Have you ever wondered where board games came from? Or card games or puzzles? How long have they been around? Well, I have been wondering. The power of Google, right?

This past weekend I played cards Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. I love to play cards! My favorite games are: For the Hell of It, Euchre, Rook, and Five Crowns. My grandmother, Prudie Mudd, taught my brothers and me to play For the Hell of It when we were very young. She used to pay us a nickel each if we would sit down at the table and play with her. That was a big deal then, as we could walk down to the local grocery store and buy five pieces of penny candy! I remember it didn’t take long before we wanted to play cards, and no exchange of money was needed to bribe us to take a seat near her. Later we found out how board games could become addictive, playing the old games Monopoly and Life out on the front porch with our friends in the neighborhood. We used to play those games for hours on a hot summer day, then grab up our bicycles to ride for a short time. We would ride back home to cool off and start up playing a board game again.

I have played Euchre for twenty years. In this game four people are needed and partners of two play against each other. Lots of states claim to be the founder of Euchre, and I have friends in Canada that claim their country is the true founder. I remember riding my bicycle in Canada and every now and then I would ride by a small building with a sign out in front which read, Euchre Club. A few times a year I play with three other gals, Lori, Debbie, and Sherry, my Indiana Girls. They all live in that beautiful state that borders Kentucky, Indiana. When I googled the origin of Euchre I found out this game was brought to America by German immigrants in the early 1800’s. And that there are actually six states here in the United States that are considered to be in the “Euchre belt”. Those states include Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, MIchigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

The card game Rook was created by the Parker Brothers in 1906. According to Google this card deck was created to offer people another design for cards as some people considered a regular deck of cards inappropriate because of its use for gambling or fortune telling. (Another word for fortune telling is cartomancy. To be honest I had to look the meaning of this word up, which is absolutely marvelous because now I have a new word for the board game Scrabble. I want you to know like most people if you like a game you are very good at it, and I REALLY like Scrabble. So to a darling Man out there, I am giving you fair warning for when we contest again over a board with wooden squares, imprinted with letters of the alphabet.) :O)

The board game Clue was created by a British musician who played the piano. But the Parker brothers actually released the game in the United States back in 1949. In the original game a gun room and cellar were choices to choose from for the room the murder took place in, along with other choices for weapons, including a bomb that could be detonated at any time, a syringe, and a fireplace poker. Google explains modifications have been made to the game over the years. And this past fall, two of the Foxy Hags, Chickie and Robin, traveled with me to visit Salem, Massachusetts. We walked around the city one night on a ghost tour, and our guide told us that a mansion on our tour was the home that the actual design of the Clue rooms were based on, kitchen, library, ball room, etc. Back in the 1800’s the gentleman that owned the home was actually murdered in his own bed, stabbed to death. And Salem, Massachusetts is where the Parker brothers founded their board game company.

As for puzzles, well who doesn’t really like the challenge a puzzle gives to our minds. I wondered how many puzzles are out there, but as puzzles are created everyday there is no way to count. They go on and on, and there are all types of puzzles. The above jigsaw puzzle is one posted on FaceBook by one of my beautiful Girls, Ashlee. She and her husband Kurtis are currently working on this colorful puzzle. They are two of my treasures in one of my many families. And isn’t this puzzle just magical with it’s four legged friends in their home inside the Tall Being, and another home for people in the background? Look at all the details; the tiny tracks in the snow, the snowflakes, the owl, the stars in the sky! I have friends that find this hobby of putting puzzles together very relaxing and quite habit forming. It’s all in finding the game or activity that fits you and gathers friends together to make a long, cold winter warm hearted and filled with fun!

c   Love, Joan