Where did Shut the Box come from?
Shut the Box has several stories about where it came from, and none of them is proven:
- Normandy, in northern France: a popular story says it began there, some even say in the 1100s, but no evidence has been published to support it.
- Napoleonic times: Arthur Taylor's 1976 book Pub Games mentions a claim that the game goes back at least to the early 1800s.
- The Channel Islands: a 1967 article in Brewing Review described the game as native to the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey, and some writers date it there to the middle of the 1900s.
The honest answer is that nobody knows where it started, and the written accounts usually cited date from the twentieth century.
How Shut the Box reached English pubs
Shut the Box spread through English pubs in the 1960s. The 1967 Brewing Review article reported it being played in pubs in Manchester, and Arthur Taylor wrote in 1976 that it had been revived in Britain over the previous fifteen years or so. The soft drinks company Canada Dry handed out boxes to many pubs as a promotion. In pubs it was often played for small stakes, with the winner taking the pot; today's family versions, including ours, are played just for fun.
Why is it called Shut the Box?
Shut the Box is named after its goal: shutting every tile in the box. A player who covers all nine numbers has "shut the box", which in most rules wins the game on the spot. The name describes the move and the box together.
Other names for Shut the Box
Shut the Box is also known by at least three other names:
- Canoga: the name of a version made by the Pacific Game Company, which also made a 12-tile box called Canoga XII.
- Batten Down the Hatches: named after the sailors' phrase for making a ship safe before a storm.
- Trick-track: not to be confused with Trictrac, an old French game played on a backgammon board.
Shut the Box on television
Shut the Box was the basis of an American television quiz show, High Rollers. It ran on NBC from 1974 to 1976 and from 1978 to 1980 with Alex Trebek as host, and returned from 1987 to 1988 hosted by Wink Martindale. Contestants rolled dice and removed numbers from a giant board, much as players shut tiles.
Shut the Box around the world
Shut the Box is played far beyond England and France. Versions of it have been recorded in Barotseland, in what is now western Zambia. Today it is also a classroom maths game: NRICH, at the University of Cambridge, and youcubed, at Stanford University, both publish versions for teaching young children to add.
Why our game is set in a Normandy harbour
Our daily game is set on an old Normandy quay at sunset because of the most popular story about the game's beginnings, even though that story is unproven. The harbour, the fishing boats and the worn wooden box are our picture of where Shut the Box might have been played, not a claim about where it was.
Sources
- Shut the box, Wikipedia, which cites Arthur R. Taylor, Pub Games (1976); Brewing Review (1967); and Jack Botermans, The Book of Games (2008).
- Shut the Box, NRICH, University of Cambridge.
- Shut the Box, youcubed, Stanford University.