THE old-fashioned pub has always been a place to play games.

They’re usually darts, chess, skittles, shove-ha’penny or draughts – or maybe the landlord will lend you a pack of cards with a stern nod in the direction of the Betting and Gaming Act, 1964, a copy of which will probably still be displayed where customers can’t read it.

Here are a couple of games that were trendy in the 1970s in the Albert and are overdue for revival.

This one is just a trick, really. First, choose your innocent ‘mark’. Sell the game by telling them it’s a test of concentration.

Take a soft pencil, a piece of paper and a 10p coin. The 10p coin nowadays is the only one with knurls or reeds around the edge. Get your ‘mark’ to draw round the coin on the piece of paper.

Now ask them to keep their eyes closed while they roll the coin down their forehead, along the bridge of their nose and down their chin before placing it back on the piece of paper as near as they can to the circle they have just drawn.

You can repeat the exercise by drawing another circle and getting them to roll the coin from one ear to the other.

With a bit of luck, by the time you’ve finished, your mark’s face will be a mass of graphite lines.

THIS is a good game for four people, each of whom must have a piece of paper and a pen or pencil. One of you could use the pencil from the previous game.

Sit round a table. Each contestant must draw a square divided into 16. Choose a first person and direction of play.

Each person calls out a letter and everyone must decide in which of the 16 squares to place that letter.

The next person chooses a letter and so on until all 16 squares have a letter.

The skill is to create words of two or more letters, which you score horizontally and laterally. High score words would be WEND (4,3,3,2,2) and PART (4,3,3,2).

It’s even possible the evening will not end in noisy acrimony.