Shut the Box

If you are looking for a simple and kind of old school Christmas gift….check this out.  It is one of the Schrafft family’s favorite past times for sure.  Freddy and I first discovered “Shut the Box” while wasting away a rainy afternoon on Nantucket with a few Bloody Mary’s at what used to be the Atlantic Cafe.  We probably played for hours…and looked forward to popping a squat at the bar and playing a few rounds during later trips to the island.  We were both sad to discover a few years later that the Atlantic Cafe (the A.C.) was no longer there…nor was Shut the Box.

Several years later a friend of ours bought me one of our own for Christmas.  I had totally forgotten how much fun it was.  I actually then purchased one for my classroom as it turns out that it’s a great way to learn simple addition math facts.

We introduced the game to Thatch and Finn a while back and they immediately took to it as well.  We’ve clocked some hours playing on the coffee table at home, by the pool at various hotels, and in front of the fire up north.  The boys look forward to it as kind of our thing. I like that it is part luck of the roll…and part strategy. For me it’s a win, win, win with the boys.  They’re practicing their math reasoning, we’re spending some quality time together, and (my personal favorite part) truly anyone can win!

The same friend who bought it for me years ago, sent me a link this fall when a “Four Family Family Shut the Box” became available on Zulily.  So, I obviously bought it for them (us) for Christmas.

They started to play at halftime during yesterday’s Patriots game….so I took a quick video.

Here’s the gist….

1.  One player goes until they can’t go any more.
2. You roll two dice at a time and add up your score
3. You then decide which slots of the box you want to close….to add up to the same number.
4. For example…if you roll a total of 9…you can close just 9, or 8 and 1, or 7 and 2, or 6 and 3, or 5 and 4….or even three slots, like 5 and 3 and 1.
5. You keep rolling and selecting which slots to close….until you roll a number that you can’t make with your remaining numbers.
6. You add up what you have left….and that becomes your score.  For example, if you can’t roll a 7 and you only have slots #8 and #3 left…you can’t go…and your final score is 11.
7. Obviously, the lower your final score the better.

Every once in a while you actually “Shut the Box” and close all the slots…getting a score of zero.

When one person is done, they record their score, and then the next person goes.  We usually play 5-10 rounds and add up our total scores.  The person with the lowest total wins.