Sequence lives in a million family cupboards, and I suspect at least half of them belong to people who could not recite a single rule but know exactly which shelf the box is on. That is the secret of it: you learn the whole thing in two minutes, and then you spend the next hour quietly trying to ruin your own grandmother.

It is a deck of cards married to a board printed with those same cards. You hold a small hand, and on your turn you play a card and drop one of your chips onto a matching space. Line up five of your chips, across, down, or diagonally, and you have made a sequence. First to the target number wins. The two eyed Jacks are wild and go anywhere; the one eyed Jacks are little agents of chaos that let you pluck a rival’s chip right off the board.

It rides a lovely line between luck and tactics. Your hand is the luck, but where you place it is all you, and you spend the whole game squinting at the board for the line a rival is quietly assembling, then blocking it a heartbeat before it closes. Played in teams it turns genuinely social, partners groaning and grinning as the board fills in around them.

There is nothing fancy here, and that is precisely the charm. It teaches in two minutes, plays with a pair or a whole crowd, and hands everyone from a six year old to a grandparent something to do every single turn. The chips are deeply satisfying to plonk down, and a game rolls along at a friendly, chatty clip.

Are you a build your own line player or a block everyone else menace? Tell me below, and tell me about the sneakiest one eyed Jack you ever played. I am still a little smug about one of mine.

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