In a Pandemic, Board Games Can Take You Places
In a Pandemic, Board Games Can Take You Places
In a Pandemic, Board Games Can Take You Places
By Susanne Fowler
November 25, 2020
Summary
Take a short journey to a museum gift shop to send them themed board games or jigsaw puzzles that attempt to recreate the frisson of travel.
Canceled a trip to the Louvre during lockdown? The Paris museum sells a version of the classic Monopoly board game in which players compete not to buy up real estate and amass hotels but rather to outbid opponents for masterpieces like the "Mona Lisa" or the stele inscribed with the Code of Hammurabi.
The most recent edition of the game has swapped the traditional player tokens for metal miniatures of artworks in the Louvre, including an Egyptian cat goddess, the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace.
Beware the Brilliant Busker square: It involves a 100 Monopoly "Dollar" penalty, paid to the Bank.The transport museum also offers a limited-edition Scrabble set that comes in a durable wooden box with wooden game tiles whose letters are printed in the highly readable Johnston Sans font created more than a century ago by Edward Johnston for the London Underground system.
The original sans serif font has had a couple of updates over the years and the version used today by Transport for London is called Johnston 100.As with Monopoly and Scrabble, there are many versions of Clue, a game created in England during World War II.One such version comes from Bletchley Park, a mansion, estate and museum in Milton Keynes, about a 30-minute train ride northwest of London, that was the home of the Enigma code breakers credited with helping to end the war.
Around a game board depicting locations like the mansion's ballroom and the staff canteen with its secret passage to Hut #3.Bletchley's version of Clue is subtitled "Who killed the Bletchley Park spy?" While there's no Colonel Mustard in the library with a lead pipe, there is the dismembered body of John Blackcross, an intelligence officer and suspected Communist spy, and the race is on to find his killer.
Its version of the Royal Game of Ur replicates a game that was played by Mesopotamian queens and kings in the ancient city of Ur, within modern-day Iraq.
The game includes a board, dice, playing pieces, and a reproduction of an artifact dating to around 2500 B.C. that was excavated from a royal tomb in the 1920s under the direction of Leonard Woolley, a well-known British archaeologist.
Board games may not work for people on their own or living without enough players, but jigsaws don't present those difficulties - possibly part of the reason they have been enjoying a resurgence in the lockdown era.
Now Ravensburger puzzles are found in many museum shops and game stores and offer plenty of tabletop travel ideas with puzzles depicting locales like Uluru, or Ayers Rock, in Australia; the Greek island of Santorini; Iguazu Falls between Brazil and Argentina; the Vatican's Sistine Chapel; even the universe.
Reference
Fowler, S. (2020, November 25). In a Pandemic, Board Games Can Take You Places. Retrieved November 28, 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/25/fashion/gifts-board-games-monopoly-clue.html