 Site updated 11 September 2008 (See UPDATES below) Plaudits? Complaints? 
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David Parlett (games etc)"Wer spielt, hat schon gewonnen"
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| I specialise in indoor games (board games, card games, word games, etc) as a freelance inventor, writer and consultant. Sometimes I even get round to playing them. | My books include Teach Yourself Card Games, the Oxford History of Card Games, the Oxford History of Board Games, and the Penguin Book of Card Games (right). |
REVISED AND UPDATED EDITION HAS JUST BEEN PUBLISHED !
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| I give talks and run workshops on the history, theory and appreciation of games, am a consultant on games terminology to the Oxford English Dictionary and card game contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica, and advise on the staging of games in period films and TV productions. | |||
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This site details all my published books, games and film/TV credits and includes some games to play on-line. | ||
| It also incorporates pages devoted to other of my interests. All can be reached from the site map (click globe, left). | |||
| Updates | Blog | |
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11 September: Added a very long article entitled The Arts of Contest, which originated as the introductory chapter to an exhibition of the same name mounted by the Asia Society in New York, October 2004. It considers the place of games in culture and history and offers some speculation on the origin of games. (10 September): Added my paper on Chance and Skill in Games. (3 August): Made some technical changes to tidy up HTML. (25 July): Added Piquet to my Historic Card Games pages. (21 July): Added plug for new edition of the Penguin Book of Card Games (top right).
(25 June): Minor additions to the Arnold Bax front page, including a link to the E. J. Moeran website. (24 March): Added a new section containing an exhibition of my sketches and drawings. (14 January): Revised Hare & Tortoise pages in preparation for a new edition. |
Stupid question of the week: Or should that be "of the weak"? Anyway, the question in question appeared in the "Notes & Queries" section of The Guardian Newspaper on 9 September and reads "Why do we enjoy re-reading books and films we have seen before, even though we know the plot ending?" Brilliant! Here are two counter-questions: (1) Why do we enjoy re-listening to a symphony even though we know how that ends? (2) Why do we enjoy re-reading books and films even though we know how they begin? Colour me baffled! Bon mot: In preparing a talk on humour for a local Quaker group I came across this striking observation: "All coherent thinking is equivalent to playing a game according to a set of rules". (Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation, 1964). Here are some pictures (opens in new window) taken by Jorge Nuno Silva at the recent Board Games Studies in Lisbon, and here are a few of mine. In preparing a paper called "Random thoughts on chance and skill" for the 2008 Board Games Studies Colloquium in Lisbon I re-read Bob Abbott's article "Under the Strategy Tree" published years ago in Games & Puzzles magazine, and was struck by the following observation: "It makes more sense to say that art is a game form than that games are an art form". I think Alex Randolph must have liked that. Johan Huizinga certainly would. Peer Sylvester has translated most of my original card games and word games into German and these are to be published by Bambus Spieleverlag later this year under the title "Entensuppe, und 53 andere Spiele von David Parlett" (i.e. Duck Soup, and 53 other games by..."). Unsolicited testimonial: Recently discovered a website devoted to
single-pack Patience games, in which the author says of a game called
Curds and Whey: "This excellent game is a modern one, invented by patience
scholar David Parlett; it is based on some very unusual principles, and in my
opinion is one of the best patience games ever invented, old or modern.
(Parlett is the author of the Penguin Book of Patience, which is probably the
most comprehensive book on the subject in existence.)". Thanks, Michael! Balloon = top of page
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29 June: Added several links to the
