Oh What A Time... - #106 Games (Part 1)

Episode Date: April 13, 2025

Come with us, as we roll the dice and shoot a podcasting bullseye as today we’re discussing: games. We’ve got a brief history of chess, the game of life (as in, the board game) and.. the word gams dvlopd by a collction of Frnch xperimental writrs in tha 60s.And why on earth did we as a civilisation take so long to get round to inventing the bicycle? And why were the bicycle prototypes so bad? And has anyone else ever been to the Segway Olympics? Questions we’re desperate for you to answer, which you can do at: [e-mail] you fancy a bunch of OWAT content you’ve never heard before, why not treat yourself and become an Oh What A Time: FULL TIMER?Up for grabs is:- two bonus episodes every month!- ad-free listening- episodes a week ahead of everyone else- And much moreSubscriptions are available via AnotherSlice and Wondery +. For all the links head to: ohwhatatime.comYou can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom xSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wanderi Plus subscribers can listen to episodes of Oh What A Time early and ad free. Join Wanderi Plus in the Wanderi app or on Apple podcasts. Hello and welcome to Oh What A Time, the history podcast where we contemplate things like this. This fact that I, Ellis has inspired me with his cycling and I've refurbished my bicycle, started cycling myself. Yes! Two nurseries. Morning and evening, my quads getting thicker every day and I can't help but think

It took us a while to get around to the bicycle, didn't it? Yeah. It kind of blows my mind that the ancient Greeks didn't have a bicycle. Yes, and also, the tricycle makes so much more sense. When they made the bicycle, they probably, did they start off with stabilisers, and then someone would have said, I reckon with enough practice we only need two wheels. Feels quite counterintuitive. No, no, no, no, no, no, enough practice and enough falling off. And then when we get there, it will, trust me, it'll be worth it.

It's also funny that along the way we went through the penny farthing as well. That was part of the process. There was a stage where we thought that's the way it falls. It took us ages to figure out why don't we have the same wheel on the front and back? Yeah. Like how did we start with massive front wheel, tiny, tiny back wheel? There was one called something like a bone crusher or a bone shaker maybe. Okay. It doesn't...

Is that robot? That was it. The bone... Sorry, there was another one called Sergeant Chaos. It was called the Velocipede and it was nicknamed the Bone Shaker and it was a kind of bike dating back to the 1860s. Now if someone said to me there's this cool new thing, I suppose the last one would have been either electric scooters or what are they called?

You get them at the Olympics and stuff. Segways. Okay, yeah. You don't get a segway at the Olympics. Yeah, that's a very weird link there. Did someone con you in thinking you were at the Olympics when you were watching the segway race? No, not as an event. You see cameramen with...

If I was watching very popular daytime TV show Pointless and the subject was name things you see at the Olympics. No, you see... No one is saying segway. No, there's the guy on... He runs over a Usain Bolt after he's just won a race. Have you seen this? Oh yes, I have seen this.

No, what happened? Yeah, he's the cameraman on a Segway. Usain Bolt is just 100 metres and the guy loses control of his Segway and runs over him. Almost globbers the world's greatest ever athlete. Great. It's good TV though. You know the story about how the inventor of the Segway died? He fell off a cliff on a Segway.

Is there an episode in people getting destroyed by their own inventions? Oh yes, the Hoist by the Rumpitardin episode. Yes. Because the first bike, or a very early bike was known as the Bone Shaker and you just think, you can't sell it to me if that's the name. I'm like, no, I'm fine actually. Can we have a word with the marketing department? We need a better name here.

I'll carry on walking actually. Do you know what? I can't imagine how bad the Bone shaker is because in 2025, I still think bike suspension isn't good enough. Can you imagine 100 years ago? No suspension. Also bumpier roads. Much, much bumpier roads. We now are blessed with tarmac back then. Not yet be a brain shaking, everything would be shaking. The brain shaker. My worry as well. Obviously, classic marketing is you would play down any faults. So it suggests that if they're leading with bone shaker,

then I'm thinking it's worse than just shaking bone. It's actually a bone breaker. Exactly, yes. Do you want to go on my new invention, the bone breaker? The spine crumb. Yeah. We've said this before, by the way, I still love an electric bike. Find a normal bike quite annoying. I just don't think there's a need for a normal bike anymore with the invention of the electric bike. We've had this discussion before, but I stand by it. But I've seen your body, Tom, and it makes me sick. I've actually lost a stone, El. Yeah, and you're too weak and thin now.

Oh, we could do an oh what a time cycling holiday. Me and Chris on proper bikes and Tom on a bloody electric scooter or whatever. And every day you'll meet me at the bar at whatever seaside town we're cycling to next and I'll have been there for six hours and I'll be hammered. Didn't even need to have a shower. Straight to the restaurant. You say Chris, you go to drop off on your bike. There is a parent where I live in Clapton who takes their child to nursery in the front of a line bike and they put the child in the green basket in the front of the line bike. Wow. They stick them in.

Like ET. Like ET. I'm not sure about that. Actually, it doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel quite... It feels very, very 80s. Yeah. It's really stuck in. The legs are sort of arched over the front of the basket. Oh my gosh, the legs are out. Yeah, the legs are loopy, it's really crushed in.

So if you come off that, you're not falling at a normal angle. There's not any chance to save yourself if you're the one stuck in the bucket. Would you ever say something to someone like that? Well I don't know them and it's also not the nursery that my child goes to, so I'd be stopping someone who I have no link to. You're a million miles away from this. Yeah. Well then even better. You're a million miles away from this. Yeah. Well then even better.

You're just a good Samaritan. You probably wouldn't even crop up on the WhatsApp group. And also, and this doesn't help the situation, it does suggest, I really should say something, they are always going pass at pace. And they smell of weed. So I need to. Yeah, leap in the way. Doing wheelies.

Yeah. Absolutely. Well, I just find it astonishing that bicycles weren't invented until when they were. It blows my mind. Pythagoras, in my mind's eye, is the kind of guy going around on a bike. I imagine in ancient Greece, everyone's going around on bicycles, but of course that did not happen. Yeah.

You would blow their minds. And that just feels alien to me. There's a bit of me that thinks the ancient Greeks had bikes. What did they have then? They had the horse. They had the horse and cart. They had the Segway Olympics. Of course they invented it.

They had their legs, of course. They were using their legs in the way that we do just to walk around, a bit of running as well, a bit of jogging. I don't think they were jogging, were they? Oh no, jogging you said it was like an 80s adventure. Yeah, 60s certainly. Also, it would look crazy, I think. If you'd been born in a time before bicycles, if you saw loads of people cycling around, it would look... it doesn't make sense because there's only two wheels. You would just assume that they were magic people rather than it's actually quite an easy thing to balance on a bike and not as hard as it looks.

Because I've taught my kids to ride a bike. Initially, when you let go of the seat in a method that hasn't changed for decades, it is a slight leap of faith for both child and parent. Yeah. Because it is still counterintuitive, unless of course you're like me and you're Wales's most talented cyclist. And I do include Geraint Thomas in that. It's worth saying, by the way, before we move on with the show, the reason that Chris has been inspired by Elle, Elle has cycled amazing work from Swansea to Newport. Swansea to Newport.

To direct people's eyes towards a very important website. So why don't you talk about that now because it's an important thing. I will. It was a British Heart Foundation campaign, but they're not trying to raise money. They're trying to raise awareness for the Reviver page on the British Heart Foundation website. So it teaches you CPR and how to use a defib. So their target is to get 270,000 people to do this. You can do it on your phone, takes under a quarter of an hour. And you learn how to do CPR, you learn how to use a defib. You do like a simulated phone call with 999,

and then you set your phone up and via the camera can tell whether you're doing the compressions properly. You get a certificate at the end. It's a really, really useful thing. So revive on the British Heart Foundation website, which is why I did it. Is it lame that I'm quite excited about the fact you get a certificate at the end? No, it's on our fridge. Yeah.

I'm a very simple person and the idea of a certificate still feels quite exciting. Popped out there and actually a bronze swimming certificate, Tom? Exactly. Yeah. My daughter, when we went on holiday and she was in the little creche thing and she got the frozen chip award for being a cool customer. That was her first certificate. Do you still have that?

No, but I remember feeling quite proud of her, even though basically it just meant that she hadn't made much of a fuss. I've still got some GCSE certificates just behind me I found the other day. Have you? What'd you do if you came over to my house and I framed them? I would say, until my mid-twenties I'd achieved so little in life, the frozen chip award would still be on my CV. Any national record of achievement?

And not far down either. It's quite high. Oh my god, you're right, love of results. You're Jesus of your results. You're frozen chip award. You're job at Sainsbury's. And that is in that order. Because who doesn't want to employ a cool customer as well?

Imagine all these top industrialists and business people. They're sitting around. They're like, who should we employ? Well, this is an interesting looking CV from a tea crane in Bath. Oh my God, he's won a frozen chip award. I'm imagining that scene in The Apprentice where Claude, or his name is going through your business proposal and your CV. I can't help but notice you've put down the frozen chip award because you're a cool customer. Do you want to explain that? You're 42. Do you want to talk me through that?

Mr Sugar, he's won the Frozen Chip Award. You're hired. Lord Sugar. Right. This, of course, is a history show, so it only feels right that we do a little bit of history. Before we get into that, should we do a bit of correspondence? Should we do that? Oh, yes please. Let's go. Great, great, great.

Okay, this is from Chris in Pontepoel. Hello, huge fan of the show. I've got a strange piece of history linking to the Lost Property episode. This absolutely staggered me, by the way, so I'm really looking forward to our listeners hearing this. Before the early 20th century, men used to have a shave at the barbers. This changed when Gillette invented the at-home razor. Have either of you had a shave at the barbers before? Yes. No, but it's something I've thought about doing. I'm quite tempted by it. Yeah, I've been to the Turkish barbers, had the old fire. You had the fire?

What, in your ears? Burn your nose and your ear hair? Yeah. How does that work then? What is that? I don't know. Okay. They light, there's definitely fire. There's definitely the smell of burnt hair.

It doesn't hurt. That's all I can tell you. Okay. I've had a shave, I've had it once. And it is lovely. It's really, really great. Yeah. Is it smoother than what you achieved?

Way smoother. And I didn't have to shave for about four days afterwards. So they seem to be plucking hair from below the skin somehow. I don't know how they were doing it. In homes in the USA, medicine cabinets were usually installed directly into walls and a slot was added to dispose of your used razor blades for safety. Oh that's clever. They often, however, did not install a way of getting the blades out, meaning that the

blades would accumulate in the wall. When people moved or decorated and new people moved in, often this was forgotten, until a bit of DIY happened and someone knocked through a wall, releasing often hundreds of old used razor blades over the new house owner. Not exactly the crown jewel, but still quite frightening, Chris and Pranthapool. I mean, people must have been injured horribly. Yeah. Absolutely.

That's terrifying. How? That seems like such an obvious design flaw as well. Yes, such an oversight. The fact that you can't get them out. It's not like a money box. You shouldn't have to smash your medicine cabinet to get things out of it. You're putting your razor blade in and you're like, yeah, there that goes. I won't see that again and I can't see that ever coming back to haunt me or anyone who lives in this house ever. Bye then.

Would you ever do that thing, if you've got some building work, like maybe there's a wall or like a flooring going in, would you ever do that thing of getting a skeleton? Like a little fake skeleton and put it in there for a future homeowner to discover as they knock through and build something else. They have that moment of terror. You've used the phrase there, would you ever do that thing? Like it's a thing that people do with any particularity. The old skeleton trick. Yeah. Nobody's done that. I once stripped the wallpaper off a wall in the houses that live out, was painting it.

And it was like, Kath and Steve were here in 1975. You ever seen that on a bit of like plasterboard or something? Oh, I love that. Yeah. The old home archaeology. That's nice. That's nice. That's a nicer version of razor blades in a wall.

Do you remember, El, when I went to see a flat in Cardiff down near Chippy Alley? Now, anyone who lives in Cardiff will know what Chippy Alley is. It's a famous street you go to after a night out. Anyway, there's a flat there, went into the flat and on the floor was the visible shape of where a body had been. Like a outline, like a shadow shape of someone on the floor. And I said to them, what is that on the floor? He said, I'm not allowed to tell you what that is. Which is not good enough from the estate agent's point of view.

But there was some kind of thing about they weren't sure about what. So legally, it was a really weird situation. Something had happened, obviously obviously not that long ago. It was still- That phrase, I can't tell you. Exactly what the, yeah, yeah, exactly. It's a long way behind.

The thing is, you were one flat away and one experienced with a ghost away of doing a great poltergeist podcast. If you'd moved in and you'd been haunted by the person who died there, you would have got thousands of hours of content out of it. A paranormal podcast, they're big, Danny Robbins and Kanye is a big pot, Tom. You bloody idiot. Here's the storyline, El, okay? Here's the drama. You move into a flat. There's a funny

outline on the floor. Clearly somebody's died there. Haunting noises, poltergeisty moving of things. They died of a heart attack, they lived above Chippy Alley. It was always going to happen. The ghost floats in. Yes, you're in a haunted flat. Your challenge as a main character in this drama now- To finish everything on the menu in Dorothy's. It can't be done. Is to find out who killed them. They were hit from behind, they don't know who did it. So it's you or your, you are now, they're one chance, going out into the world to find out who killed this guy.

With a buttered sausage. And then they'll leave the flat and the flat's yours after that. Oh yes. If you can find out who killed them, then they are willing to sort of scarper and you can just have the flat as a nice one. That's right, you're one of the great writers of the 21st century. That took you seconds. of scarper and you can just have the flats of my schwa. That's why you're one of the great writers of the 21st century. That took you seconds.

There you go. Anyway, I'm looking for 1.5 million. Battered with a sausage. Right, that's an amazing fact that I would say the slot to put your disposable razors is something I could quite happily have in the house now if there was a way of getting rid of them because they end up sort of like, I've got, I open, I've got a little shelf in my thing where they end up pining up a bit until I eventually dispose of them.

But I'll move on to a new one and I stick them up there. But actually a little slot to put them in for a while is quite a good idea and could be brought back. That would be a useful addition to the contemporary household for what it's worth. Also, they were just blades in those days. They weren't like the protected ones nowadays. Oh were they? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The old fashioned, old fashioned razors. I used to use one at one point. They're

sort of, there's actually like a hipster-y shaving community. There are shaving forums online where you use badger hair brushes and things and shaving soap rather than shaving foam bought from a supermarket and a Mac 3. We use like the proper ones like the barber would use. But those ones... What's this hipster... Are they forums? What is this hipster community? It's just loads of people who like being clean shaven and writing about it on forums. And ridiculous mustaches. You mean you've never been on a hipster shaving forum online? I'm going to be honest, it sounds a bit like the Segway Olympics. I'm not sure this is real.

And what happened with the Segway Olympics? I was right. One of them knocked over Usain Bolt. Well, I'm a proud member of the mainstream Gillette shaving community. What a loser. What a loser. Right. If you have anything you want to email into

the show, that was a great fact, by the way. Thank you very much for that email. Do get in contact. You can get in contact with One Day Time Machines, interesting facts that relate to things we've talked about in the past, amazing relatives from history, whatever. Floats your boat. And here's how you get in contact with the show. Alright you horrible lot, here's how you can stay in touch with the show. You can email us at hello at earlwatertime.com and you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Oh What A Time, Pud. Now clear off. So today's episode is about games in their various forms. So what are you guys talking about later today? Later in the show, I'll be talking about post-war France

and how a group of experimental writers invented a series of word games, which they then deployed across a whole range of literature. I'll be talking about how Abraham Lincoln shaving directly led to a games empire. Oh, yeah. Amazing, that's exciting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Abraham Lincoln, just like me, a part of the hipster shaving community. Because he's on the forum as well, isn't he? Yeah, yeah. A underscore Lincoln on the shaving forums. And I am going to be talking to you first of all about a game that I absolutely love. I'm going to be talking to you about the history of chess. Oh okay. Now I've become properly obsessed with chess this last year.

I really have. So much so that I've bought a special board, which means that I can play other people elsewhere in the world who also have that board. It shows you where their pieces are to move. I'm thinking of buying a new board, which moves the pieces as well. So when I play them, their pieces will just move magically with magnets as if I'm playing them face to face. And I also play on this website called chess.com, although I'm trying to do that less because it's more screen time and I don't think that's particularly healthy. But I really I love chess.

Are you good? Because I'm rubbish at chess and I've never been good. I've improved a lot. But I don't have the sort of mathematical logical brain that means I'll ever be really good at it. I'm sort of, I'm good through repetition and enjoyment. You're probably as a cameo. You're not tracking back. But I know. I'm, in the scheme of things, rubbish, but I'm much better than I was a year ago and I can play Casually Gets People and I do really enjoy it.

I even have an opening now, a particular opening that I play. Do you? All these sort of things. What? Hello, how are you? I say, how does the horse move again? It's weird, isn't it? It does look like a castle, doesn't it? Tom, when you're playing with the magnet board, is it like, is that not like playing a ghost? So you're moving and then the other guy is just like, the piece is just, that's crazy. Yeah. Well, this is literally only just, this has only just come out now. It's quite expensive, but I'm thinking of saving up and treating myself to do it. Mainly because I'm on screen at the moment. I think anything where

you're trying to relax while staring at a screen isn't necessarily good. You play a bit there now, do you? I mean, I've played with my daughter. She beats me and I'm trying my best. So that's our bad. I don't know if the attention's fun to be good at chess, and she does. And she teamily beats me. I used to be in a chess club, but I find it a bit of a headache. Okay. Let's see. Let's test how much you know. How does a horse move then, Chris? What direction does the horse move then, Chris? What direction does the horse move?

With its legs! L-shape, I do know that much. What does en passant mean? You know what that means? No. And? Well, that's a weird little thing, which is where if the person makes their pawn jump forward two spaces that they can with its first move. Oh yeah. And you happen to be close to it, you can jump into the space it's jumped across, as if it's there, and capture it. There you are. So that's a weird little... Is that a rule? ...leash move. It is a rule which you can use on your daughter,

because your daughter won't know that. Yes. And I will destroy her! Exactly, exactly. Battered. And final thing, Chris, do you know why the horses move in that L shape? Do you know? No, couldn't tell you why.

Because in history, back in the day, that is how horses used to move until we trained them. In L shapes? They would always move forward and then slightly to the left or slightly to the right, and then we taught horses to move in a straight line. That can't be true. I'm calling it horseship. Of course it's not true.

No, it's absolute rubbish. Now... That can't be true. Of course it's not true. No, it's absolute rubbish. Now! But the pause of silence worries me that you took that impossible. I mean, I'm still not entirely sure it's not true. I actually believe it now. Yeah. You do? Okay, so maybe I'm the fool for not believing it. For thinking it's a joke.

I can't wait to tell Izzy that tonight. Do you know about bloody horses? We taught them how to run in a straight line. Well that can't be true. Oh yeah? Have you ever played chess, Izzy? You can tell a castle used to be on wheels as well, that's why they can move straight down the board.

And kings are very heavy, that's why they can barely move. Now chess, of course, is a game that has captured the imagination of people throughout history from people such as Ivan the Terrible. I think I'm not really pushing myself to win that game. You're going to really... No. If you see checkmate against Ivan the Terrible, are you going for it? Oh, yeah. Bloody on again. Oh, God. Oh yeah, bloody on again. Oh god. There's also people like Charles Dickens, love chess. US presidents John F. Kennedy,

Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter, in fact, had his own specially carved set, which he auctioned off to raise funds for charity work in the early 1990s. He really loved the game, had this special set made for himself. Benjamin Franklin as well, he even wrote books on the subject. When we were students, there was a scheme designed to get graduates into teaching. Do you remember this? No, what was it? And if you did a PGC after graduating, I think you were given six grand. Okay.

And a friend of mine did this, and he spent a large proportion of the six grand on a very, very ornate chess set. And I saw him a few months later, and he was eating beans out the tin. He was like, that was a mistake. Because I'm not actually that into chess. I just went mad when I saw that man in the mech. Was it at least a sort of beautiful or night traditional one? Or was it one of those really lame ones like Star Wars theme that people will spend a grand on? No, it was it was, it sort of looked like like a, it was like they were all made of gold, the figures were made of glass or

something. It looked, but it was very expensive. Do you know what the best chess set is? The garden large chess set. Do you know what I mean? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. The big one. That's the best kind of chess. Nothing, nothing is not improved by being garden sized.

Like Jenga towers. You've made it. All these gaps. If your garden's big enough to have like a massive chess set in it. Like chessboard in it. You're definitely... We have well we have a life size mousetrap in our garden, which is quite... remember that game? But we did we did have one. Growing up near where I grew up in the West Country, there was a life size version of mousetrap.

Was there? In a sort of like amusement thing. Yeah, it was, it was more for you climb over the bits and it was function. But it was like a thing you could climb over. Did anyone ever actually play the game Mousetrap or just set up the Mousetrap? It's the worst game in the world. We had it and I had to throw it out and pretend to my kids that I just don't know where it is, but I threw it out. Setting it up is impossible. It's so stressful. It's the opposite of fun. Because every time you get it slightly wrong, one thing knocks into another thing. Yeah, it's just, yeah, it's unbearable.

So the history of chess, it stretches back over a thousand years. It's got a direct ancestor in a game called Chaturanga, which is a board game which was invented in India sometime in the 600s CE. From India, this game then spread east and west. It was brought to new audiences by traders, by land, by sea, by religious missionaries. And interestingly, each time the game of Chaturanga was introduced to a new place, it would spawn a fresh version which kind of related to the area it was in basically, and then that eventually developed and led

to the game we now known as chess. So here's some examples along the way. The Persians had a version called Chantraj. In Byzantium it was called Zatrichion. In East Asia, each civilization which encountered Chaturanga developed the game into something particularly local. So in China, Korea, Japan, they all had their own versions, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam.

Each area had a variant of this game, Chaturanga, which is the game which in time became chess. And by the early 14th century in England, it's amazing how long this has been around, it was known as chess. So since the 14th century in England, it was called chess or the game of chessmen. And in Wales, and I might be pronouncing this wrong, L, it was called siess. Am I pronouncing that right? Yes. What was it? Because Gwyddybwyll is the modern Welsh name for chess. Okay, yes. So 14th century. I think that's what I love about the game chess is that it's been around

so long that it's been, it just works. It's brilliant. It really is like a, it's an art form, it's like a language you can really learn and you really improve in time as you do it as well. I think the idea is very nice that you could play a game against someone who was born 500 years ago and the rules are the same. Yeah, exactly. Because, you know, sort of the laws of most sports have changed a lot. I mean, they fiddle with the rules of football and rugby all the time. But chess, I think, is chess is chess.

No one's going, let's throw VAR into chess. But there was an adaption. Who's the world champion? Is it Magnus Carlsen? Magnus Carlsen, yeah. He played someone who was accused of cheating. Did you hear about this story? Yes.

And they were accused of cheating because they thought they had some sort of buzzer inserted into their anus. That's right, like a sort of vibrating butt plug. Yeah, that's true. Now, you couldn't get away with that in the 14th century. It's just not happening. It's because he was screaming every time he went to make a move. So there is innovation around the game of chess. Also, Deep Blue was a chess-playing supercomputer. Yeah. And I read Andrew Marr's history.

I thought that was the name of the book. But I read Andrew Marr's history of the world and the last two or three pages is devoted to Deep Blue because it beat Garry Kasparov, who is the best chess player in the world. And what was so incredible about it was a computer had beaten a person. And I think the first time it played Garry Kasparov, he won. And then the second time, in 1997, it was like a six game match and it beat him over six legs. And people were really, were excited. What does this mean for humanity that the computers we've invented are now cleverer than us? Completely. So it's like a milestone in AI. And there's a very funny half and half biscuit lyric where he expects Deep Blue to

get overseas BBC sports personality. Love that. There's a thing called Stockfish now, which is an even more advanced version of that, which basically analyzes to a level way beyond human possibility, obviously. But that's the thing. It's such an endlessly complex game. That's what's exciting about it, why every game is slightly different because there's so, there's just like infinite options after every move. So it's great. Will Barron I think it's quite sweet to into that. Like Izzy's massively into Scrabble. And plays Scrabble with friends and online and all that

kind of stuff and loves it. Will Barron Yeah. So we can trace the arrival of chess into Europe via trade routes, through diplomacy as well, and also lines of conquest from Persia through to the Arabic speaking world in Spain, France, finally Northern Europe. And initially it was established amongst the wealthy elites. Now, do you want to guess why initially in England it was really the wealthy elites that played this game? Was it you could play it in the evenings when it's dark because they were able to light their houses?

That's a lovely idea. It's actually simpler than that. Can I guess? Yes. Chess pieces are actually quite expensive to build. Yes, that's exactly it. Because the wealthy could afford to buy these finely carved chessmen. Because of course at that point they all had to be carved by hand.

Everything had to be done by an individual. This wasn't mass produced chess sets that you get today. Everything had to be made as a piece of art, essentially. Same with the chess boards. Something like the pieces carved with Christel and Jasper, which were given to Eleanor of Castile by her husband, Edward Longshanks, in 1286. So very ornate, very expensive boards. So initially, this was embraced by her husband, Edward Longshanks, in 1286. So very ornate, very expensive bores.

So initially this was embraced by the wealthy because that's who could afford to play the game. Soon the game then spread though into all walks of life and eventually it was played everywhere from posh country houses to taverns and even in monastic cloisters. Now, there's an interesting story here in 1324, the monks of Avebury Priory in Wiltshire, they treated themselves to a chess set to help relieve themselves of their apparent loneliness and isolation with the inventory, entry surviving forever after. So it is 1324. And it's got me thinking about that. At a time when, you know, there's no Netflix, there's none of these things to fill your time, especially when you're in a monastery, the endless hours that spread in front of you. A chess set must

be such a sort of revolutionary thing in the way you experience, like the ability to play and have fun, games as an adult as well, must be huge. Yeah, and one that's aimed at adults as well as children. That's genius because you can play chess against little kids and they love it. Yeah, and one that's aimed at adults as well as children. That's genius because you can play chess against little kids and they love it. Yeah, absolutely. It's amazing how classic it is. I mean, how long has it been around? 600, 700 years. No one is playing mousetrap in 600 years, even though on the face of it, it is more exciting. What is something about chess that is fundamentally good? I don't, but it's so simple.

Nobody's playing mousetrap after setting it up once, I can tell you that. After one set of a mousetrap, you're done. Peterborough Abbey, okay, they took it up a level. They added books on the game to its library. In the 13th century, visitors noted the popularity of chess in the abbeys of Gloucester and Hexham in Northumberland, so it's really starting to spread.

But the branch of society's love for chess that we can most easily trace, and this is interesting, is the Royal Family. And the reason for that is because they keep such detailed records, records which still survive today. Now would you like to hear about one of the most cushy jobs in history? Now we've talked about on this show a lot about jobs from history you'd fancy. I think this is possibly the best one. This is the easiest job I've ever heard of. Is it Queen Victoria's chessboard polisher?

You are so close, El. Chris, like to take a guess? I couldn't get it. Like the chess arranger? Ding ding ding, 100 points to Chris Skull. In the reign of Edward III, during the 14th century, there was a special appointment for someone whose job was to set up the king's chess set and put it away when he was finished. Now that I can do! And for that, El, his name was Sir William Russell, he was given a house to live in just a few miles west and he would come and set up the chess set and put it away again. That was his job and he got a house to live in just a few miles west and he would come and set up the chess set and put it

away again. That was his job and he got a house. Trekkie's like working for the fire brigade and you're just sitting there waiting for something to happen and then the bell goes and you've got to go down a pole and you've got to set up a chess board really, really quickly. Imagine how good that guy is at setting up a chess board. It'd be like a sommelier, but for chess. It'd be like this guy has got chess stories, chess knowledge, a bit theatrical in the way he lays out the pieces. Imagine how mortifying it'd be though, Chris, if you've plagued the interview and then it's day one and you're in front of the king and you don't know where he is. You've never seen a chessboard in your life.

They're all in the middle. But do you think that job has actually got... Do you think he's got to put the puzzles away at the end of a day, set the mousetrap up? He's got to do Jenga as well. He's got to do Monopoly. Garden Jenga. Community chess is mixed up with the money. He's like, oh bloody hell.

This job's a flipping nightmare. There's quite a sweet note to this, which is apparently his busiest day was Christmas Day, they say, this is when he was especially needed. Well, that's not ideal, is it, working on Christmas Day? You want to be with your family. He's got to set the PlayStation up, download, or the latest software, tearing his hair out, the King's going, come on, it's nearly,

I'm serving lunch in a minute, I want to play FIFA. I'm doing a speech at three. It's a good job though, isn't it? I'm serving lunch in a minute. I want to play FIFA. Yeah. I'm doing a speech at three. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha a dozen chess sets, all with their accompanying chessmen, as they were called, which were carefully recorded in his wardrobe accounts. It's another game I'm not looking to win. I'm going to let Henry VIII win that one, I think. Also, Catherine Parr, who was Henry's last wife, not only did she play the game, she also used chess as imagery in her writing. Henry's son and heir, Edward VI, he had his own set in a toy box, so he was starting young, like your daughter, Elle. Elizabeth I, she loved the game, owned several chess sets of her own. And later still,

Charles II realized that he could make money by adding import tariffs onto boards and pieces. That's how popular it was by that time. And with this ecclesiastical and royal patronage, it's basically no surprise that chess thrived as an upstanding activity. Here's a really sort of interesting side note, which I'm surprised it sort of snuck through. During the religious wars of the 17th century, when Puritans were basically getting rid of anything fun, okay, anything fun was banned by the Puritans. Chess avoided being banned as it was seen as an upstanding recreation, whereas things like football, or old football as it was then, and dice were not. They were seen as habits of the lower orders. Chess was allowed to continue. So chess was one of the few things you could do during the years of the Puritan? I think, sadly, I would have been quite a good Puritan.

No, put that down! Alright, alright, tidy that away! No, no, no, no, no, no, no, stop, stop, stop! Stop that! If you're a Puritan today, El, what three things you ban- What are the main three fun things you're banning from the off? Listening to music on your phone on public transport. Yeah.

Uh, vaping. That's gone. Can you imagine a Puritan today? The amount of stuff you'd have to ban. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's so much more stuff. The internet. Uh, yeah.

Young men walking around with their hands down their trousers. That's gone. Oi! Get those hands where I can see them! Stop fiddling with yourself! You would be a good puritan. Any kind of electronic music? Yes. Basically, the fiddle is the only instrument?

When I've got to tell off my kids, I become ten times more Westwaleian. I adopt a voice that hasn't actually been heard since before I was born. Right, put that down! Proper like, school teacher from Hammanford from about 1968. You become a character! Yeah, it's really weird. I just turned, I don't mean to turn to my dad, I turned to my granddad. What did I say?

That's so strange. What is that? Is that because you're falling into the role? Falling into the role. It's like, this is what I do. It's not me. If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times. Yes.

And then they write their name 100 times on a chalkboard. I will not, what it is, yeah. Yeah, yeah, Yeah. Yeah. My, uh, my daughter said we were in Wales last week and she said, I love coming to Wales. I just love hearing all of the lovely welcoming Welsh accents. Not yours. Amazing.

So as a final point on all of this and its amazing history, the fact that it had this sort of ecclesiastical royal backing is kind of much the reason why for as long as chess has been present in England and anywhere really, but mainly in England, the game has been a metaphor for the class system. That's what's interesting about chess as well. William Caxton introduced printing to England in the 1470s, one of the first books he published, the very first books printed in England, was called The Game and Play of Chess, which was full of spurious details on the history of the game, but more importantly, it was also an allegory for social standing. Similarly, Shakespeare used similar motifs in his play The Tempest. Early Jacobean theatre uses chess to disguise discussions of religious upheaval, international relations, the dangerous belief in the divine right of kings and also on the strata of society. Basically, in other words, chess has always been more than just entertainment.

It's kind of being seen as a guide to behavior, a metaphor for conflict, a mechanism for diplomacy. It's interesting that it's kind of held this deeper meaning and it sort of speaks to who you are, the way you play and all this sort of stuff. This simple board game has become so important, and for so long as well. A thousand years. Isn't that crazy that this has remained important? My daughter loves it. She was born, you know, 10 years ago. She's grown up in a world of screens and the internet and the programs she wants to watch constantly being available. That's the one thing, that's the difference between when we were kids where you had to wait for the good programs to come on.

And then once they were, if you missed them, that was that. You know, she's got all this entertainment at her fingertips and there's something about chess that she really, really loves. So yeah, there's got all this entertainment at her fingertips and there's something about chess that she really, really loves. So yeah, there's clearly something to it. I can say, El, that time where you're waiting for the good program is a better time from a parenting point of view. Oh yeah. I think the infinite choice that children have now on streamers and also myself when

I'm trying to choose something is a nightmare sometimes. Whereas if it was just a channel, it was like, okay, Blue Pete is on at this time, that's your option. Yeah, yeah. Also, I think it makes it harder to put adult programs on. Yes. Because when I was a kid, I accepted that there were no children's programs.

So I can either watch the adult programs with my dad or my mum or whatever and be like, oh, well, you know, I'm just wait, you're waiting for news round or bike grove. Whereas now they're like, dad, I don't want to watch this. You've lost your mind. Why are you watching a world cup final when you could be watching an endless, you could be watching endless twirly wolves you crazy Okay, that's the end of part one if you want part two right now You can become an oh what a time full-timer where you get two bonus episodes every month. Access to the full archive of bonus episodes, which will include, very shortly,

in fact it might already be out, Ian Kershaw's biography of Hitler, plus Simon Sharma's Citizens, loads of other book reviews to be enjoyed. You can become a subscriber by going to owhatatime.com and you can subscribe by a Wondery Plus or another slice. Otherwise, we'll see you tomorrow for part two. Bye. Goodbye. I'm gonna go get some food. Follow Oh What A Time on the Wondry app, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts and you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple podcasts. And before you go, tell

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