Whipple - How to Win Games and Beat People: Demolish Your Family and Friends at over 30 Classic Games with Advice from an International Array of Experts

It is always the case that a lot of people are involved in the creation of a book. That is especially true here. Each chapter required the time, effort, and experience of experts in the field. Not only were they kind enough to talk to me about their jobs and lives, they were also kind enough to do so in the cause of a book about games.

One of the privileges of my day job as a science writer is that I get to chat to people about their lifes work and distill it into 600 words. I long ago realized that someone who is passionate about quantum mechanics, or snails, or stone skipping, is a hugely more interesting interviewee than an A-list actor or a celebrity chef. That theory was proved here.

My only regret is that two experts were left out: Daniel Sheppard on Rubiks cube and Michael Bowling on poker. With both the fault was mine. They were engaging and knowledgeableit is difficult to think, in Sheppards case, of how I could have found someone more qualified than a man who can solve a Rubiks cube blindfolded, in under a minutebut my own talents were lacking: I was unable to transfer their expertise into something comprehensible on the page.

Jamie Joseph at Ebury was all I could have hoped for in an editor: just enough praise to keep my fragile ego happy, and enough gentle suggestions for structural improvements hopefully to keep readers happy, too. He is responsible, along with designers at Clarkevanmeurs Design and illustrator Tiffany Beucher, for overseeing the beautiful final look of the book. Helena Caldon helped get rid of some of the sillier mistakes. Both she and Jamie should be thankful to my wife, who saved a lot of editing and probably a lot of ego massaging, too, by eliminating the more self-indulgent passages and clunkier phrases. Without Sarah Williams this book simply would not be here. She is the perfect agent: efficient, kind, wiseand she doesnt wear red trousers or drink Nespressos.

Finally, I would like to thank The Times of London. Early in my career one of the editors gave me a piece of advice. He said, Whenever important people agree to interviews or invite you to parties, remember they are not talking to you at all. They are talking to The Times .

I owe everything to the paper. Far too many people at Times Towers have helped me get to the stage where I could pitch a book and have a publisher notice for me to name them all, but it would be wrong not to mention several: Ben Preston, Martin Fletcher, and Bronwen Maddox, who gave me my first job; Roland Watson and Emma Tucker, who helped me get my second; and Nicola Jeal, who for a while kept me occupied every Friday finding trends in male beauty products, Great White Sharks in Cornwall, and even self-awareness in Jedward.

It was James Harding who moved me to science, and John Witherow, Fay Schlesinger, and Jeremy Griffin who decided to promote someone whose milieu is research papers about seals having sex with penguins and why dogs defecate in a north-south direction. I am hugely grateful. It is the home news deskDan Parkinson, Mark Sellman, James Burleigh, Andrew Ellson, Devika Bhat, Claire Bishop, Dee Howey, and Robin Staceywho have to live with the daily consequences of that decision. Lastly, massive thanks to Mike Smith and Michael Moran.

Any mistakes are mine and mine alone.

1. Aldrin 2. Saint Barthlemy 3. Arachne

All words are in Merriam-Websters Official SCRABBLE Players Dictionary (4th Edition). Lists compiled by the North American SCRABBLE Players Association (www.scrabbleplayers.org).