GG Saar

Andrus Saar carved wood in near-total solitude for fifty years and retired into a quiet that suits him entirely. Over those decades he also built Saar Woodworks, producing luxury wooden backgammon boards in small numbers and earning the sort of reputation that travels further than he does. His family knows the workshop, the carving and the name. What they do not know is how much backgammon exists beyond it.

Three children, six grandchildren, Sunday lunches every fortnight, and in eleven years not one of them has been told about the division, the fixtures, the eight hundred matches or the shelf of results, because it is his and he has never seen a reason to hand it over. He is exact and self-contained at the board, generous with nothing and accurate with everything, and if anybody ever asks him directly he will presumably answer, since he has never in his life told a lie about anything.