A pen and a piece of paper. That is all you need. No batteries, no wifi, no setup, no instructions to dig out from under the sofa.

Some of these games take thirty seconds to explain. Some take a bit longer. All of them are genuinely fun and have been keeping people entertained long before anyone had a screen to stare at.

Here are ten of the best.

1. Tic Tac Toe

The obvious one first. Draw a 3x3 grid, one player takes X and one takes O, and you take turns filling in squares until someone gets three in a row. First to do it wins. If the board fills up with no winner, it is a draw.

Simple as it sounds, there is real strategy here. Take the centre first. Take a corner second. Set up a fork (two ways to win at once) and your opponent cannot stop you. Once you know the strategy it always ends in a draw against someone who also knows it, which is why it works so well with kids who are still figuring it out.

If you want to play online without a pen and paper, tictoe.org has a free browser version with three modes: vs computer, pass-and-play, or online against a friend.

2. Dots and Boxes

Draw a grid of dots. Could be 4x4, could be 6x6, whatever fits your paper. Players take turns drawing a single line between two adjacent dots. The goal is to complete the fourth side of a box, which scores you a point and earns you another turn.

It sounds simple but it gets tactical fast. At some point in the game someone has to give the other player a box, and knowing when to do that and which boxes to sacrifice is where the skill comes in.

Good for all ages. Gets more interesting the bigger the grid.

3. Hangman

One player thinks of a word and draws a dash for each letter. The other player guesses letters one at a time. Get it right and the letter goes in. Get it wrong and a body part gets added to the stick figure on the gallows. Classic, tense, and genuinely difficult with the right word.

A tip if you are the one picking the word: short words with unusual letters are harder than long ones. "Lynx" will ruin someone's day.

4. Battleship

Each player draws two 10x10 grids and labels them A to J across the top and 1 to 10 down the side. On one grid you place your ships secretly (a 5-square carrier, a 4-square battleship, a 3-square cruiser, a 3-square submarine, a 2-square destroyer). On the other grid you track your guesses.

Players take turns calling out a grid reference. Hit or miss. First to sink all five of the opponent's ships wins.

This one takes a few minutes to set up but the game itself can last a while and is genuinely tense. Mark hits with an X and misses with a dot so you do not repeat guesses.

5. Sprouts

Start by drawing a handful of dots on the page. Three or four is a good starting point. Players take turns drawing a line between any two dots (or from a dot back to itself) and placing a new dot somewhere on that line. Two rules: lines cannot cross each other, and no dot can have more than three lines coming out of it.

The player who cannot make a move loses.

It sounds fiddly but it is actually very elegant once you get going. Games with three starting dots take about ten moves. The strategy gets surprisingly deep.

6. SOS

Like tic tac toe but different. Draw a larger grid, maybe 6x6 or 8x8. Players take turns writing either an S or an O in any empty square. The goal is to complete the sequence S-O-S in a straight line (horizontal, vertical, or diagonal) and score a point for each one you complete.

Unlike tic tac toe there is no fixed turn order for strategy because you can write either letter. Blocking your opponent while setting up your own SOS at the same time is harder than it sounds.

7. Boxes (Ultimate Tic Tac Toe)

A trickier version of tic tac toe for when the original feels too easy. Draw a 3x3 grid of tic tac toe boards, so you have nine small boards inside one big one.

On your turn you play in one of the small boards. Wherever you play in a small board, that is the small board your opponent must play in next. Win a small board and you claim that square on the big board. Win three in a row on the big board and you win.

The catch is you are always forced to play in whatever small board your opponent sends you to, even if it is nearly full or already won. Planning where you send your opponent is as important as winning your own squares.

8. Mastermind (pen and paper version)

One player secretly writes down a four-digit number where each digit is between 1 and 6. The other player tries to guess it. After each guess the code-setter gives two pieces of information: how many digits are correct and in the right position, and how many digits are correct but in the wrong position.

Keep a record of every guess and the feedback. Use logic to narrow it down. Most people can crack it in six to eight guesses once they figure out a system.

9. Categories (Scattergories)

Pick a letter. Set a timer for two minutes. Everyone writes down one word for each of several agreed categories that starts with that letter. Animals, countries, food, films, famous people, whatever you like. When the timer runs out, compare answers. You only score points for answers nobody else wrote.

Better with more people but works fine with two. The letter X is chaos.

10. Terni Lapilli

Save this one for last because most people have never heard of it, which makes it a good conversation starter.

Terni Lapilli is the Roman game that tic tac toe evolved from. Same 3x3 grid, same goal, but each player only has three pieces and must slide them to adjacent squares rather than placing new ones. Once all six pieces are on the board, the placing phase ends and the sliding phase begins. No new marks go down. You just keep moving until someone gets three in a row.

It sounds like a small change. It is not. The board never fills up, the game can swing completely in a few moves, and the strategy is genuinely different.

Romans were scratching this grid into pavements and the steps of the Colosseum around 100 BC. You can play it free in your browser if you want to try it before committing to the pen and paper version.

Ten games. One pen. One piece of paper. That is enough to keep two people entertained for a very long time.

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