Intellectual Property Rights -- Information

Game Rights

All games under the CARDS, DOMINOES, and DICE tabs were invented by Howard Fosdick © 2015, 2023. Feel free to distribute these rules under the Creative Commons License BY-ND so long as you do not change them in any way or alter their attribution.

I'd love to hear from you about any recommendations for improving my games or this website. Send your feedback to 'webmasterA' at-sign-goes-here 'RexxInfo' a-period-goes-here 'org'.

This website is non-commercial and 100% ad-free.

Picture, Photo, and Clip Art Credits

We thank the World Camelot Federation for their kind permission to use several of their game board drawings and photographs. We highly recommend visiting their website for excellent information on Camelot and its variants.

We thank several websites for free clipart used in the game boards we designed. These clipart libraries are: Cliparts.co, ClipArtMag.com, Pixabay.com, PublicDomainVectors, ClipGround.com, ClipArLibrary.com, FavPng.com, and NicePng.com. Free wallpapers used as background in some boards from: GetWallPapers.com, WallPaperSafari.com.

We thank the inventors of Arimaa and Martian Chess for allowing non-commercial use of their written rules. We urge enthusiasts to buy these games directly from their inventors to reward and encourage them for creating such entertaining and challenging games.

Bent Y printable designs were adapted from backgrounds at Hexwiki listed under CC BY-SA 3.0 license. The brown and white Ringo board appears courtesy of the Bona Ludo Blog. The tan Conspirators board board appears courtesy of Wikipedia By Ihardlythinkso CC BY-SA 3.0. Both Chinese Checkers boards appear courtesy of ClipArtKey.com. The black background board is courtesy of Rafa Delannon, the white background board from Kazunari Utsunomiya.

Credits for pictures of Romans playing board games: (1) earlyworksweebly.com (2) aerobiologicalengineering.com (3) arthistoryresources.net (4) crystalinks.com (5) classroomadventures.co.uk.

Original Art

The three drawings of the chipmunks playing cards, dominoes, and dice are original artworks by Chicago-based Kristin Swain.

Kristin caused quite a stir a few years ago. When the historic building in downtown Chicago at 209 West Lake Street was refurbished, workers knocked out a wall... only to find a second brick wall covered with an astounding full-sized mural!

The artwork depicted several goddesses in various incarnations. Some appeared strict and matriarchal, while others floated as if ethereal and angelic. Behind them strode wide-eyed dragons, alertly guarding their female masters.

Art experts determined that the work was likely a lost masterpiece by world-famous Austrian painter Gustav Klimt (1862-1918). Eventually, the real, forgotten story finally emerged. Kristin Swain had been commissioned to create the mural two decades earlier for a long-defunct nightclub. Along with assistants Peggy Robinson and Rob Soller, Swain free-handed the gigantic mural "in the style of Klimt." Somewhere along the way, between changes in property ownership and a rehab that covered up the original art, the history of the mural and who had created it was lost.

Needless to say, we're thrilled Kristin has permitted us to post her orginal artwork on this website.

All other paintings on this website are public domain works by deceased artists.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to all who intensively play-tested these games over a period of many years, and who provided advice and encouragement for developing this book: Jim Adams, Michael Adams, Bill and Janet Backs, Brian Delaney, Lisa Dimberg, Lisa Dziadosz, Florence and Lee Fosdick, Brenda Holmgren, Jennifer Holmgren, Jessica Klein, Dr. Laura F. Murray, Pat and Roma, Priscilla Polk, Kate Robinson, Peggy Robinson, Dr. Elizabeth Rovelli, Austin Stewart, Theresa Stewart and family, Kimberly Vermilya, Max Vermilya, Dr. Sandra S. Wittstein, and JW.

A special shout out to my faithful writing companion Schnappsi. Long may he run.

And Pippy, Vandy, Phoebe Jane, and Josie... never forgotten.

I wish to acknowledge a few special individuals, all now deceased, who inspired me to write this book: Brian P. Delaney, Mrs. Dickle, Florence Fosdick, Lee Fosdick, Orlando Carmelo Scarnecchia, Carol Whitcomb, Dr Sandra S. Wittstein, and especially Ms. Schnobrich. I remember. Thank you.

Computers and Software

I developed this novel solely on computers I rescued from the trash and refurbished. I installed free "open source" software to create a platform fully competitive with commercial offerings. No proprietary software was used.

I gratefully acknowledge the developers of the free software I used:

• Linux -- Open source operating system

  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux)

• Mint -- A Linux version or "distribution"

  (www.LinuxMint.com)

• Xfce -- A user interface for Linux that runs well on older computers

  (http://xfce.org)

• Bluefish -- HTML editor

  (http://bluefish.openoffice.nl)

• Bluegriffon -- HTML editor

  (http://bluegriffon.org)

• KompoZer -- HTML editor

  (http://kompozer.net)

• SeaMonkey Composer -- HTML editor

  (www.seamonkey-project.org)

• HTML, CSS -- Languages for creating web pages

  (http://html.spec.whatwg.org/ and http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS/#css)

• HTML, CSS Validators -- Tools for creating correct web pages

  (http://validator.w3.org/ and http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/)

• Firefox -- Web browser

  (www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new)

• Chromium -- Web browser

  (http://www.chromium.org/Home)

• Brave -- Web browser

  (http://brave.com)

• Epiphany -- Web browser

  (http://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Web)

• LibreOffice -- A Microsoft-compatible office suite

  (www.LibreOffice.org)

• Impress -- LibreOffice component used to draw the maps

  (www.LibreOffice.org)

• Writer -- LibreOffice component for word processing

  (www.LibreOffice.org)

• Leafpad, vi, others -- Text editors

  (http://sourceforge.net))

• Artha -- English dictionary for definitions and spell-checking that doesn't require a web connection

  (www.artha.sourceforge.net)

• Awk, Sed, Grep, Cut, Tr, others -- Text analysis LC primitives

  (www.gnu.org/software/ and http://sourceforge.net)

• Bash, C, Awk, Rexx -- Programming languages I used for text processing, encoding, and analysis

  (http://sourceforge.net)

• PDFtk, Minuimus -- Toolkits for PDF manipulation and conversions

  (www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit and http://birds-are-nice.me/software/minuimus.html)

• Calibre, Pandoc -- For file conversions, etc

  (https://calibre-ebook.com/ and https://pandoc.org/)

• Gimp -- Primary tool for image manipulation, compression, etc

  (http://www.gimp.org)

• jpegoptim, gueztil, convert, cwebp, simple-scan, xsane, EOM -- Tools for image manipulation, compression, etc

  (http://sourceforge.net)

• Audacity, EasyABC, Midi -- For musical capture, editing, and conversion

  (http://www.audacityteam.org/, http://sourceforge.net/projects/easyabc, and www.midi.org)

• Aisleriot Solitaire, PySolFC Solitaire -- Over 1,000 patience games for tea breaks

  (http://pysolfc.sourceforge.net and http://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Aisleriot)

Websites

Finally, a thank you to several websites covering game theory, statistical analysis, and binomial probability distribution. These were useful in analyzing game design (though the ultimate verification comes only through play): Stat Trek @ stattrek.com, Statistics How To @ statisticshowto.com, and About Education @ statistics.about.com.


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