In our common forfeit games, too, mental contest often forms the
basis of the fun. For instance, it is a distinct attack and parry
when a handkerchief is thrown to a player and a word pronounced to
which he must find a rhyme. In English, where the spoken and written
words are so unlike, the spelling of unfamiliar words is turned into
a game; and another idea is to introduce into a story some object or
incident suggesting the name of one of the players, whereupon he must
continue the recital, passing it on to another in the same way. Or a
passage from some great author may be cited and his name guessed, and
many similar devices. Finally, we mention the important group of plays
for which the stimulus is partly intellectual experimentation, but is
primarily attributable to the combative instinct, such as board and
card games, both of which are symbolic of physical contests in which
the players appear as leaders of opposing forces and originators of
strategic operations. A genuine battle ground is afforded by the board,
and the great object is to have the right man in the right place at
the right time. In cards strategy is exhausted in the choice of the
right champion at the right moment, but is rendered much more difficult
by the fact that the former contestants have disappeared from view,
while the reserve is concealed. Thus it results that board games afford
opportunity for the display of skill in arrangement and card games
especially cultivate memory, while both are important promoters of
the logical faculty and of imaginative foresight.[386] An important
distinction between them is that in board games the strength of the
contestants is exactly equal at the start, and the material chances are
identical, while in cards inequality is the rule.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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