Blindfold backgammon is rarely played, but when it is played, one or both players cover their eyes while a seeing witness rolls the dice and move the checkers for them, updates them on the dice outcome and on the other player’s moves. To play blindfold backgammon, one has to have phenomenal visual memory, excellent 3 dimensional perception and exceptional understating of the game.

More common is blindfold chess, often played simultaneously in chess exhibitions. However, in chess there are 6 types of game pieces, making the visualization process easier comparing to backgammon. Oswald Jacoby, the legendary bridge and backgammon player and the creator of the famous "Jacoby rule" told (The New Yorker) he dared to play the game only once "…about thirty years ago. Very difficult. …in backgammon you have these thirty men, all the same shape, wandering on and off and around a twenty-four-point board." While backgammon pro Barclay Cooke, who had also witnessed the historic game did not have the guts to learn the blind version of the game "I wouldn’t dare. This is not a memory game."

Nevertheless, Paul Magriel who was 30 then and already known as "The Human Computer", one year after publishing his famous Backgammon book and a year before winning the World Backgammon Championship, was leading the game he played with a green and brown scarf tied around his eyes. Luck was also helping, and a roll of double 6s determined Plimpton’s loss. It is to Plimpton’s credit that he did not set his hopes high from the game:

"I have nothing at stake except the honor of my psyche. My tactics are going to be to talk as much as possible, ply him with drinks, and do everything else I can to befuddle him. If he loses track of a single piece on the board, I win."

He said before the game and revealed that "…it was my wife, Freddy, who taught him backgammon." And added "I wish she were playing him today instead of me." At the same opportunity, Paul Magriel revealed the origins of his nickname X-22:

"I used to play backgammon against myself," he said, "and once I had a private tournament with sixty-four imaginary entrants, whom I designated X-l, X-2, and so forth, through X-64. In the final, X-22 was pitted against X-34, and X-22 won."