Edward Falkener (1814–1896)

Yet another entry in Dover’s program to reprint every book ever written. The original dates from 1892, and covers senet and a couple of other Egyptian games, the Roman and Greek game of “robbers”, chess in several variations (including Indian, Burmese, Siamese and Chinese versions), checkers (“draughts” here), backgammon, parchesi, go, shogi, and magic squares. I was most interested in author Edward Falkener’s take on senet; this is probably the world’s oldest board game, with show more examples from Predynastic time (oh, around 3000 BCE or so) – but no description of how it was played. Falkener’s is one of several proposed rule sets, all of which produce plausible and entertaining games of unknown authenticity; I pity all the folks finding themselves in Amduat challenged to play senet against Anubis without knowing the rules. (To be fair ancient evidence suggests there were several games that could be played on a senet board so it’s possible more than one set of rules is correct).


Falkener’s take on various other games is respectful and interesting enough, but badly handicapped by his choice of idiosyncratic notation systems – even for chess, which had an establish notation at the time he was writing – and an almost complete lack of illustrations. Admittedly it was somewhat harder to print illustrations in 1892; still Falkener does include several illustrations of ornamental chess boards but few of actual positions. This is especially lacking in his discussion of backgammon – it’s entirely text, with no illustration of the board at all. Falkener’s confusing discussion of go indicates that although he understood it was a sophisticated and highly challenging game, he probably seldom or never played himself.


About the last third of the book is devoted to magic squares; this must have been a hobby of Falkener’s as they can only be considered a board game by stretching the definition a lot, and there are more illustrations of magic squares than all other games combined. Falkener provides methods for construction magic squares of arbitrary side (while noting you need at least three rows and columns for a magic square and it’s a lot easier to make squares with an odd number of rows than with an even number).


Mostly, then, of historical interest. Some of the chess variations seem intriguing enough that I may look around and see if there are some sets available. show less