Games for Shabbos

Apples to Apples

Quelf

Scrabble

Set

Risk

any sort of card game (President, Kent, Mao, poker)

Bananagrams

Settlers of Catan

Carcassonne

Any game which normally entails writing (e.g. Scrabble) might be problematic; ask a shailah.

DY: Most Poskim are Mattir Scrabble and Bananagrams. The real Shaila is the Scrabble board with the individual holders for letters on the board (one of the old Deluxe Editions). Rav Moshe said that that one is Assur.

I personally hold that the new edition of Settlers with the puzzle border is an Issur D’Oraisa of K’siva.

Backgammon and let’s not forget about PARCHESI.

Sam2, in the Mishkan they actually wrote.

Chess has a long and venerable tradition among frum Jews. Even a Rishon wrote about it. Of course, you can’t play with an electronic clock or record moves, but that only affects official tournaments.

Now I’m intrigued. What’s Quelf ?

Sam4: That’s the original one, that used blue hexes as the border. The new version has 6 puzzle pieces that make up the border, each of them with a number on each end. You line up the numbers to create the border.

Here are some more:

Pit

Perpetual Commotion

Mille Bornes

Jungle Speed

Tribond

Trivial Pursuit

FLUXX! (Can’t believe I forgot this one on the first time around–this is my favorite game!)

Sam2: lol, also through a friend. Though I have other friends that own it too. It is a very good game, one of my favorites. And if you like Quelf, you should definitely try Fluxx. ^_^

Also, when we play Settlers on Shabbos/YT we don’t use the puzzle border, and we space out the board tiles. The game comes with little replacement harbor tiles to use instead of the border.

Sam2, no, I’m not sure. I’ll try to look it up.

Sam2, the Gemara (103b) indicates that they wrote or engraved.

Chayei Adam (38-11) assers games which normally involve writing.

munchkin cards are YUCK!

OOM and Sam2, ur listing all my bro’s faves.

No one mentioned Quirkle yet- that’s fun

Sam2: Yes, I’m sure that was not the Kesiva that is Assur on Shabbos. The writing is Kesiva, matching up numbers is not.

Interestingly, I remember learning that one can use magnetic letters ON SHABBOS to “write” a message, since there is no actual Ma’ase Kesiva being done. (Of course, this assumes you are not machmir like the YU shitta not to use magnets on shabbos. Even if you are, you can “precut” letters before shabbos and use those.)

I know it sounds strange, and I don’t have the source off the top of my head, but I certainly remember learning it.

“In regular scrabble, you record the score. It’s assur miderabanon. In Scrabble, the pieces interlock, it’s really writing and it’s assur mideoraisa.”

False on all three. My wife and I play Scrabble regularly. We don’t record the score; we keep track using bookmarks in books, so nothing is getting recorded at all. And as anyone who has ever played Scrabble knows, the pieces do NOT interlock. In some of the more deluxe editions of Scrabble the boards do have squares with raised edges to hold the pieces which as noted above does cause halachic concerns; we just use the old flat cardboard playing board that causes no concern.

charliehall, In the rules of scrabble it says that you write to record the score. It may even come with a pad of scorecard sheets. If you usually use that to record the score then it would be assur miderabanon. If you normally don’t, then I think it’s muttar, but I could be wrong. There’s an Israeli version of scrabble, it’s called Blanko, I think there’s a different way how to record the score there. In deluxe scrabble, there are places where the blocks are held in place. The poskim as Sam2 mentioned say that’s forming a word and it’s assur mideoraisa. I don’t remeber the Rema offhand, but the gemaras in shabbos and gittin discusses whether you’d be chayiv m’deoraisa for writing two letters. That doesn’t matter English, Hebrew or any language. In any case the Rabbonon assur’d even one letter.

There a quite a few very good board games out there that aren’t well known in mainstream communities. Check out the “Strategy Games” section in Barnes and Noble. I play Carcassonne with my wife on long Shabbos evenings. There are others out there that I haven’t necessarily played. Most of these games take no longer than an hour.

• Ticket to Ride: Build train tracks across the US. Very easy to learn and a lot of fun to play.
• Agricola: Every player plays a family of farmers. Every turn you need to ensure that your crops and animals are being tended to, structures are being built and everyone gets fed.
• Alhambra: Compete against the other players to get your palace built bigger than theirs.
• 7 Wonders: Card game involving players collecting cards and using their effects to collect more cards, resources or points in order to build your medieval empire
• Race for the Galaxy: Similar in description to 7 Wonders but with an outer space theme but plays like a different game
• Dominion: Same idea again. Also a vastly different beast
• Kingdom Builder: Players need to build villages by placing houses on a map of a kingdom. The fun part is that how the game is scored, what the map looks like and what special powers there are is basically randomized via picking cards in the beginning.
• Pandemic: Fun co-operative game where everyone needs to work together to stop diseases from spreading across the world. Each player has special abilities that they can use to help one another.
• Small World: Kind of like Risk where each army has different abilities and fights are determined more by strengths than die rolls so there is less of a luck factor.

Charlie: That is a Rama in the Siman of Amirah L’akum, I think, and no one (and I mean no one) even thinks to hold of it. (Though the Mishnah B’rurah does have a Chumra in the Be’ur Halachah in Siman 65 that seems to be based on the same basic idea as this Shittah of the Rama.)

I never asked a shailah about puzzles, because I personally wouldn’t do one on Shabbos. It is mamesh creating something, and the intent is typically to keep it permanent, once completed. If it is permissible (and I would find that to be odd), I still wouldn’t do it.

Trivial Pursuit is my game of choice, and also games like Blurt, Taboo, or any game where you have to think of ways of expressing something without using specific common words. Charades is also a great choice.

I know puzzles is a shaila and we were told we could do the ones that are not interlocking. We probably spent more shabbosim doing puzzles than we did playing risk and spoons!

Seriously though, I could never understand the concept of keeping a puzzle once it’s done. What could you possibly do with it? Hang it on the wall next to the bar mitzvah pictures?

Seriously though, I could never understand the concept of keeping a puzzle once it’s done. What could you possibly do with it? Hang it on the wall next to the bar mitzvah pictures?”

You are clearly not a serious “puzzler.” I am not, either, but my friend who routinely does 1,000 – 1,500 piece puzzles, likes to put a certain type of clear puzzle glue on them to keep them intact and then frames them. So, yes, they DO hang it on the wall (whether next to the Bar-mitzvah pic or not).

(though I cannot imagine it to be)

even after mentioning my rav said it was?

I do happen to be a serious puzzler, but that includes considering the puzzle to be finished when the last piece is placed. It then goes back in the box for the next time. I’ve seen people save them but I cannot imagine why.

no, some puzzles have pieces that fit together, some have pieces that actually grab each other. Those are the ones you can lift up by the corners in one piece when they are done. A non-interlocking puzzle will not come up off the table.