A strange little side quest
The next time Darwinism asks for one more try, remember that game ideas rarely appear from nowhere. Arthur Wynne published a diamond-shaped 'Word-Cross' in the New York World on December 21, 1913; the name later shifted to 'Cross-Word' and then 'crossword'. Another piece of context lands nicely beside it: Spacewar! appeared on MIT's PDP-1 in 1962 and became one of the earliest influential computer games shared among programmers. It is a good reminder that simple game mechanics can carry a surprising amount of history.