A Gamut of Games
book by Sid Sackson
A Gamut of Games is an innovative book of games written by Sid Sackson and first published in 1969. It contains rules for a large number of paper and pencil, card, and board games. Many of the games in the book had never before been published. It is considered by many hobbyist gamers to be an essential text for anyone interested in abstract strategy games, and a number of the rules were later expanded into full-fledged published board games.
Some of the games which were later sold separately include Focus, Property and Origins of World War I; Robert Abbott expanded his game Crossings, published here, into the more-refined title Epaminondas. Many of the games covered in the book were creations of Sid Sackson himself, who was a prolific game designer.
Book sections
The sections of the book and the games covered therein are as follows:
In Search of Big and Little Games
Blue and Gray, a board game by Henry Busch and Arthur Jaeger
Hekaton, a card game originally published along with "Yankee Notion Cards" from the 19th century
Le Truc, a revived French card game
Mate, a card game by G. Capellen
Plank, a serious revamp of the concepts in Tic-Tac-Toe
Zetema, a Victorian card game similar to Bezique
Game Inventors Are People Too
Crossings, a board game by Robert Abbott; later turned into Epaminondas
Cups, a mancala variant by Arthur and Wald Amberstone
Knight Chase, a board game by Alex Randolph (inventor of games like TwixT)
Lap, a complex progeny of Battleships by Lech Pijanowski
Lines of Action, a board game by Claude Soucie
Origins of World War I, a historical pencil-and-paper game by Jim Dunnigan which teaches players history
Paks, a playing card game by Phil Laurence
Skedoodle, a pencil-and-paper game by Father Daniel
Three Musketeers, a board game by Haar Hoolim; notably, this game and the character in it was once used as the mascot for the Zillions of Games software product
Those Protean Pieces of Pasteboard
All of the games in this section use a standard pack of cards.
All My Diamonds, an auctioning game by Sid Sackson
Bowling Solitaire, a one-player game by Sid Sackson that simulates ten-pin bowling.
Card Baseball, by Sid Sackson
Color Gin, a two-handed modification of Hollywood Gin by Sid Sackson
Osmosis, by Sid Sackson
Patterns, by Sid Sackson
Poke, a two-player multi-genre card game that combines strong elements of Poker with trick-taking games
Slam, a two-handed takeoff of Bridge by Sid Sackson
Suit Yourself, by Sid Sackson
New Battles on an Old Battlefield
All of the games in this section use a checkerboard.
Focus, by Sid Sackson; this game was later sold commercially
Network, by Sid Sackson
Take It Away, by Sid Sackson
Grab a Pencil
All of the games in this section are meant to be played with pencil and paper.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “A Gamut of Games” is book by Sid Sackson. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Gamut, Games and book, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “book by Sid Sackson” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2904728. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1969.
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This entry incorporates text from “A Gamut of Games” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.