When Great Britain was under threat of night bombings during World War II, “black-outs” were ordered by the government. Not even streetlights were allowed to be illuminated, as enemy plans would fly low and slow, forcing families to stay indoors. What little light was on inside homes had to be screened in.
What to do during those hours? THE BLACK-OUT BOOK: 500 FAMILY GAMES AND PUZZLES FOR WARTIME ENTERTAINMENT reprints about 200 pages’ worth of the pencil-ready pastimes in which residents would engage in order to pass the time safely and without crushing boredom.
As Mike Brown notes in his introduction, such books by Evelyn August (a pseudonym for then-married couple Sydney and Muriel Box) became highly prized by collectors and traded on schoolyards like baseball cards. Today’s kids wouldn’t have any interest in activities so quaint and, well, non-electrical.
THE BLACK-OUT BOOK collects some of August’s wartime-effort work. There are brainteasers, riddles, cartoons, poems, astronomy lessons, limericks, trivia, quotes, word games and other miscellany, all as presented originally, with vintage illustrations and fonts. August’s style is buttoned-up British as ever, which makes the book radiate with a slight time-capsule charm.
The book is meant to be more of a curio of a historical era, rather than one to actively work. For more old-school fun, I also recommend the recent reissue of the 1920s’ THE BAFFLE BOOK. —Rod Lott
Related posts:
- The Baffle Book: Fifteen Fiendishly Challenging Detective Puzzles
- Snowbound / Games
- The Return of the Black Widowers
- The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps
- Exquisite Corpse: Surrealism and the Black Dahlia Murder
