Shut-the-Box is a dice-based strategic game of chance for one or more players. The game’s components include a counting box with nine numbered tiles and a pair of standard six-sided dice. Players take turns rolling dice, flipping down numbered tiles, and accruing penalty points until they are knocked out of the game; the last player left is the winner. Also called Tric-Trac, Canoga, or Batten Down the Hatches, Shut-the-Box is a game with an enduring, if foggy, history. It seems to have first gained notice as a game played by Hudson Bay Company sailors. Descriptions of the game go as far back as the 12th century, when it was popular with sailors on the English Channel. Although it is now often associated with pirates, no accounts of pirates playing Shut-the-Box are known to exist. But since all pirates began their lives as commercial or naval sailors, it isn’t much of a stretch to imagine Edward Teach (the notorious marketing genius Blackbeard) hoisting a flagon and playing a few rounds between sewing silk pants and bouts of high-seas mayhem.

Figure 6-1. The finished Shut-the-Box set