backgame

Noun

backgame (plural backgames)

1. A game in which a player blocks the opponent's progress by forming two or more points in the opponent's home board.
   • The strategy of the backgame is very similar to the defensive strategy discussed earlier; i.e., you begin to make your points inside your inner table and wait for him to leave a blot.1977, Nicolaos S. Tzannes, Basil Tzannes, Backgammon Games and Strategies, page 65
   • We are also taught that we should not commit to a backgame until we have to and that we should try to win by going forward if at all possible.2007, Chris Bray, Second Wind, page 96
2. An indirect strategy in which one attempts to achieve one's goals by maneuvering behind the scenes.
   • This doctrine, once fully established, will add a great facility to business, and prevent unnecessary delays: for example —in former times a minister would have been exceedingly hampered with such a promise as we have here cited: he would have shifted, and delayed, and played the backgame to have...1836, Junius
   • If we understand the law as a backgame of images to which life adheres through repression, which the body represses by repeating, then the bodegón articulates at a level just above or just below the kitchen pieces , the pans and pots and jars of the kitchen scene, a type which contracts into...1991, Roberta Kevelson, Action and Agency, page 106