OBJECTIFIED
Stock up on sets that are both fun to play and beautiful to display.
Tired of the same Scrabble and tic-tac-toe sets? Designs by Aspinal, Ralph Lauren and others are here to make game night more interesting.
Scrabble Set, Aspinal Scrabble is, of course, a cerebral classic. But if your box has been collecting dust in the closet, then perhaps you need a version that appeals as much to your finely honed aesthetic sense as to your intellectual one. Aspinal’s version includes a handbound leather board that sits atop a red leather tray. Even the little racks where players keep their letters stashed are bound with a topquality hide. Plush. $1,700
Jeux Marble Backgammon Set, Baccarat Backgammon has been around for some 5,000 years, so its board and pieces have been designed every which way. Baccarat tasked Dutch designer Marcel Wanders with sketching up yet another iteration of the age-old game; the result is a set that balances marble and crystal with the occasional pop of bright red. Playful, but not too irreverent, it doubles as a great coffee-table centerpiece when you’re not busy mulling over what chip to move next. $18,000
Pool Table, Bugatti After over a century of manufacturing autos, Bugatti has gone wild and designed a pool table for yachts. Its nautical take on the game is accomplished via gyroscopic sensors, which tell each self-leveling leg to adjust when the ship moves, a process that takes just five milliseconds. The table’s façade, meanwhile, is made almost entirely of carbon fiber, so it looks a bit like a freshoff-the-track supercar. Even the ball pockets have some automotive flair, as they’re made with the same leather that’s used in a Bugatti interior. Like many of the French automaker’s top marques, this particular creation is a limited edition— only 30 are up for grabs. About$300,000
Sutton Carbon Tic-Tac-Toe, Ralph Lauren Rounds of tic-tac-toe only take a few seconds at most, and getting three in a row feels a bit more satisfying if you’ve got a well-made set like Ralph Lauren’s. The individual pieces are made of nickel, and the board itself is walnut and leather. It’s a refreshing take on the tried-and-true X’s and O’s, which here are bones and skulls, a look that brings an air of devilment to an otherwise laid-back affair. $595
Prestige Chess Set, Saint-Louis What do you mean you didn’t run out to buy a chess set after watching The Queen’s Gambit this year? Those who still need to brush up on their Sicilian Defense can try their hand at Saint-Louis’s version of the game, which has a board made of reflective squares. One of its sets of crystal knights and rooks is a dark blue, a reference to the Blue Rider, a collective of German artists who laid the groundwork for the expressionist movement in the early 20th century. The pieces’ individual designs have a slightly less artsy, though no less interesting, origin story, though: Many owe their sculptural shapes to old SaintLouis decanter stoppers. $34,100 Helena Madden