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When Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder were singing “Ebony and ivory, live together in perfect harmony…” they weren’t singing about Othello – but they could have been. When this board game’s black and white pieces were laid out, it was each player for themselves. Fortunes changed quickly, luck ran out… come to think of it, there wasn’t perfect harmony with this game at all.

 

Othello’s roots might have come from an English game called the Game of Annexation, played around 1880 in British pubs. It remained fairly obscure until 1976, when the Gabriel toy company introduced it to the U.S. Their tag line was “A minute to learn…a lifetime to master.” Indeed.

 

The game board was bright green felt, reminiscent of a casino game. Sixty-four squares were printed on it, plus spaces on each side for the discs, which were black on one side and white on the other. One player is “black” and one is “white,” and each get thirty-two discs. The game begins with a disc of each color at the center of the board, and players take turns placing discs next to these. The trick is to “outflank” your opponent – positioning your color disc at either end of your opponents row of discs. One the outflanking occurs, your opponent’s discs are flipped to your color, and now they belong to you.

 

The exciting thing about Othello was that the game could change dramatically at each turn. You could feel nicely confident that most of the board belonged to you, but with one strategically placed move, your opponent could end up flipping most of your pieces, sending you back to square 1 – so to speak.

 

Gabriel released a pocket version of the game as well. The box art showed the backside of a happy couple together in a lovely park. But the mini Othello game was peeking out of the woman’s back pocket, signifying a slightly more competitive afternoon is in store. In other words, if you’ve got Othello with you, the charms of the day will be lost to raw aggression. As the box warned, “Be advised Othello may be habit-forming. We strongly urge you to eat and sleep between games.” Definitely advice to heed – we hear those little black and white discs don’t taste so good.