# The Paperoom blog > Stories and ideas about paper games from around the world: their history, their many names and how to play them today. The stories behind the games we print, and ideas for playing them well. - [A short history of bingo](https://paperoom.yunusemrevurgun.com/blog/a-short-history-of-bingo/): How lotto-style games grew from a 1500s Italian lottery into tombola, housie, tambola and the 75-ball card, and how word bingo followed. - [Alquerque: the ancestor of checkers](https://paperoom.yunusemrevurgun.com/blog/alquerque-the-ancestor-of-checkers/): Alquerque, the 5 by 5 board game from the Arabic al-qirq, its mention in Alfonso X's 1283 Book of Games, its basic rules and its link to draughts. - [Battleship on Paper: Hunting, Spacing and Salvoes](https://paperoom.yunusemrevurgun.com/blog/battleship-on-paper/): How pencil-and-paper Battleship is played, how to set up two grids and a fleet that fits, and real strategy for searching, hunting and placing ships. - [Dots and Boxes: La Pipopipette and the Art of the Chain](https://paperoom.yunusemrevurgun.com/blog/dots-and-boxes-la-pipopipette/): How Édouard Lucas published La Pipopipette in 1889, how to play dots and boxes, and the strategy of safe moves, chains and the double-cross. - [Exquisite Corpse: The Surrealist Game of Hidden Drawings](https://paperoom.yunusemrevurgun.com/blog/exquisite-corpse-surrealist-drawing-game/): How Paris Surrealists turned chance into a game, where the name comes from, and how to play the folded drawing and sentence versions at home or in class. - [Hex: the game that can never end in a draw](https://paperoom.yunusemrevurgun.com/blog/hex-the-game-that-never-draws/): Invented twice in the 1940s, Hex has one of the cleanest rule sets of any board game. Why someone always wins, and the bridge, its first trick. - [Lotería: Mexican picture bingo](https://paperoom.yunusemrevurgun.com/blog/loteria-mexican-picture-bingo/): How the Mexican picture game Lotería works, from its boards and caller's rhymes to a family version you can make with a 4 × 4 word bingo card. - [Mancala: the count-and-capture family](https://paperoom.yunusemrevurgun.com/blog/mancala-count-and-capture/): How the mancala family of seed-sowing games works, where its names come from, and how to play a basic Kalah-style game on a printed board. - [Nine men's morris: a board game carved in stone](https://paperoom.yunusemrevurgun.com/blog/nine-mens-morris-trilha-molino/): The history of nine men's morris, from stone benches to schoolyards, with its two phases, mills, flying and tips for printing a board. - [Paper Fortune Tellers: A Folding Craft That Is Also a Game](https://paperoom.yunusemrevurgun.com/blog/paper-fortune-tellers/): The folded paper fortune teller and its many names, how to play it with friends, and kind or funny fortunes to write inside. - [A world tour of paper games](https://paperoom.yunusemrevurgun.com/blog/paper-games-around-the-world/): A short tour of paper games from around the world, from Stop and tombola to xiangqi, mancala and nine men's morris, with notes on where each is played. - [Sudoku: From Number Place to the World](https://paperoom.yunusemrevurgun.com/blog/sudoku-from-number-place-to-the-world/): How a 1979 American number puzzle became sudoku in Japan and then a worldwide favourite, and how to make simple 4 × 4 and 6 × 6 versions. - [The Game of the Goose: a spiral race with geese](https://paperoom.yunusemrevurgun.com/blog/the-game-of-the-goose/): The 63-square spiral race with geese: its traditional hazard squares, a Spanish counting rhyme, a way to teach counting and house rules. - [The many names of Stop](https://paperoom.yunusemrevurgun.com/blog/the-many-names-of-stop/): The categories game under its many names, with how a round works, ways to pick the letter, 10, 5 and 0 scoring, and variations to try. - [The Royal Game of Ur: a race game from ancient Mesopotamia](https://paperoom.yunusemrevurgun.com/blog/the-royal-game-of-ur/): How boards found at Ur and a Babylonian clay tablet let people play a 4,500-year-old race game again, with its route, rosettes and odds explained. - [The story of Snakes and Ladders](https://paperoom.yunusemrevurgun.com/blog/the-story-of-snakes-and-ladders/): From Moksha Patam and Gyan Chaupar to England, the story of Snakes and Ladders, why it suits young children, and two common house rules. - [Why Paper Games Still Matter](https://paperoom.yunusemrevurgun.com/blog/why-paper-games-still-matter/): An essay on why printed games still gather people at one table: shared attention, no logins, room for in-jokes, large print and the calm of paper. - [Xiangqi for beginners: Chinese chess from the first move](https://paperoom.yunusemrevurgun.com/blog/xiangqi-for-beginners/): A complete beginner's guide to xiangqi: the river and palace, how each piece moves, the facing-generals rule, checkmate and printing a board. --- Languages: [English](https://paperoom.yunusemrevurgun.com/blog/index.md) · [Español](https://paperoom.yunusemrevurgun.com/es/blog/index.md) · [العربية](https://paperoom.yunusemrevurgun.com/ar/blog/index.md) · [Português](https://paperoom.yunusemrevurgun.com/pt/blog/index.md) · [中文](https://paperoom.yunusemrevurgun.com/zh/blog/index.md) · [Français](https://paperoom.yunusemrevurgun.com/fr/blog/index.md) Page: https://paperoom.yunusemrevurgun.com/blog/ · Paperoom by Yunus Emre Vurgun · https://paperoom.yunusemrevurgun.com/llms.txt