Games
Discover facts about games. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Games
Why chess cheaters keep visiting the bathroom
Chess players may use bathroom breaks to consult smartphone engines, which can calculate strong moves in seconds.
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Standing alone in a dark closet while your friends leave
In hide-and-seek, a hider can stay undiscovered even after everyone else gets bored and leaves for snacks.
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D-Day code words turned a crossword compiler into a suspect
Before the invasion, sensitive operation names appeared in Daily Telegraph puzzles, prompting intelligence officers to question Leonard Dawe. He later…
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Tag changes the rules the instant someone gets touched
The player doing the chasing becomes the player trying to escape as soon as the role passes on. That tiny rule keeps reorganizing the whole game without a…
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Chess pawns granted immense promotion
A pawn that reaches the opposite end of the board can be promoted—even to a queen.
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Relying on digital dice for better loot
After a grueling boss fight, a random number generator decides whether you get a legendary sword or useless loot. The reward system can feel like a slot…
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Listening to screaming children in lobbies
Multiplayer voice chat can put you on the receiving end of insults from an unsupervised 12-year-old on another continent.
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Creating entirely new game modes
Players sometimes set aside a multiplayer game's intended objectives and organize hide-and-seek matches instead, especially when the usual gameplay gets boring.
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Standard soccer balls are truncated icosahedrons
Its stitched shell has 20 hexagons and 12 pentagons, giving the ball its distinctive shape instead of a perfectly smooth sphere.
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Poker completely relies on massive human deception
Bluffing rewards players for hiding what they know about their hands and misleading opponents—sometimes even close friends.
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How bingo helps keep local halls afloat
Bingo’s steady stream of players can generate revenue that helps keep small-town community centers and local halls financially afloat.
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When England banned bowling for archery practice
King Edward III banned bowling because soldiers played it instead of practicing archery.
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How pinball players shake cabinets without tilting
Players learn how hard they can shove the cabinet before its tilt sensor cuts power to the flippers.
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Entering secret inputs for giant heads
The codes often did nothing else; they were private jokes for developers during long work sessions.
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Shin-kicking competitors pad their pants with straw
In the Cotswold sport of shin-kicking, opponents hold each other by the shoulders and try to bring one another down with kicks to the lower legs. Straw…
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Jump rope originating from skilled rope makers
Artisans leapt over thick hemp strands during weaving to avoid tripping and damaging their work; the motion became a rhythmic activity.
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A taut rope can store a dangerous amount of energy
A rope under heavy tension stretches and stores energy. If it breaks, that energy can send the ends whipping back through the surrounding space. The danger is…
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Flipping cardboard tables over fake real estate
A few paper deeds and plastic hotels can turn pretend property wealth into real resentment between friends.
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Scrabble's letter supply was counted from newspapers
Alfred Butts counted letters in printed text to help decide how often each should appear in his word game and how much it should score. Common letters…
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Olympic croquet reportedly sold just one spectator ticket
The 1900 Paris tournament is remembered for drawing a single paying spectator, an English visitor. Croquet also brought women into the early Olympic program,…
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Why losing can sound like winning
Slot machines can play celebratory sounds when a payout is smaller than the bet, making a net loss feel like a win.
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Mahjong can turn one discarded tile into someone else's victory
A tile that seems useless in your hand may complete another player's set or winning hand. Discarding is therefore a decision about other people's needs as…
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Sudoku puzzles rely entirely on basic visual pattern matching
You can replace the digits with distinct shapes and solve the same puzzle, because the clues depend on patterns rather than arithmetic.
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Shooting high velocity colorful pellets at your friends
Players wear thick padding while firing fast-moving paint-filled spheres at one another, often going home with bright splatters and welts.
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