The Infinite Monkey Cage - Science of Board Games - Jess Fostekew, Marcus du Sautoy and Dave Neale

Episode Date: July 17, 2024

Brian Cox and Robin Ince, go past jail, climb a ladder and build a civilisation as they explore the science behind our favourite board games. Joining them in the library (or was it the conservatory?) is mathematician, Marcus du Sautoy who discusses the global history of games as well as his tips for winning at Monopoly. Joining him is games designer and play researcher Dave Neale who explains how key games are to developing a theory of mind alongside Jessica Fostekew, comedian and gaming enthusiast who admits to becoming a more ruthless gamer as time goes by.Producer: Melanie Brown Exec Producer: Alexandra Feachem BBC Studios Audio Production

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. It's summer in Britain and the crimes are just getting started. I found another body. Stream the best of British crime drama only on Britbox. Don't miss new seasons of acclaimed series like Blue Lights, which Time Out calls Belfast's answer to the wire. Back up, back up, Ivan!

And The Responder, starring Martin Freeman in his international Emmy award-winning role. I can feel it, I'm gonna crack. Stream the best of British crime drama on BritBox. You know, this is why I want to be a detective. Watch with a free trial today. Hello, I'm Greg Jenner. I'm the host of You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy show that takes history seriously. And we are back for series 8, starting with a live episode recorded at

the Hay Literary Festival all about the history of the medieval printed book in England. Our comedian there is Robin Ince. And then we'll be moving on to the life of Mary Anning, the famous paleontologist of the 19th century with Sarah Pascoe. And then we'll hop on a ship all the way back to Bronze Age Crete to learn about the ancient Minoans with Josie Long. Plus loads more. So if that sounds like fun, just type in You're Dead to Me wherever you get your podcasts. BBC Sounds music radio podcasts Hello you're about to listen to the Infinite Monkey Cage

Episodes will be released on Wednesdays wherever you get your podcasts But if you're in the UK the full series is available right now on BBC Sounds Hello I'm Robin Ince And I'm Brian Cox and this is the Infinite Monkey Cage Now when Brian and I are on tour as you probably imagine on the tour bus more often Not we play board games, but It doesn't go very well partly to the nature of Brian part of the nature board guy the Cluedo Cluedo is one of the ones That I think is most rubbish. Yeah, I always knew who did it Robin in the library

That was it. I didn't commit any murders. I was just in the library. I never got railed to do in the murders I love libraries. So that was the first then it was professor Cox in the observatory with the atomic bomb So that ruined everything Then he would refuse to allow us to open the envelope to find out who done it because he said it would collapse the wave Function so that was an issue and then it totally went down the drain when Brian said we could use DNA evidence Yes, we moved on some monopoly. Yes, so we moved on to Monopoly. Yeah, and that didn't go very well because someone bought the water utility and everyone else died of dysentery. Today we are looking at the science of board games. What can we learn about each other's minds from how we play games?

Just how much is luck versus skill? Is it unwise to play risk against a mathematician? Never play snakes and ladders against Steve Batchel. That goes on for ages. So today we are joined by a mathematician, a games designer, and a professional twerp. Their description, not mine. And they are?

I'm Dave Neal. I'm a board game designer. And I've also done research in play and psychology. And my favorite game is incredibly hard to pick because I think games are just so diverse. It's a bit like asking for my favorite thing. But I will say The Mind, which is a very simple card game, is one of my favorite games at the moment,

partly because it's just so simple and yet it activates part of my brain I think I didn't even know I had. Follow that. I'm Jess Foster Q. I'm Jess Fosterkew. I'm a comedian and an avid board game player. And my favourite game is Azul, because it's patterns and strategy and luck,

and it's possible to play kindly, and it has a definitive end. And it was the game I was playing when I proposed, and she said yes. I'm Marcus de Sotoie, I'm a mathematician and also author of a book called Around the World in 80 Games. Again, very difficult to choose, one of those 80 is my favourite, but I'm going to choose the last one which is actually a game we don't know how to play. It's called the Glass Bead Game and it's a game that features in a book by Hermann Hesse.

And I read it when I was a student, and I fell in love with the idea of playing this game because it seemed to be, to play the game well, you had to kind of synthesize knowledge. You had to bring music, history, mathematics, science together by telling a story through the game. And I thought, yeah, that's what I want to be when I grow up I want to be a glass bead game player. And this is our panel.

First question for you Dave, what is your favorite thing then? My favorite thing I would say socks. Fair enough, yeah yeah yeah, yeah. That's a very, very strong answer and pragmatic too. And I want to... So, Azul, is it a solo game, is it kind of... Or is it a game you were playing together or...? You need at least two, you can have up to four. And were you winning at the time that you proposed? I can't remember.

I was in such a state of extraordinary stress and anxiety, I've got no idea who was winning. Yeah, I've got no idea who's winning is the answer. Marcus, what is the definition of a game? That is a really tricky question to answer. In fact, it's one that Wittgenstein wrestled with. I mean, he had this idea that defining words is actually really difficult. And he had this thing called language games, that you only know what a word means by the way that you play with it and use it and his example of a word that was really hard to pin down was the word game and

so he said you know every time you're trying to find what a game is you include things which you didn't intend to include and you exclude other things but I think there have been some attempts and the definition I like is playing a game is a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles so no but actually I think it captures a lot because a game actually is an expression of free will you go enter into the game because you want to play the game so it's very important if you're and the game should be not useful for anything that's really important as soon as it if it's teaching you something or you're and the game should be not useful for anything That's really important as soon as it if it's teaching you something or you're earning money. It becomes work So I think it's really important that the quality of a game is it should be just for the fun of it

The other important thing and this is something bit can Stein agreed on a game involves rules Everybody's tried to find a game has include rules as an important part of that. And that's why I think actually a mathematical insight into the way games work is a really powerful one because mathematics is really good at understanding the implications of rules. And so in this book Around the World in 80 Games, I take a lot of the games that I love playing. And actually, I give away all my tips for how to use mathematics to win at these games. Because basically people stop playing games with me because they say, oh, Desoto, you all know some clever trick to win at risk or monopoly, for example.

So in a way, this is to try and get people to play with me again is to give away all my tricks. Does that mean when someone does beat you in a game, they feel like the surge of ego at that point? I crushed Desoto. Yeah, especially when it's something like, he can't play snakes and ladders he couldn't use this and then they realized well there isn't any strategy to that game. Dave I should ask you the same question how would you define a game do you agree or disagree with Wittgenstein? Yeah I liked that definition that Marcus just gave. I mean, a game is like a discrete system

that we can engage with and that essentially doesn't really have any impact on the outside world. And this is the thing about play as well, is that play in general is about this space that is separated off from having consequences for the real world and our daily lives. It's a space we can enter. We can have fun.

We can try out different things. And there isn't going to be impact on our daily lives. It's a space we can enter we can have fun We can try out different things and there isn't gonna be impact on like our daily lives It's just for exploration and creativity and that kind of thing I guess I would say play is willingly doing that is entering this other Space where we can just try out things creatively and mess around and then a game becomes kind of doing that With rules attached where you actually formalize it to some extent and you play within certain bounds and expectations. But there's an interesting thing that quite often a game has to have a separate space and a separate time.

It's almost like a parallel universe that you create. And you live inside that world, and then you come back to the real world. I quite like that element of a game, that kind of escapism. But the key thing that you both said seems to be this voluntary aspect to it that you're focusing in on. It's something that you... You should never be forced.

It's a rule. I mean, I really think a forced game, and that happens every Christmas for nearly a year. Well, that's life, isn't it? Life is a forced game. Yeah, I guess we have enough of that from just what we're forced to do in life and then the game is a nice voluntary escape into something else. It gives you a sense of agency and that's one of the things people love about games. Agency I think is a really important word here because I think the best games are ones where you can express yourself. So something like Snakes and

Ladders is a really failed game because you have no agency. You're just the mercy of the roll of the dice. I love how much you hate that game. But the weird thing is that game has very ancient origins from India that is actually a game about teaching good and bad karma. The ladders are good actions and the snakes are bad actions. And it would be a teaching tool in sort of Jain philosophy and Hindu philosophy to teach the impact of these good actions. And the winning square nirvana or moksha Paradise and the weird thing in the Indian version is that if you missed it you were reborn

You had to keep on going round and round until you eventually got yet. It can take some time Kind of a an unforsterra in it so whatever you call it where isn't getting drunk or inebriated a useful thing Oh, that's really weird. So there's a lovely piece of mathematics, not to play the game, but to make the game. So what do you want? And Dave, you'll know this, making a game, which is that perfect point where it doesn't go on too long

but doesn't finish too quickly. So snakes and ladders, it's a decision about how many snakes versus ladders. And so I took this game that's in the Pits Rivers Museum, which came from India, and I analyzed how long it took to finish the game, and it was about 59 rolls of the dice. And then I thought, well, that's quite long. So I took a snake out, which should mean

that it would be easier to win the game. And this snake, exactly as you said, Brian, was the snake attached to drunkenness. So, okay, let's take that out, and you should be able to get to paradise quicker. But it turns out that this snake helps you. Because when I did the amass, it turned out it takes 75 rolls of the dice without drunkenness. I was like, that's really weird. So, the interesting thing is this snake allows you to have a second go at a really long ladder. So, if you miss the ladder first time, the snake takes you back down again you get a second chance so

I'm sure the Jane philosophers didn't mean this but the message of this game is Drunkenness helps you to reach Nirvana You have really reached the sweet spot of academic research now Another 20,000 pounds for more booze and dice Jess I suppose the important thing to ask you is how much has Wittgenstein influenced your game play? Thanks Robin. One of the things that we were talking about before we came on was you said that you have become, now this is interesting as well because of your first answer today, you've become more ruthless

as a game player. Yes. Where does that come from do you think? And I think it's also ties in that I found it really interesting that part of these definitions of games were that they were you don't learn anything from them and that there's no that to me implies that there's no moralistic element but I would say I was brought up with quite a silly naughty family But we played kindly I think I mean I'd one granddad who was just an out-and-out cheat

But you just sort of knew he was gonna do that and that was part of fun Can I ask what was it cheating be like what kind of games it's just because we actually taught me a card game called Cheats. Oh, yeah, it's right. Yeah where the whole point of it is to cheat and also say for example It was actually I had a grandparent on each side I had my mum's mum was a brilliant mathematician and she was incredible at Rummikub, which was close to being my favorite. But she'd just invent and change the rules

every time we played. Sometimes you were allowed to play a smiley face from the beginning, sometimes you weren't, sometimes you could break up a line that had a smiley face and sometimes you couldn't. Anyway, gone very niche. I used to get really upset if people played ruthlessly, people played like sharks, especially if I was playing like a world building, a game like Risk, a game like that where actually

you've got to deceive, you've got to team up, collude. I would get genuinely really upset if people broke what I thought was an allegiance with me, and I genuinely did think it was a reflection on what they Were like as a person. I think that's really important. Yeah, but I think I still kind of do and I think perhaps I've become less earnest as a person and more able as I've grown up to go Well, it is a game that does end in the confines of the game and you'd find out something about this person's personality as a gamer But not necessarily about how they're functioning in the World and you don't get to judge them the whole life

I also just say something on the learning thing. Yeah, it's not that learning doesn't happen It's that the point isn't to learn and that because obviously you can learn a lot of things to be playing a game You can learn a lot of things to play But the difference is if you go into it with the aim of doing that then it's no longer a game but if you go into it with the aim of just enjoying and playing it you will learn that stuff but it's when it becomes the aim that's the different thing yeah that's brilliant there's one theory that the reason that we love playing games so much is that it coincided with the emergence of

consciousness and that it was a way to explore the mind of the other because you need a theory of mind to play a game you have to realize that what your opponent will do is something completely different from what you do and the risk their call and response that happens there well I think it's also really interesting that if you're playing with strangers you have almost a more open field to play ruthlessly and play the game to the best that you can play the game which is say you've got two options and one of them you'll both gain you as many points at that point in the game but one of them will screw over your

opponent and the other won't it is best to play the horrible version of that but I play most of my games with my loved ones with my family where there's another consideration there and you think it's people pleasing. I think Yeah that bit where you're with your eight-year-old and you go I am gonna just wipe the floor with them But I feel having read some late 19th century psychotherapy that this may bring on later issues in terms of my care home choice. LAUGHTER Well, quite. Do you ever do that? Because I know you've quite done it. I do that loads. And actually, so, I feel like I should admit,

it's not a noble reason that I've started playing more Ruthless, it's because my partner is incredibly brilliant at games and lucky. LAUGHTER And that's infuriating. So I've become more and more ruthless. But she's so lucky that the first time she played a game with my son, having learnt that I do let him win a bit for my future care home, she desperately tried to let him win and just kept winning.

She couldn't do it. She's so lucky she kept thrashing him. Dave, given that, as Mark has said, games seem to be somehow quite closely linked to consciousness, so closely linked to consciousness, so closely linked to our humanity, if we go back into the past, when do we first see games emerge? There's like archaeological evidence, I think the oldest game board ever found is about 8,000 years old, that immediately tells us we were playing board games before we invented

the wheel. Something about them was important and significant enough to emerge that early on and be an important part of our culture. That makes Monopoly very difficult, doesn't it? Because there's nothing on the chance cards, and the cards got no wheels. So that is going to really. Yeah, it's a very different version of Monopoly

when you go back that far. Do you have an example of one of the early games that we've discovered? The one I'm thinking of, I know the archaeological one that was found, like the archaeological record of about 8,000 years ago. I don't think anyone knows exactly what that is, it just looks like some kind of game board. But then you have these other old games like Senet for example, which is about 5,000 years old and played by the ancient Egyptians.

And often we don't quite know how they were played, but we can kind of work it out. Like Senet was very important to Egyptian culture. It's in the tombs of pharaohs, it's on paintings on the walls of tombs. It was thought to represent like some kind of link to the afterlife, and it was thought to help people understand how to navigate the passage to the afterlife when they die. So it had this deep cultural symbolism to it. And what is the representation of it? Is it a game board? There are paintings of kind of one person playing with the board in front of them and the pieces on it

And there isn't an opponent because the idea was they're playing with the part of themselves in the afterlife Like it's this Sounds like a cross between Boggle and a Ouija board Yes A Ouija Boggle is great. You're gonna make a fortune on that this Christmas I just like the idea of going into a pyramid and finding all the mummies have been left on a twister mat. So that would have been quite nice. That could have been very different.

There's another nice ancient game, about 5,000 years old, which is the Royal Game of Auro. Which, again, is a racing game like Senate, but it's a slightly better game. But there's an interesting connection to ancient science. That the board, there's a interesting connection to modern science or ancient science. Sorry the that the board There's a common line of 12 squares that you race along and you race five pieces along those squares And it's thought this might be a little version of the cosmos that the 12 squares that you race along together

Like the constellations in the night sky and then at that time there were five Planets that they could see with the naked eye and that they were racing the planets Through the constellations so so that's another idea that maybe we were you know once we understood that the universe is controlled by rules Our games was like little mini experiments We say okay Well, what if we crystallize those rules in a game and see what the implications of those rules are and then maybe that would tell us something about how our universe works. So it seems the picture you're painting of the first games is they're more entwined with

the rest of culture than they are today. They're not just play things in those days. Or if they started off in that way they quickly became more entwined with culture and ideas because I think partly there was this natural connection as well with the idea of fate and chance and luck. So when people saw the way the world worked with chance and fate and things happening, they saw that reflected in the way chance was used in games. So you get this connection between those two things.

When we face chance and luck in real life, it can be quite devastating, it can be difficult to comprehend, understand, difficult to deal with. And then a game gives you kind of a way of tackling that in a way that's comprehensible and safer and more understandable. And it's interesting that, for example, the board game Pandemic sells really well

in real world pandemics. And it's almost like people want a way of having an overview of something which, in the real world feels quite incomprehensible and difficult to understand. And you have this representation of a system, and this is the way Senate worked as a representation of a part of the afterlife, something unknowable, something scary, becomes more knowable and more manageable and navigable when it's put in the form of a game.

And both of these games actually gave rise to what I believe is one of the greatest games that emerged out of the ancient world, which is backgammon. Because basically those are very early versions of racing games, racing pieces around with the throw of the dice. And I think it sort of evolved into modern day backgammon. I was wondering board games, first of all, as you said, imagining the consciousness of someone else, the fact that we begin to realize there's thoughts within everyone generally. And then, but also that idea of, you know everyone generally and then but also that

idea of you know robin dumbar's talked a lot about things like the importance of grooming you know into basically the flea picking that we see within chimpanzees so would a game possibly have something like that as well you've got bored of picking the fleas off your friend and so you've got to find another way of creating that kind of scenario that that kind of connection. Would it have anything to do with that? I think there is an element of that. And I think that word connection is really important because I think, for example, I just came back from India, I went to a wedding, and the wedding very often two people don't know each other.

And they need some safe place in order to try and understand, you know, who their partner is. And so they start every Indian wedding with a series of games that the couple play. So I think that element of using a game as a safe space to understand who somebody is, also a safe space actually to explore your own personality and try things out. I mean, there's a- I think that's an incredibly dangerous first date.

He got thrashed on all four games. He'd be like, great, this is the rest of my life. I think you were winning, by the way, when you asked it to me. It's funny that pandemic actually emerged out of a married couple that the man was vicious in gameplay. And the woman just said, I'm just never playing games with you again, because you always use psychological manipulation.

And so he was devastated. So he came up with this kind of new idea, the concept of a collaborative game. So he made Pandemic because he wanted to play games with his wife, but they play together against the game. So it's a very different quality of game, I think, Pandemic that emerged in recent years. Well, Marcus, you met your wife, didn't you,

when you were drunk playing Snakes and Ladders with you. Is that right? But yeah, that theory is, so that does play its part as well. So there might be some of that sense of connection, but it's not the most important part. Games just play just multiple roles. I mean there's a lot of evidence, I think, of neurodiverse people finding the game a very safe space to explore parts of their personality than in normal life. It's just too frightening. So I think that's why Dungeons and Dragons, you know, which you see the beginning of Stranger

Things, it's a really wonderful place to just try out bits of your personality that you might be frightened to in with the reaction. I think the idea of rules just helps somebody to just understand what is allowed and what isn't allowed. You said to me earlier that as a mathematician mathematician your family now don't like playing games with you because you analyze, I was gonna say overanalyze, let's just say analyze the game. So Monopoly for example which feels I think to most of us like a completely random game. It's a highly flawed game as well I mean I hate Monopoly. I really don't

understand why is Monopoly everyone's game of choice at Christmas time? It is I tell you one of the things a couple of qualities that make a good game One is that it shouldn't finish before it starts And very often you see like chess if you're playing somebody who's really good at chess, you know Donald Trump against Gary Kasparov is not gonna be an interesting game of chess that is finished before it even Kasparov is not going to be an interesting game of chess that is finished before it even I'd pay to watch Yes, so I think that's a game which doesn't satisfy my second quality which is a game shouldn't finish before it ends So monopoly is a game which finishes halfway through the game and you just spend the second half of the game

Just the person you know who's going to win Bankrupting everyone else is the most boring game ever but you have you have a mathematical base strategy I do have a share I will share my mathematical strategy with you so what is the most visited square on the Monopoly board does anyone know jail exactly because there are so many ways to end up on the jail square you can get sent to jail, you can visit jail, what's the most common throw of two dice? Well, Dave's actually got it tattooed on his arm, because he's got a six and a one tattooed on his arm, which is seven.

And seven is actually the most popular throw, because there are so many ways to make a seven. Six and one, five and two, four and three, three and four, two and five, one and six. Now, actually, seven sends you to I think community chess, so that's not much good. But six and eight are also common scores. So out of jail, most people are throwing dice

which sends them into the orange regions of properties. So my strategy is to buy up all the orange properties, stack them with hotels and bankrupt everyone as they come out of jail. Do you find, Dave, as someone who designs games, have your tactics changed through the learning of designing your own games? Yeah, I mean, I play so many games now. As a designer, I have to play a lot of games.

I guess it's kind of like, so when you come to play a game, and I mean a lot of what I design is very kind of narrative based, so a lot of what I design has like puzzles in it or choose your own adventure type stories in. So particularly when I'm playing that type of game, I can often almost like see under the hood, right? So I can kind of, I'm almost like, oh this is clearly that kind of puzzle, so this is gonna go here and that's gonna go, oh yeah it is.

And so that can be quite frustrating for people I'm playing with who are like, wait, we haven't even like understood what the puzzle is yet and you've kind of puzzle so this is gonna go here and that's gonna go oh yeah it is and so that can be quite frustrating for people I'm playing with who are like wait we haven't even like understood what what the puzzle is yet and you've kind of just already gone it's obviously this thing so there is that you do just get this affinity with it and understand a bit more about how things work what's expected that makes it sound similar to like if you're a someone who writes stories or who's got that then when you're watching you might you know a really good film you'd be like it's them they did it, then when you're watching, you might, you know, really good film, and you'd be like, it's them, they did it. Yeah, yeah.

You're that guy, but with games. Yeah, I'm like that with games, which is a bit more frustrating because with a game, if you're playing with other people, you're all trying to work that out. Whereas at least with a TV show, you can just kind of keep quiet, but with a game, the whole point is to do that.

So then, then I'm just annoying people I'm with because. I just wanted to ask, the one more strategy you spoke of, so you got your monopoly strategy which now everybody knows. Yeah, no, you can't play anyone a monopoly game. But it's your strategy for a paper, scissors, stone. Well I think we should get Jess to come and take this, because I don't know what the strategy is so why don't you and me Brian play paper, scissors paper scissors stones because it's radio. It's not very good radio

Do you know what's what the first review in the daily telegraph said about this So Jess is gonna commentate so the audience at home know what's gonna happen you ready? Yeah, I'm ready Okay, are you ready Brian? You're going on three two one draw. Okay, then three two one draw Okay, two papers. They've both gone paper Robin would already be disqualified because what you can't see on radio Is that his paper was actually? The rules because I played in international championship I played in international championship. Oh. Oh.

Oh. Oh. You'd be disqualified. No, no, no. But that's, this is, I, this is. He had one. She paper. This, this gets to the, the interesting bit without all this fluff.

No. No, no, no. Loser. Loser. No, listen. An international championship, because most people would assume that this game is completely random. So how can you have an international championship anybody could win it? Is that correct the point about this game is it actually is very close to being a mathematician because I call a mathematician a

Pattern searcher that's actually what we try and do we look at the chaos around us and we try and identify Is there some pattern going on here? So when you're playing rock paper scissors what you want to do is to see if the person you're playing has got some sort of strategy that they always or some little tick that they always follow scissors with paper. I mean some people just have this pattern. So if you play enough rounds you suddenly see I know exactly they've done paper I know what they're going to do next. So that's one side of it. If you can spot the patterns you're in. But on my side, if I'm playing rock-paper-scissors, I want to leave no patterns at all. So when I took part in this International

Championship I actually used the decimal expansion'm going to try that again. I used the decimal expansion of Pi to make my choices. Because Pi has a decimal expansion which is genuinely random, we believe. So if it was 1, 2, 3, I chose rock. 4, 5, 6 in the decimal expansion, paper. 7, 8, 9, scissors. And if it was 0, I had a free choice. But you have to remember Pi.

Yeah, that was actually a problem. so I actually had it written on there. Because I've got a terrible memory, so I actually had to have it written here. Are there no rules in this? Because it would seem like it was almost cheating to have this crib sheet written up your arm. Yeah, well the person I lost to when I looked at his arm, he had a Fibonacci spiral to him. So I think he was using a Fibonacci number. Go on then. Ready? Okay. You ready?

Three, two, one, draw. Right, you see I beat you away. It worked very well. It works! We probably should say for those listening at home that that was rock from me and scissors from Robin. Very poor decision by me. It's summer in Britain and the crimes are just getting started. I've found another body.

Stream the best of British crime drama only on Britbox. Don't miss new seasons of acclaimed series like Blue Lights, which Time Out calls Belfast's answer to the wire. Back up, back up, over. And The Responder, starring Martin Freeman in his international Emmy award-winning role I can feel it, I'm gonna crack stream the best of British crime drama on Britbox You know this is why I wanna be a detective

watch with a free trial today Hello, I'm Greg Jenner, I'm the host of You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy show that takes history seriously. And we are back for series 8, starting with a live episode recorded at the Hay Literary Festival all about the history of the medieval printed book in England. Our comedian there is Robin Ince. And then we'll be moving on to the life of Mary Anning, the famous paleontologist of the 19th century with Sarah Pascoe. And then we'll hop on a ship all the way back to Bronze Age Crete to learn about the ancient Minoans with Josie Long plus loads more. So if that sounds

like fun, just type in you're dead to me wherever you get your podcasts. So actually that's what I wanted to ask is what do you think I'll ask you first. What do you think is the most a game that you should really avoid because of the possibility of irritation? Because you know, again, that kind of time when a family are gathered together, there must be a league of anger that can occur. My family gets pretty testy over Scrabble.

Yeah, I think Scrabble, and I agree with that, actually. I think the generations have different approaches. And my generation, that's a geriatric millennial, you're welcome. We came in with a lot of two-letter word and clumping strategies that infuriated the boomers. Yeah, and that brought a really spicy element to Christmas after Christmas for us. It got to the point where the deliberations pre-game, in terms of setting out what rules

we were going to play by, took longer than the game itself. But Dave, there are cooperative games, aren't there? So they don't have to be competitive. Yeah, I mean, most of what I designed is cooperative games where you work together. Like we mentioned Pandemic earlier, which was one of the first big successful cooperative games. You each have a hand of cards and you're trying to move around a map of the world and collaborate together to exchange cards to get sets which become cures for diseases and so you're trying to collaborate to do that.

Some people are completely unaware that that type of board game exists, they only think of competitive ones and for some people it's a real kind of eye-opener and a joy when they discover it because for some people it's like, wow, this is a way of playing a game I really like and they might not even like competitive games and they suddenly realise there's something completely different and this sense of collaborating together and working together can just be incredibly satisfying. It's a different kind of experience. In the kind of stuff I design, some of it's like escape rooms you play at home. I guess a lot of people don't know what an escape room is,

where you're solving multiple puzzles. It's like that, but you do it at home. You open the box, you have lots of puzzles in it. You do it in a sequence. There are games that are based on communication, like the mind I mentioned earlier, like there's limited communication, and you have to kind of read each other,

and it's very satisfying when you, it basically, these kind of games create this this environment where when they work you just get this thrill of working together as one and this sense of elation that you have jointly achieved some goal together and that's a really satisfying feeling. You said the mind you chose it as your favorite game yeah describe what that is. Yeah I love it because it's so incredibly simple. It's one of these games where when it came out I think all game designers were like, why didn't I think of that? Because it's just this, all it is is 100 cards numbered 1 to 100 and you shuffle them. At the beginning

you just deal one out to each player and you're working together. You look at your number but you don't show anybody else and you then have to play them into the middle of the table face up from the lowest number to the highest number without talking or directly communicating your number to other people. So you just have to look around, wait, like if you have 99 you know you're gonna be waiting towards the end, if you have like a low number you're gonna be playing earlier but you're trying to read other people, judge what number they might have and play things in the right sequence. So the main sort of part of your brain that's activated is almost like this, you're like in a psychic. You're like just actually like trying to read

people and read minds literally is, and I've never known any other game that really focuses on that. And when it works, it's amazing. When you've been playing it a few times, you kind of get into sync with the group you're playing with the more you play it and the moment when you're kind of sitting looking at each other and like you put down a 39 and the next person puts down 42 then 48 then 50 all in correct sequence quite quickly and you look at each other and you're like, how did that happen? And getting flashbacks to a level drama.

I was getting Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World. You know, that Brian's going, maybe there is truth in psychic powers. OK, he's not thinking that. But that is bad. I know he wasn't thinking that, but that does sound, to me, Jess, that does sound really delightful.

Yeah, I think it's interesting. And again, you learn so much about people. It does bring back me just that that does sound really delightful. Yeah, I think it's interesting And again, you learn so much about people it does bring back against that You're not meant to learn anything from it or that not be the point But for me, I I don't mind it being the point that I'm gonna learn that you know The person I'm playing with communicates with really wide eyes. They've got a low number Always great Really? Wide eyes, if they've got a low number. Or, you know, or it's great at comp- Some people are going to be brilliant at that compared to others, and they might not know that they were.

That's the sort of thing that you- I suppose practice can improve, but you're- there's going to be an element of innate talent at how good you are at conveying or communicating without- with minimal verbal language. Just blinking 48 times. I'm sorry, that's not the point. That's not really the point.

Some people are going to find that really frustrating. Yeah, some people hate it. I've played with some people who just don't get it or don't have the patience. Because if you're sitting there and there's four of you, you deal out four cards and you have 90, 92, 94, and 98, you're going to be sitting there a long time before anybody plays a card.

So you need a lot of patience, because everyone, the person with the 90 who's got the lowest number is thinking, I'm gonna be, I'm the highest number, so I just need to sit and wait and then like 20 minutes passes and they're like, maybe I'm, maybe I'm not the highest number. But yeah, it does help you understand and connect with people in a different way. I think it's really interesting as a kind of bonding exercise and this is one thing about playing games as well that we haven't really mentioned is how Much of a bonding thing it can be to play with somebody in any kind of way Marcus

I want to ask you about one of the very famous Nobel Prize that was awarded for game theory. So John Nash because To this point we've talked about games as play. But when a Nobel Prize is awarded for something called game theory, that becomes rather more serious. Yeah, it's quite extraordinary. I mean, 15 of the Nobel Prizes for economics have been given to mathematicians for analysing games. Because of course, that's the point. A game isn't just an isolated thing. It's actually a model of something which happens in real life. So a lot of game theory is about analyzing the implications of rules and things like economics, politics or warfare.

And Nash came up with this thing called the Nash equilibrium, that you can analyze the way a game works. And if everyone is playing perfectly, you should be able to work out how the game evolves. And there's some lovely examples of games that have been analyzed by game theorists. One of the ones, a lot of people have probably heard of the Prisoner's Dilemma, but the one I really like is called the Ultimatum Game. So I wonder whether I could play this with Robin and Brian. So the game works like this. I'm going to give Robin a hundred pounds. It's a monopoly money. Psychological money. Yeah, very good.

There you go. The game is that you have to decide how to divide this money between you and Brian. And Brian will then vote on whether he accepts the offer or not. But if he rejects it, I get the money back and neither of you get anything. You're both greedy. You're trying to get as much as possible. But basically, what have you got to offer Brian basically to buy his vote how much have you got to give up of your hundred do you think to buy his vote genuinely first I probably would be

fifty fifty but I'm gonna say that's what I would do yeah it's obvious isn't it because I suppose that the strategy is not for you to take the money back. Well, yes, exactly. So it seems to me that a 50-50 split is guaranteed. Yeah. You'd have to be very straight. Would any of you, if it was 50-50? Well, let's play with Jerry. Let's say anybody would pass.

No, no, no. And you're going to play it with Dave, so let's find out. Because you said you're ruthless. But remember you're greedy. The important thing is you're both greedy. In these games, it's important you're greedy agree you're trying to keep as much as greedy You can have 40 and now that's interesting because 40 is less than would you accept 40? It's so much more than none day I like the way you brought maths into that as well. I like KL except 40. What if she'd offered you 10? No.

No, exactly. You see, you would say... That's still a lot more than non-none. But it's still worth spending the £10 to punish her for a bad division. And this is the interesting thing, because the Nash equilibrium here says that you should actually accept one pound, because one pound is better than no pounds. But we feel that actually, I'm not going to accept, I'm prepared to spend one pound to punish somebody for the division. So the interesting thing is, 40, you said, yeah, that's fine.

So where is the sweet spot when most people play this game? And the weird thing is, there's a piece of mathematics called the golden ratio, which actually seems to define where the sweet spot is, where somebody says, I'm going to spend my money to punish the person, or I'll accept because that's just enough to feel, you know, like I'm benefiting, although the other person has got more. So the golden ratio is a proportion, kind of in art and in nature that comes up. So to be specific, for £100, where does that come from? It's about £38.

£38. So £40, you both kind of went like 40 I'd be okay with but anything less than that you're beginning to feel that their proportion to what they had at the beginning is just a bit bigger than what I got to what she's kept so the golden ratio seems to be that sweet spot. And how does this become more widely applicable because obviously the Nobel Prize was not awarded for that. So. You'd be surprised. So this is about.

The interesting thing is a lot of games are about negotiation, deception. And so just a simple game like that can actually tease out what might be, you know, somebody in a position of power. What do they need to offer in order to win or feel like everyone is satisfied with how the game finishes it's interesting because your favorite game so you were leaning towards complexity you don't like games that your challenge something like backgammon I learned backgammon in one minute but every time I played it's a different game each time and I think that's the beauty of a really good game

is one that you can explain I mean if I think that's the beauty of a really good game is one that you can explain I mean if I'm still explaining the rules of a game to my family after five minutes, they drifted off I'm watching Netflix Channels are available at what point like I asked you just first of all But what point because I've done that Christmas where someone buys like it's a game That's meant to just be a pocket game and then you pull out and it's just instruction after instruction What do we know like for you? When would you go? That's too many? I've got much more patience. I've got no older, but you know in my 20s, I think to one minute max

Yeah, that's all I've got for you Really if I haven't got it Whereas now I sometimes go to board game cafes for fun and choose a new one that you know You're gonna actually your precious time you're on the clock money wise to be in there but you go there to try a new game and spend most of your time learning it the first time you're gonna take the hit the first time with really good games but it's worth it for the long game because then you've learned it then and then every time you play it can get funner and more playful I think it's a mistake people make at like Christmas and

family time is you get out these games that either have quite a lot of rules and take quite a long time to learn Escape from Coldest, that's one I love, Escape from Coldest Eddie Izan beat me at that, right? This was 30 years ago when he came to my flat and told me that I shouldn't have an airing cupboard because it was a level of luxury too much for creativity, right? And Eddie Izan made me the guard even though I'd never played it before which I think was a deliberate tactic so that Eddie would win. What do you reckon?

That sounds perfectly viable. Yeah, I think that's the best thing that sounds. And like Michael was saying about games that go on too long, like a lot of these games people play at Christmas, they seem to pick these games. I don't know why the games are popular. Trivial Pursuit often seems to go on too long. Monopoly goes on too long. There's often these games you get out that can drag on for hours beyond their like level of interest. Whereas what you want is these really quick, simple games that you learn in 30 seconds and that are short. That's what you want at Christmas time. Find those kind of games and that everybody can just get involved with. That's what you really need. Again, Drunk Snake and Ladders. You know it's only mentioned one snake there as well.

I made it a singular style of Drunk already. So, should we go to the audience questions, Ron? We asked the audience question, what game do you never want to play again and why? Oh this is nice, this is a Schrodinger's escape room. I have to spend the rest of my life with a cat and a strawberry. Twister? Because I'm pregnant. Can I check, are you pregnant because of a previous game of Twister? Game of Thrones. Felt it was dragon on a bit. That goes straight to the Radio 4 Pun Museum where it will be preserved forever. In a similar vein, somebody's put rowing games because you just can't get the cocks these days. Two people laughed in a different way there.

The dating game, because it used to be electric, but now it's just electronic. Russian roulette. It didn't go well for me. I lost it. Thanks to our panel, Marks to So Toy, Dave Neal and Jess Busticue. Next week we're going to be at Cheltenham Science Festival with a special Infinite Monkey Cage in which all the questions are going to be asked by children.

Yeah, it's going to be challenging that one, isn't it? And it is. It really will be challenging, because the first event Brian and I ever did, this was probably like 2009, 2010, like the first live event beyond monkey gauge. There was a kid at the front, and Brian went to them, like 10 years old, and thought, oh, it's going to be a lovely, sweet question.

And the question was, dark energy, is it merely a fiction created by scientists from an area of knowledge they have absolutely no idea about whatsoever? So we're waiting for that in Cheltenham. Thank you very much. Bye bye. Thank you. In the infinite monkey cage, in the infinite monkey cage, without your trousers, In the infinite Monkey Cage Turned out nice again. Hello, Robin again. I just wanted to let you know about another podcast that I've been involved with recently

and it was fantastic and absolute joy to join Greg Jenner at the Hay Festival for an episode of You're Dead to Me. Why didn't you tell me about that? I would have done it. Oh, I think you were busy or something. It was lovely being free from him for once. Anyway, shush, Brian. We talked about the history of printing. We had a great chat and I hope you find it interesting.

I like the history of printing. I could have... That's exactly why I didn't have your answer. I knew you'd be interrupting all the time. Anyway, you can listen on BBC Sounds. Just search for You're Dead to Me. I'm Helen Lewis and I have a question. for your dead to me. woman who married an AI. One hundred percent I would never go back to humans ever, ever again. No idea? Well, they're all examples of how instant messaging has changed the world. Find out more by joining me for my new BBC Radio 4 series, Helen Lewis has left the chat.

Subscribe to Helen Lewis has left the chat on BBC Sounds. Lights, which timeout calls Belfast's Answer to the Wire, and The Responder, starring Martin Freeman in his international Emmy award-winning role, streamed the best of British crime drama on Britbox, and Watch with a free trial today. Hello, I'm Greg Jenner. I'm the host of You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy show that takes history seriously. And we are back for Series 8, starting with a live episode recorded at the Hay Literary Festival, all about the history of the medieval printed book in England. Our comedian there is Robin Ince. And then we'll be moving on to the life of Mary Anning, the famous paleontologist of the 19th century, with Sarah Pascoe. And then we'll hop on

a ship all the way back to Bronze Age Crete to learn about the ancient Minoans with Josie Long. Plus loads more. So if that sounds like fun, just type in, you're dead to me, wherever you get your podcasts.