GAMES & PUZZLES

You don’t need me to tell you that games are everywhere these days, and are now big business virtually throughout the world. But you may need someone of my age to tell you it was not always thus. When I started inventing and thinking about games as a 15-year old schoolboy there was nothing to feed my appetite in the news-stands or libraries. (True, Murray’s History of Board Games had only recently been published, but I didn’t discover that till late in life). The only games I was aware of as current amongst my contemporaries were Monopoly, Cluedo, Scrabble, and a few others no longer extant. It was another 15 years or more before, as a technical journalist for a PR company in Blackheath, I went to lunch and spotted in a local newsagent a magazine called Games & Puzzles. That I’d never heard of it was due to the simple fact that it proved to be the very first issue.

The opening editorial was a revelation: “The appearance of Games & Puzzles”, it said, “marks the beginning of a novel and exciting publishing venture. There has never been a magazine devoted to the games people play, the ways in which, they play them, the reasons why they play them, the people who develop them, and even the people who spoil them… It’s important too. Important because games themselves are important as so many people, from teachers and psychiatrists to youth club leaders and amateur crossword fanatics, are coming to realise… Above all games are fun. And Games & Puzzles aims above all to provide fun. It is going to be comprehensive, it is going to be authoritative, at times it is even going to be quite learned, but hopefully it will always remain enjoyable from front-cover to back page.”