A group from France beat out a field of 64 teams to win the Hide-and-Seek World Championship. The event was held in the abandoned town of Consonno, Italy.

In one game at the Chess Olympiad in Baku, Azerbaijan, Dana Reizniece-Ozola defeated the Women’s World Champion, Hou Yifan, despite being ranked 400 Elo points lower. Dana is no stranger to such lofty achievements, however. At 34 years of age, she is a longtime Chess competitor , holds graduate degrees in Translation & Terminology and Business Administration (in addition to further graduate studies in Law, International Business, and Aerospace Management), can speak six languages, and is also the Finance Minister of Latvia.

Grandmaster Timur Gareyev broke the world record for consecutive games of blindfold Chess. In fact, most of the 64 games (54 wins, 8 losses, 2 draws) he played while pedaling an exercise bicycle.

After declaring Monopoly an official sport, the Lagos State Sport Commission of Nigeria hosted a world record 1,300 people playing Monopoly at the same time in a single venue. That achievement was recorded at the state’s Under-17 Monopoly Championship, where also Elizabeth Braimoh of Top Field College took home the trophy and a NGN600,000 education grant prize (about $2,000).

Eight winners secured second interviews at an annual Mahjong tournament meant as a job recruiting event for university students in Japan.

At the Asian Rubik’s Cube Championship in Beijing, Kevin Hays of the United States solved a 6×6 Rubik’s Cube in a world record 1 minutes, 32.77 seconds.

Not for speed, Tony Fisher demonstrated in a video solving the world’s smallest Rubik’s Cube (5.6 mm on a side). To get one so small, he had a 6 mm one 3D printed by Shapeways and then filed it down further.

Among the activities that Cem Karabay of Turkey kept himself busy with during a world-record scuba dive of 142 hours, 42 minutes, and 42 seconds were underwater games of Backgammon.

Allan Silva of Brazil has won his fourth consecutive Pan American Draughts Championship.

The North American Scrabble Championship and a $10,000 prize was won by David Gibson, who in the final defeated his opponent 397-371 with words such as “drearies”, “serrano”, orcinols”, and “spelter” (none of which are recognized by my spell-checker).

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Ready for a board game origin story on the big screen? Not one about a plucky inventor. Instead, Ouija: Origin of Evil tells a tale of 1965 Los Angeles and how “a widowed mother and her two daughters add a new stunt to bolster their séance scam business and unwittingly invite authentic evil into their home.” In theaters October 21st.

Recently released on Netflix is The Dwarvenaut, a documentary about the founder of Dwarven Forge and the company’s Kickstarter campaign.

Disney’s Queen of Katwe, based on the true story of Ugandan Chess player Phiona Mutesi, is in theaters now.

It appears that the Jumanji remake replaces the board game with a video game. On the other hand, star Dwayne Johnson claims it’s not a remake but rather a sequel.

A new Clue movie is in the works, being developed by 21st Century Fox. Unlike the 1980s Clue, this one will be a “worldwide mystery” action-adventure story.

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A new commercial for Felleskjøpet, a cooperative and agricultural equipment vendor, featuring World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen… (note that in Norwegian, the same word, “bonde”, is used for both “pawn” and “peasant” or “farmer”.)

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Neil Scallon of the U.K. claims a world-record collection 2,500 copies of Monopoly but also says he hasn’t played a board game in 20 years.

Sota Fujii, a 14 year-old middle school student from Aichi Prefecture, Japan, has achieved 4th dan status, breaking the record for youngest professional Shogi player ever.

Brett Smitheram of the U.K. took home the trophy, a €7,000 grand prize, and a kiss to the feet at the World Scrabble Championship in Lille, France. His win was secured with 176 points from the play of “braconid” (a species of wasp) for a bingo on a triple word score.

Londoners commemorated the Great Fire of London with the toppling of 23,000 dominoes strung through 4 miles of city streets, markets, pubs, gardens, and a church.

With a win at the Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis (and its $75,000 prize), Wesley So of the United States is nearly assured of also taking the top prize for the entire Grand Chess Tour. That is, unless maybe Magnus Carlsen decides to step back in for the London Chess Classic in December after finishing the World Chess Championship.

The winner of the 40th World Chess Solving Championship (a tournament of solving Chess puzzles) held in Belgrade, Serbia was Zaur Mammadov of Azerbaijan. The second place winner was also from Azerbaijan.

Draughts also finished a World Championship of Problems recently, with Alexander Moiseyev of the United States in first place.

The winner of the 2016 Magic: The Gathering World Championship, Brian Braun-Duin of Virginia, was described by WOTC as having taken the “everyman’s journey to the top.” “Grinding” through tournament tours, he had set himself a goal of Grand Prix Master for this season but managed to trump that, going home with the big trophy.

At the 2016 World Championship Domino Tournament hosted by the Andalusia (Alabama) Rotary Club, the winner, Jerry Baker, was from nearby Ozark, Alabama. In fact, all the winners were from the Southeast United States.

A world record for the largest circle field of dominoes (76,017 toppled) was set in Westland, Michigan, along with the U.S. record for total dominoes toppled (242,518). A team of 18 spent 10 days setting up the feat.

Three retirees from China finishing on top of the 11th Austrian Mahjong Open was seen as something of a comeback after an embarrassing showing at the Open Mahjong Championship 2 years ago in France, where the highest placed competitor from China came in 30th.

It was an Austrian, Wolfgang Leitner, who won the 2016 FISTF World Cup in Belgium, where 500 competitors gathered to play table football (Subbuteo).

In first place at the 41st Backgammon World Championship was Jörgen Granstedt of Sweden.

At the European Rubik’s Cube Championship, Feliks Zemdegs of Australia set seven world records, including one for solving a 7×7 in 2 minutes, 20.66 seconds. At the PSU Open, August 28th in Novopolotsk, Belarus, Roman Strakhov of Russia set a world record by solving a 5×5 Rubik’s Cube, blindfolded in 5 minutes, 1.40 seconds. Just a few days later, however, at the SPB Championship, September 4th in St. Petersburg, Roman bested himself by finishing the 5×5 blindfolded in just 4 minutes, 55.63 seconds.

And the winner of the Pentamind World Championship was Andres Kuusk—his fourth time! The Pentamind is a meta-event, incorporating multiple games of one Chess variant, Scrabble, Go, Poker, and Backgammon.

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At the world’s largest Scrabble tournament, the King’s Cup in Bangkok, the favorite going in was Pichai Limprasert, who had won all six previous tournaments in Thailand this year. Scrabble powerhouse Nigel Richards, too, was down in seventh place, so after 24 rounds, Pichai’s chances were still looking good. But never bet against Nigel in Scrabble. He managed to claw his way back to a spot opposite Pichai in the final, where he won with scores of 445-403, 397-491, and 469-356.

Though leading the Grand Chess Tour, Magnus Carlsen has withdrawn to begin preparing for the World Chess Championship in November against Sergey Karjakin.

The winner of the 22nd World Computer Chess Championship was Komodo, a program out of the United States running on a 48-core Intel i7 platform. The previous champion was Jonny, a German program running on a 2,400-core AMD x86-64 platform. After Komodo and Jonny tyed for first at scores of 7.5/10 in the main part of the tournament, it took five drawn games of increasingly tighter time limits before Komodo won in the sixth.

Guillermo Rodriguez of Spain took home the trophy at WizKids Dice Masters World Championship by going with a Mask Ring team but substituting in a Half-Elf Bard from Dungeons & Dragons Dice Masters: Battle for Faerûn.

Feliks Zemdegs has set another Rubik’s Cube world record, a 6.45 second average in the standard 3×3.

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Privateer Press may have quit producing the Monsterpocalypse Battle Miniatures Game but it appears the game still has fans in Hollywood. Movie rights to the property saw a bidding war by several studios. Warner Bros. came out on top.

Hasbro is working on an integrated universe for its various properties, including G.I. Joe, M.A.S.K., ROM, Micronauts, and Action Man. Specifically excluded on the movie side will be Transformers. No mention yet about the various board game titles, Dungeons & Dragons, or Magic: The Gathering, though I suspect it’s safe to assume the two WOTC properties will remain separate. In comic books, IDW will have a five-part crossover series, Revolution, which will include Transformers.

Liev Schreiber has signed on to the My Little Pony movie. Not as one of the ponies, but still, I’m not sure my mind can reconcile Ray Donovan with Friendship is Magic.

Beyond the Gates, a indie horror film premiering at the Los Angeles Film Festival, is centered on a VCR board game that serves as a hellish portal trapping souls.

The Dark Horse is a biopic about Maori Chess champion and youth Chess coach, Genesis Potini. A review in the Boston Globe calls it a “Winning Portrait”, while at the same time finding the two main story lines formulaic: genius is driven to madness and the underprivileged defeat the privileged at their own game.

Current World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen is the subject of the documentary Magnus, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April and will hit home-country screens in Norway this September.

Opening this fall in Japan is Satoshi no Seishun (“Satoshi’s Youth”), a biopic about Satoshi Murayama, a 9-dan Shogi player who died 18 years ago at the young age of 29.

Managing to Win: The Story of Strat-O-Matic Baseball starts shipping today on DVD. Available only direct from the company, the film tells the story of the game’s development by Hal Richman and the early struggles of the company.

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In Singapore, 605 people broke the world record for the most people playing Monopoly at the same time in a single venue. They were, though, allowed to stop playing after 30 minutes.

At 10 years and 9 months old, R. Praggnanandhaa of India is the youngest ever to qualify for the International Master title in Chess.

Li Chao of China postponed his wedding to accept a late invitation to the Norway Chess tournament. He was asked to fill in for Sergey Karjakin, who withdrew to begin preparing for the World Chess Championship.

These guys played Jenga Giant while the blocks were on fire!

Already the top professional Go player in Europe, Fan Hui has improved his game by 300 points since he began practicing against Google Alpha Go computer program.

Webster University’s fourth consecutive win of the President’s Cup (also known as the Final Four of College Chess) ties the previous record set by the University of Maryland Baltimore County 2003-2006. It’s also the sixth consecutive win for the team’s coach, Susan Polgar, who before Webster worked with Texas Tech University.

The Wall Street Journal reported on the tremendous successes of Nigerian Scrabble players, attributing it in large part to a “surprising strategy of playing short words.” Slate, responding directly to that article, pointed out that the importance of short words has been recognized by avid Scrabble players for many years.

Taking three straight games in the best-of-five final round gave Adam Logan his fifth win of the Canadian National Scrabble Championship.

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An investigation in to the Panama Papers by the Guardian (UK) and Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany) has brought to light evidence supporting long-alleged charges of corruption in the World Chess Federation’s leadership. The organization, also known by its French acronym, FIDE, has been led since 1995 by Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. The man is a former president of the Russian republic of Kalmykia, famously claimed to have been kidnapped by aliens, and is currently a subject of sanctions by the United States for alleged support of the Syrian government.

According to the Guardian, the records of Panamanian firm Mossack Fonseca reveal a financial connection between Ilyumzhinov and two firms that have had contracts with FIDE to run high-level tournaments, including the World Chess Championship, during his term. The first, Global Chess BV, was set up by Ilyumzhinov in 2006 and was granted global commercial rights to all FIDE events in 2007. Later that year, Ilyumzhinov sold Global Chess to Russian-Israeli businessman David Kaplan, who kept his position private by designating his son as director. Kaplan was then appointed by Ilyumzhinov to head a new FIDE office in Moscow and was given an executive position in charge of development.

In 2012, those FIDE commercial rights were given to (and remain with) another firm, Agon Limited. According to the Guardian, a memorandum from that year “suggested that Ilyumzhinov was to be a hidden beneficiary of Agon, owning a secret 51% stake.” For his part, Ilyumzhinov claims that document was never put in to action.

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Based on the true story of Phiona Mutesi, who after having dropped out of school at age 9, made her way from the slums of Kampala, Uganda to international Chess prominence. In theaters September 23rd.

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Chess players are needed Friday in Savannah, Georgia for the filming of the Baywatch movie with stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Zac Efron. Yes, the casting call is very clear, “Must know how to play chess.”

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