Sackson, Sid (1920-2002)

by Bruce Whitehill

Sid Sackson, noted American game inventor and historian, died Wednesday (Nov. 6, 2002), aged 82. He was considered the most prolific, most respected game inventor of the late 1900s, credited with dozens of exceptional games, including such classics as SLEUTH, CAN’T STOP, FOCUS (one of his favorites, also sold as DOMINATION), BAZAAR, METROPOLIS, MONAD, TAKE FIVE, VENTURE, and the game that established him as one of the greats in his field, ACQUIRE.  

Sid invented ACQUIRE in 1962 when he and Alex Randolph, another famous American games inventor now living in Venice, Italy, were asked by the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company to develop a game line for the company. 3M, as the company was popularly known, had a sub division that produced wrapping paper and ribbon, and was looking for a way to expand revenues. What seemed like a strange undertaking at the time turned into, under Alex and Sid’s direction, the first successful production of a series of superior strategy games by an American company.

Besides being a productive inventor, Sid was a games collector and historian. He started accumulating games and compiling information in 1941, around the time when he got married. He and his wife Bernice lived in a small apartment, with very little space to house the growing collection. In the 1930s and ‘40s, many board games were sold as a game board with a separate parts box.   Sid, efficient and well organized, filed the instructions, piled up all the game boards, and made a separate pile of parts boxes, using pencil boxes when the game came with the board and loose implements in a larger box. Then he threw away the boxes. He was, after all, a researcher and did not see himself as a collector. He was not interested in the exterior facade of a game but in how the game played. Movement and strategy.

Sid kept a diary and notebooks, and had a detailed system of notation which allowed him to know where all the parts of a game were kept. Eventually, he and Bernice moved out of their apartment into a house with more space, and Sid began to learn that some of the older games were increasing in value–if they still had their original boxes–so Sid started to keep each game as a complete unit. Now he was a collector.

Sid frequented garage sales and contacted companies asking for copies of their games so he could write about them. He became a games reviewer for Games magazine and attended the International Toy Fair in New York every February. He had such a recognizable presence there, always scribbling in a notebook, having hurried conversations which would end abruptly so he could wander off to the next game booth, and carrying samples of budding entrepreneurs’ first products, which, when the assortment of board and card games became too cumbersome, he would stash under the booth table of colleagues, of whom there were many. He would also cart his prototypes around and arrange meetings with the company representatives from Europe and elsewhere who were scouring Toy Fair for new products.

Sid shared his love for games through a series of books, including Beyond Tic Tac Toe (“New Games to be played with colored pens or pencils”),   Beyond Solitaire, Beyond Competition (“New games for two or more players to win together”), and Calculate! (games to be played using “your calculator–and your wits”), among others. He is best known for A Gamut of Games, which Martin Gardner wrote, in Scientific American, was “the most important book on games to appear in decades,” written “by the country’s leading game inventor.” That book, which included Sid’s own line drawings, was, in 1969, one of the first sources to print the 1904 patent of a game board, signed by inventor “Lizzie J. Magie,” which Sid said “is undoubtedly recognizable to anyone who has ever played Monopoly.” It was years later that historians credited Elizabeth Magie with the creation of the original Monopoly, debunking the myth that Charles Darrow, who copied the game and brought it to Parker Brothers, was responsible for its inception. Most of the games in A Gamut of Games were invented by Sid, such as the better-known FOCUS and HAGGLE. Others were by such noted inventors as Alex Randolph (KNIGHT CHASE) and Claude Soucie (LINES OF ACTION). Soucie’s daughter, Mary Ellen, by the way, married Sid’s son, Dana.

More recently, Klutz Press published The Book of Classic Board Games, “Collected by Sid Sackson and the editors of Klutz Press.” In addition, in 1999, Hasbro (the company that bought out Avalon Hill, which is the company that purchased 3M) re-issued ACQUIRE in a deluxe version; as a tribute to Sid, the name of one of the properties was changed to “Sackson.”

Sid Sackson is survived by his wife, Bernice, his daughter Dale Friedman, and his son Dana. Sid dedicated A Gamut of Games to Bernice for her advice, criticism, game testing, and manuscript typing, and “above all because she has put up with a game nut for all these years.” That was in 1969, and in 2002, they had been married for 61 years! Sid leaves behind a lot of love and respect, along with a tremendous legacy. His wonderful body of work, and Sid himself, will not be forgotten.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••On a personal note, after Sid’s death, I spoke with Alex Randolph, temporarily subjected to a short hospital stay near his home in Venice. “Sid was the first colleague I ever had,” he remarked. Around the time that 3M brought out Sid’s ACQUIRE, Alex invented TWIXT, another classic strategy game. “We were the beginning of 3M.” By the latter part of the twentieth century, more and more smaller American companies were gobbled up, and both Sid and Alex turned to Europe as a marketplace for their games. KOHLE, KIES & KNETE, published in Germany, is considered by some one of Sid’s best games. Many of their finest works have never been produced in the U.S., but some individuals and a few companies, such a Funagain and Rio Grande, have produced or imported many of their games and provided English translations of the rules.

On occasion I would visit Sid at his long-time home in the Bronx, but I always knew I could count on seeing him every year at Toy Fair. He would take the train in, and rush around to see everything he could before having to catch the train back home. In spite of a self-imposed, hurried schedule, he would take time to sit in the press room, talk about the promising games he had seen, ask if I had discovered anything interesting, and chat about life. Sid was a friend and colleague to Alex and myself and to so many others. We will miss him.

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••A little Sid Sackson story:

One evening in Rochester, NY, our usual game-playing contingent had been reduced to only three regulars, with a fourth person who was brand new to the group. Someone had just gotten the new ACQUIRE, so we decided to play it. One of the rules of the new edition was slightly different from the original–I think something regarding the start of the game. The new guy asked why the change was made, and the reason was not obvious to any of us. It was nearly midnight. “We’ll just have to call Sid and ask him,” I declared, whereupon I picked up the phone and began to dial. The face of the new guy showed signs of skepticism. But not only did Sid stay up very late working on his game projects, he actually asked to be called after 11 PM, when he had more time to talk. Sid responded to my question with something about a nearly arbitrary decision that came about from the suggestion of someone at Hasbro, and I thanked him and hung up. The three of us regulars got a kick out of knowing that the new guy would never be sure if I had actually talked to the Sid Sackson, or if we were, more than likely, playing a light-hearted prank on the neophyte.

SID SACKSON
by Bruce Whitehill
From a talk given at the symposium, “Game Authors in Our Time,” at the opening of the Alex Randolph Studios in the Deutsche Spiele-Archiv, Marburg, Germany, May 5, 2006.

Math was always his passion; he wanted to be a math teacher when he was in college, but was told his voice wasn’t good for teaching, so he went into engineering.

Loved to dance; he would dance even if no one else was on the dance floor.

He hobnobbed with celebrities sometimes (and loved it), such as Tony Randall. Shari Lewis came to the house once. Sid shared a TV spotlight with Omar Sharif.

Wife Bernice said Sid was a very interesting person to live with, …always had time for people, ….a bit of a temperament. He liked racy jokes, liked certain comedians, was serious, very political, very liberal. When working on a project, he would be totally absorbed, and his family knew to leave him alone and let him work.

The success of video games got Sid very depressed.

I asked Bernice, “Are there any funny stories?”

She replied: “I wish there were.”  Sid was kind of a serious person.

Sid wrote on the back of papers he picked up from work.  Notes and mathematical computations for his (prototype) game of MATCH STIX were written on the back of an 8” x 5” Commandant’s Order dated July 20, 1943 from the United States Navy Yard.  His large, paper gameboard for his (prototype) game of PROJECTILES was hand drawn on the back of a map for “Proposed Parking Meters” in the Borough of Richmond, NY, dated June 16, 1949.

Sid was a games collector and historian.  He started accumulating games and compiling information in 1941.  In the 1930s and ‘40s, many board games were sold as a game board with a separate parts box. Sid, efficient and well organized, filed the instructions, piled up all the game boards, and made a separate pile of parts boxes, using pencil boxes when the game came with the board and loose implements in a larger box.  Then he threw away the boxes. He was not interested in the exterior facade of a game but in how the game played—its movement and strategy.

Email from a stranger to Sid’s daughter after his death:

“I wish that you may find some comfort in playing the wonderful games of your Daddy.  Sid Sackson was my favorite game author but I imagine him now sitting in heaven and teaching the angels to play good games.   –Berit”

Sid invented ACQUIRE in 1962 when he and Alex Randolph were asked by the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company to develop a game line for the company.  3M, as the company was popularly known, had a subdivision that produced wrapping paper and ribbon, and was looking for a way to expand revenues.  What seemed like a strange undertaking at the time turned into, under Alex and Sid’s direction, the first successful production of a series of superior strategy games by an American company.