How Many Miles to Babylon? In the 1824 edition of "The Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia" there's a description of the rhyme and the game, giving the distance as "six, seven or a lang eight". The rhyme was originally accompanied by a singing game in which two lines face each other, with one player in the middle. At the end of the rhyme the players have to cross the space and any caught help the original player in the middle catch the others. The game seems to have fallen out of use in the twentieth century. In literature In film In music How Many Miles to Babylon?
David Pritchard (chess player) David Pritchard (chess player) David Brine Pritchard (19 October 1919 – 12 December 2005) was a British chess player, chess writer and indoor games consultant. He: gained pre-eminence as an indoor games and mind sports consultant, a role that he in effect created. A natural games player, it was to him that inventors or publishers would turn to organise a championship of a new game, write about it or generally promote it. Though nearly a million copies of his chess books have been sold, Pritchard is best known for authoring "The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants", in which he describes more