About the Games Centre

Why we built it

We believe that keeping the mind active, curious and organised is important at every age, and perhaps most of all as we grow older. Planning ahead, remembering what has happened, weighing one choice against another and seeing a problem through to its end are skills worth looking after. Like any skill, they stay sharper when they are used often and with enjoyment.

Card and puzzle games have exercised the mind this way for generations. A hand of bridge asks you to count, remember, infer and plan, often with a partner. A sudoku rewards patient, orderly reasoning. A crossword draws on memory and language. A game of patience asks you to look ahead. None of these feel like exercise. They feel like a pleasant hour, and that is the point.

How the centre serves that aim

The Games Centre brings bridge, card games, puzzles, word games, mahjong, noughts and crosses, draughts, backgammon and chess together in one place, free to play in your browser with nothing to install, and it is built to keep you thinking:

• Games for every taste and every age. Bridge. Hearts and Rummy, and thirteen solitaires, from Klondike and FreeCell to Spider and Pyramid. Sudoku at three levels. Crosswords set by each club, and Wordgrid, a word game of tiles across and down.
• Always something new. Every deal and every puzzle is fresh. The centre adds new games, puzzles and features as it grows, so there is always a new challenge rather than the same game over and over.
• Company, or a quiet game alone. Play with friends and fellow club members from anywhere, or against the computer whenever nobody else is about. Its players think about the game as a person would, seeing only what their own seat may see.
• Help when you want it, never forced on you. Hints explain what to bid or play and why, so a game is a chance to learn as well as to play.
• Clubs of your own. Each game is played in clubs, each with its own rooms, members, news and noticeboard: somewhere to belong as well as somewhere to play.

Who we are

The Games Centre is built by a small, dedicated team of experienced software developers. We play these games ourselves: we argue over bidding systems, race each other at sudoku and stubbornly replay the solitaire deal we couldn't crack. Chess is a favourite of ours too: a game over lunch, a post-mortem of where it went wrong, and the pleasure of a plan coming together over the board. We built the centre because we believe in what it is for: keeping minds engaged, connected and enjoying themselves, for life.

We hope you enjoy playing here as much as we have enjoyed building it.