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The Jaques Shut the Box Compendium is a fantastic dice game set, featuring a leather lined Black Walnut frame, poker dice, normal dice, two decks of playing cards and a deck of Happy Families and Snap

The set features a comprehensive rulebook with instructions for many games. An excellent introduction to the basics of arithmetic and numbers for younger players, and casual fun for older participants

Rules of Shut the Box

The game starts with all the boxes open. The object is for one player to close all the boxes with continuous throws of the dice. Any combination of numbers may be shut agains those shown on the dice, but once used may not be used again.

eg. Dice showing 6+3 = 9, Boxes closed may be 1-8, 7-2, 5-4, 2-3-4, etc.

When as many boxes as possible are shut, the numbers remaining are read off from left to right eg 1,4,6 remaining equals 146. The next player then tries to score under 146.

Another way is to total the remaining numbers 1,4,6 =11. The next player then tries to score under 11.

(a) a throw shutting all the boxes automatically wins

(b) when the last box to be closed is a 1 on its own a single dice is used