Think back to your commute this morning. Aside from the travellers aimlessly scrolling through Twitter, how many of them were hunched over and engaged in an especially taxing level (147, we’re coming for you) of Candy Crush? Though it sometimes feels like a fairly recent development, our reliance on games to divert our idle minds is hardly a new phenomenon – and the impulse to challenge, engross or simply distract ourselves existed long before we invented portable electronics to lend a helping hand. Though most anthropologists would argue we’ve been playing games since we could walk and talk, the earliest archaeological evidence was discovered in Egypt, where a chess-like board with pawns dubbed “senet” was played from about 3500BC. We’ve been hooked ever since.

Candy Crush and its kin are just the latest takes of this ancient tradition – but in the shift from physical to digital, has something essential to the experience of playing a game been lost?

Like putting pen to paper, there’s something singularly sentimental about sitting down to play a real-life board game, opening the box and ritualistically arranging the counters and cards. And it’s something William & Son, the classic British brand founded in 1999 by Mr William Asprey, a seventh-generation member of the notable Asprey jewelling family, takes very seriously. “We know that time for play is a treasure, perhaps one of the greatest in life,” the brand says. “That’s why we’ve dedicated an entire department to our luxurious leather games, made to ensure that the time for life’s diversions is one to cherish in every way.” From a fully furnished games compendium intended to impress even the most hard-to-please dinner party guests to a sleek poker set that’ll ensure you look every bit the pro, here’s a primer on just a small sampling of the workshop’s matchless creations.

Designed for “classic contests of wit, strategy and subterfuge,” William & Son’s games compendium is a treasure trove of traditional board games, which includes elegant chess, ludo and backgammon sets with their accompanying playing pieces, as well as a Victorian-inspired illustrated snakes and ladders board and two sets of cards. Crafted entirely by hand in the label’s east London outpost, each element is treated to an uncommon amount of care and attention to detail, right down to the leathers, which are carefully hand-selected by William & Son’s experienced artisans. After the leathers are chosen and refined, the hides are precision cut and inlaid atop a handmade wooden frame, in a painstaking process the brand equates to marquetry, before being finished with intricate edging and detailing.

Tiddlywinks

Despite being patented by a Mr Joseph Assheton Fincher in 1888, tiddlywinks only really became established as a strategic adult sport (yes, you read that right) in the 1950s, when a handful of unathletic students, unimpressed with the roster of extracurricular activities on offer at the University of Cambridge, met at Christ’s College and decided to set up their own club in the hopes of securing themselves a prized “blue” – a privilege usually reserved for the school’s best sportsmen. Scarcely three years passed before their rivals at the University of Oxford followed their lead, forming their own society of “winkers” (as participants are known) to take on their collegiate adversaries.

The rules (which were once described in a 1958 edition of Sports Illustrated as “embarrassingly simple”), operations and accoutrements have scarcely altered since: once you’ve learned the lexicon (squop, anyone?) and put in some diligent practice on William & Son’s true-to-tradition leather and felt set, you might even be primed for the world championship, which to this day is still held in Cambridge, though, for more casual players, it’ll no doubt serve better as a pre-dinner party icebreaker.

Solitaire And Noughts & Crosses Set

Our instinct to challenge and sharpen our minds isn’t predicated on whether we’re in the company of others or, as the case may be, our colleagues. About a decade ago, before memes and cats ruled the internet, one of the first stories that satisfied our viral thirst was that of a poor gent, a six-year veteran of the New York Mayoral office, who was fired for occasionally playing Microsoft Solitaire on his computer at work. The general consensus at the time was that his boss, then mayor Mr Michael Bloomberg, was overzealous with his punishment. “He’s no friend to games, also no friend to folks who take a desk-break from their jobs,” opined a scathing editorial in The Guardian. Perhaps it’s the electronic element of his chosen pastime that his superior’s frowned upon, but you have to wonder whether his fate would have been the same if the man in question had diverted his attention from time to time with William & Son’s refined peg solitaire set instead? Plus, with its hand-stitched edges and elegant inlaid counters, the brand’s sleek black and blue iterations are certain to look far more professional than keeping an extra tab open. And, if that’s not enough to keep you entertained, you can always flip it over and challenge your colleague to a game of noughts and crosses instead.

Ludo (which our friends across the pond will know as Parcheesi), is a strategy game derived from pachisi, a sixth-century Indian game that still takes the top spot for the country’s best-loved game. Players take turns to roll dice to return all four of their counters to the home square without being “captured” by your opponents. Sounds easy enough, right? Don’t let William & Sons’ brightly-coloured calfskin board or the simple rules fool you, though – much like Monopoly, gameplay has been known to get, ahem, heated at times – a detail demonstrated by the various nicknames it’s earned around the globe. In Germany, for example, it’s referred to as “Mensch ärgere dich nicht”, or “Man, don’t get upset”, while in Greece its name affectionately translates to “grumbler”, which may clue you in on the typical ludo player’s general demeanour during gameplay. That being said, the unique blend of strategy, luck and cunning will undoubtedly make it hard for you to tear yourself away. Trust us, you’ll be in for the long haul.