senior Cat's beloved shed.
"It's a Go board," I told the friend.
He looked at me blankly and I explained, "It's a Japanese game of strategy. You place black or white pieces on the board at the points where the lines dissect and attempt to capture the other pieces."
He thought about this for a moment and then said, "A bit like chess?"
"Yes, but much harder."
He grimaced and asked if I wanted to keep the board. It needs mending. It was given to me in that condition. I have the "stones" inside - and yes, I do know where they are.
I took the board from him and put it in the "to keep" pile but I have since discovered that you can buy just the board. It would be easier to do that. I might introduce the game to the Senior Cat's great-grandchildren next time I see them. Three of them know the basic chess moves.
I don't pretend I can play chess. I know the basic moves too - and that is about it. I do think it is, like "bridge", probably a useful social skill. I know nothing about bridge. Card games do not appeal to me. I know one person who plays at competition level. C... is a very intelligent person and undoubtedly finds the skill involved to her liking.
I put some mini-size board games in the activity packs for the kittens. They will play with them at their grandparents' home. My SIL is very good at encouraging that sort of thing - in a way that makes them think doing it is just as much fun as playing on a computer screen.
We had a "games compendium" when my brother and I were kittens. It had Draughts (Checkers), Ludo, Chinese Checkers, and Snakes and Ladders in it. Our paternal grandfather marked the draught pieces so that we could also use them chess. Unfortunately we then moved much too far away for him to teach us. The Senior Cat does not know how to play chess and our mother thought it was a "waste of time". I think this was because she had been forced to spend hours playing card games with her mother. Anything like that or related to it was of no interest to our mother.
But the Go board was a gift to me. It is an ancient, second hand one with stones that would be just as old if not older. Such things are an alternative to the more solitary activity of reading - which all my great-nieces and nephew love. Playing games like that requires some social interaction. That's never a bad thing.
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2 comments:
I worked in a research lab once, and there was a continuous running Go game on the centre bench -I never learned to play, but I could see it was fascinating, and kept those super brains ticking. When you are doing research it is good to have a diversion, to allow the other half of your brain to work on its own.
I only know the very, very basic principles. I had a severely disabled friend who was a brilliant mathematician and he showed me. His wife gave me the stones and the board when he died - but they were old when they were given to him. Good sets are expensive!
But I can imagine some very creative work might have been done in that lab!
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