Robert Sengstacke Abbott was an American newspaper publisher and social reformer. He was born in 1868 at St Simmons Island, Georgia and died in 1940. The son of former slaves, in 1905 he founded and until 1940 edited the 'Chicago Defender' newspaper, through which he campaigned against racial prejudice and the unjust treatment of 'Black' Americans. Research Robert Abbott
Eleusis technically belongs to the eights group, in that players try to get rid of their cards by playing them to a discard pile. However, the unique feature of this game is that the rule governing which cards can legally be played is initially unknown to the players. The dealer (sometimes known as God) secretly invents and writes down the rule governing play. The other players try to guess the rule by observing which plays are legal. The original version of Eleusis was invented by Robert Abbott in 1956, and was published in Martin Gardner's column in the Scientific American in June 1959. It subsequently appeared in Gardner's 2nd Scientific American Book of Mathematical Puzzles and Diversions and in Robert Abbott's book Abbott's New Card Games (published by Stein & Day in 1963). In the 1970's Robbert Abbott made some major improvements to Eleusis, including the option for a player to become a prophet and try to predict whether each play would be called legal or illegal. This current version The New Eleusis was published in the
Scientific American in October 1977. Research Eleusis
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