Doesn’t Matter If…

Shake Sphere’s Othello has made the news headlines, Dear Reader. Well, it is the silly season…

snoopy tongues.gif

…A cryptic remark in a freudulent conversation…

black (adj.)Old English blæc “absolutely dark, absorbing all light, the color of soot or coal,” from Proto-Germanic *blakaz “burned” (source also of Old Norse blakkr“dark,” Old High German blah “black,” Swedish bläck “ink,” Dutch blaken “to burn”), from PIE *bhleg- “to burn, gleam, shine, flash” (source also of Greek phlegein “to burn, scorch,” Latin flagrare “to blaze, glow, burn”), from root *bhel- (1) “to shine, flash, burn.”

white (adj.) Old English hwit “bright, radiant; clear, fair,” also as a noun (see separate entry), from Proto-Germanic *hwitaz (source also of Old Saxon and Old Frisian hwit, Old Norse hvitr, Dutch wit, Old High German hwiz, German weiß, Gothic hveits), from PIE *kweid-o-, suffixed form of root *kweit- “white; to shine” (source also of Sanskrit svetah “white;” Old Church Slavonic sviteti “to shine,” svetu “light;” Lithuanian šviesti “to shine,” svaityti “to brighten”).

*Ah ‘Shining Words‘, Clicky… /thinks… and forwards and backwards…*

The game Reversi was invented in 1883 by either of two Englishmen (each claiming the other a fraud), Lewis Waterman or John W. Mollett (or perhaps earlier by someone else entirely), and gained considerable popularity in England at the end of the nineteenth century. The game’s first reliable mention is in the August twenty-first 1886 edition of The Saturday Review. Later mention includes an 1895 article in The New York Times: “Reversi is something like Go Bang, and is played with 64 pieces.”

In 1893, the German games publisher Ravensburger started producing the game as one of its first titles. Two 18th-century continental European books dealing with a game that may or may not be Reversi are mentioned on page fourteen of the Spring 1989 Othello Quarterly, and there has been speculation, so far without documentation, that the game has older origins.