pentominoes would be a nice one to add (players take turns placing pentominoes on the board until someone cannot make a move). probably one of the variants like callisto or blokus where everyone has the same set of tiles in different colours and there are rules around connectedness
the usenet thread was a fun nostalgic read - something about the character of discussions was different from the ones you get on web based fora like reddit today. (also i recognise your name from rec.puzzles, which was another nice nostalgia moment :))