Pencil and paper games

A pencil and a sheet of paper can give you hours of fun. And although it's lovely to play at a table out of doors in the sun, these games are excellent for whiling away a wet afternoon; you don't need much space to play in either!

Our first pencil and paper game is one that many of you have probably played at some time or another.

Battleships
This is a game for two people, in which each of you draws up a secret plan of attack. You will both need two sheets of squared paper, as illustrated on the right. Mark off nine squares along the top, leaving the first blank and then numbering the rest from one to eight. Now letter the squares running down, leaving the first one blank and lettering the remainder from a to i. Do this on both your sheets of paper. One of these sheets is for you to keep a record of the shots you fire at your enemy; on the other you are going to mark in the squares where you have deployed your fleet. This consists of the following ships: one battleship (four squares), three cruisers (three squares each), three torpedo boats (two squares each), four submarines (one square each). Also on this sheet of paper you are going to mark in shots fired by the enemy at you. You are free to position your fleet as you please, but you must leave one square free between each ship and its neighbor.

When the four sheets are ruled up and filled in, you are ready to start. The first player to attack names a square, for instance "D3" and draws a cross on his "record of attack" sheet. His opponent must state truthfully where the shot has landed, either by saying "Water" or by saying "Hit - cruiser" (or whatever his damaged ship may be); he also marks in with a cross his opponent's shot, but he marks this on the sheet showing his fleet's positions. Now it is the other player's turn to attack, and so you proceed one turn each until one or other of you has managed to sink all his opponent's ships, thus winning the game. Incidentally, it is not good enough to sink part of a ship; you must knock it all out.

This is a basic formula for Battleships; once you are used to the game you can build in your own variations. You might have fun enlarging the sea and supplementing your fleets with mine-sweepers, aircraft carriers or any other vessels you care to add to your armada.

Line drawing
Another game for two people. On squared paper, mark in sixteen points as illustrated above. The player who starts draws a line between any two adjacent points. The other player must now continue that line to another point — he can draw horizontally, vertically or diagonally. Take turns to continue the line until you come to a position where one of you cannot link up the chain — whoever fails to link up the chain is the loser.

Motor racing
To play this you need a long sheet of squared paper. The first thing to do is to draw in the track, starting at the top of the paper and running down in a series of sharp bends to the finish line at the foot of the paper. Draw the sides of the track parallel to one another and at least as many squares wide as you have competitors.

Any number of you can play; each one needs a different colored pen or crayon to chart their progress in the race. Take it in turns to move. The first and second moves are the same for everyone: on your first move, you advance one square; on your second move, two squares. After this, you can choose whether to advance the same number of squares as your previous turn, or one less (ie braking) or one more (ie accelerating). You cannot stand still on your turn. As well as moving in a straight line, you can go diagonally up or down to go around the corners.

If your bad driving leads you into a collision, or if you fly off the track, you are disqualified. First one over the finishing line gets the winner's flag!

Hangman
One player thinks up a word — the more complicated the better! His opponent now has to guess the word without being "hanged"! He is allowed to know the number of letters in the word, the first letter and the last letter, and if either of these occurs elsewhere in the word. So, if the secret word is OCCUPATION, the guesser would be given this information to work from: O_ _ _ _ _ ON. He now suggests letters of the alphabet at random that might be part of the word. Each correct one is filled in, but for each mistake a new line is drawn on his picture of the gallows. The drawing shows a completed gallows on which the guesser was hanged; if you count the lines that compose the gallows and body, you will find 13 errors! To make the game harder for the guesser, don't give the first or last letter.

Boxing
Only two can play — each boxer has his "ring" which a square is divided into 16 equal sections as in our illustration above, where red lines mark the sections. Each boxer must now fill up his ring, in secret. Start by writing S in one of the four outside corners, then numbering the remaining squares 1 to 15 in any order you like. Once you are both ready for the fray, you should reveal your cards on the table.

The starter draws a pencil line from his corner marked S to any one of the adjacent numbers. Now it is his opponent's turn to work on his own sheet. If he is to win this round, he must draw his line from his corner S to a higher number than his opponent has chosen. And so the game precedes — the winner of each round clocking up a point against his name. You can connect to any adjacent number provided you have not already made that connection previously in the game — it's easy to see from the pencil lines whether you have or not.

The game is over either when one of you has put himself in an inextricable position, or when you have connected up every number to all its neighbors. The winner is the boxer with the most rounds to his credit at the end of an agreed time.

Only two can play this fascinating word game. Both players draw up two sheets into 35 squares, leaving the top left-hand square blank, numbering the squares to the right from 1 to 4, and lettering the squares downwards from a to f, as on our illustration above. Each player fills in the blank squares on one sheet with letters of the alphabet, excluding the letters x and y, and selects a four-letter word, for instance bird, which he keeps secret from the other player.

In turn, each player calls out a letter and a number, for instance B3. Their opponent has to tell them what the ' corresponding letter of the alphabet they have written in that square is unless it is a letter of their secret word in which case they say "Jotto" keeping the letter secret from their opponent.

By filling in the letters as you discover them from your opponent on the blank squared sheet, by a process of elimination you will soon build up an indication of the other's secret word; the first player to make a correct guess is, of course, the winner. Experiment with more squares and longer words.