The MAJOR FUN Awards

Dizios

2010-03-12T10:20:00.000-05:00

Dizios is a highly visual tile game that plays with color the way most tile games play with shape or number.

The 70 thick, cardboard tiles are matched edge to edge. Some edges are all one color. Many more are two colors. Each tile is worth a certain number of points (indicated by dots in the center of the tile). Players get points, not for the tile they place, but for the tiles they connect to.

Dizios can be played by 1-4 players, of a recommended age of 6 or older. There's very little strategy involved, so the game is easily accessible to younger children.

To play with more than one player, the special "starter tile" is placed in the center of the table. The rest of the tiles are placed face down, mixed, and then set aside or built into draw piles. Each player selects 4 tiles. For the rest of the game, players take turns, matching a tile on to the expanding grid, if possible; taking score (by counting the dots that appear on the adjacent tiles), and then picking a new tile from the face-down tiles. If no match is possible, the player must forfeit his turn.

The score pad is designed so any player who can count can keep score.

As a solitaire, Dizios offers a surprising variety of challenges. You can try to make a "vortex" (an array of connected tiles) of all one color, you can try for a vortex that is 8x8, 7x10, 5x14. Or, you can arrange try to arrange the tiles so they create the highest possible score. The solitaire versions greatly extend the fun of the game, and could easily lead a moderately creative player to develop more interesting variations of the competitive game.

Dizios is an easy game to learn. The visual challenge is easy to understand, intriguing enough to entice a 6-year-old, attractive and complex to engage the full attention of adults.

It is like dominoes only insofar as there are tiles that get matched - which makes the game that much easier to understand. But it is a very different game. Unique. Visually pleasing. Well made. Only lightly competitive. Intriguing (especially the solitaire versions) enough for serious adult contemplation. Inviting enough to engage the whole family. You can play in teams. You can play by yourself. You can make up your own challenge. Fun. Major FUN.

Imaginets

2010-03-10T08:25:00.000-05:00

Think Colorforms - thick, bright, hefty, magnetic, geometrically-shaped colorforms. Imagine these thick, bright, hefty, geometrically-shaped colorform-like pieces that you carry around in a wood-framed suitcase. Now, while you're at it, think Tangrams. That would explain the deck of large, two-sided cards, printed with colorful designs of varying complexity - each of which can be made with some or all of the thick, bright, hefty, colorful, geometrically-shaped pieces. OK. We're getting close.

Now, add a dry-erase marker or two. Note how you can draw, and of course, erase on the inside of both panels of the suitcase. Which means, if you want, you could make any shape out of any combination of pieces, outline the shape with a marker, and make your own puzzle. Can you take all the pieces off and put them back on?

Imagine all the things you could do with this set, all the places you could play with it, the puzzles you can try to solve, the puzzles you can create, the designs you can make. If your imagination is good enough, you'll understand why this toy is called Imaginets, and why it was given a Major FUN award.

Imaginets is a toy that can engage children in a wide variety of creative and intellectual play experiences. It is easily shared (lay it flat and you have two, clearly de-marked play surfaces), and just as easily something that your child can play with by herself. It's roughly the same size and feel of a briefcase or laptop computer, and thus lends itself to dramatic play. The ability to draw on the surfaces (no, the dry-erase markers are not included, and yes, it'd be neat if they were) adds a unique dimension to this activity, increasing the invitation to play, to exploration, to creativity and interaction.

Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction

2010-03-09T18:38:00.000-05:00

If I could travel back in time and give my early adolescent self a gift of potentiation and portends of power, it would be a copy of John Austin's Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction. If I were my father, on the other hand, I'd take that book away from me in a most timely and uncompromising manner, hide it in a place where only I could find it, and read it from cover to cover.

On yet another hand, my going on 8-, going on 21-year old granddaughter loves this book.

Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction contains 241 pages of detailed, painstakingly illustrated instructions for making (and here I read from the table of contents) launchers and bows, slingshots, darts, catapults, combustion shooters (combustion shooters!), minibombs and claymore mines, and, finally, concealing books and targets.

Did I mention combustion shooters? Like the famous match rocket which you can make out of paper or wooden matches, with nothing more than aluminum foil, a needle or pin, a medium binder clip (Austin loves those binder clips), a toothpick and a large paper clip? O, there are warnings. "Eye protection and a safe firing range are musts" declares the ever-pragmatic Austin. "Match rocketry is not an exact science," he cautions, "misfires and modifications will be needed to find the perfect balance." Match rockets! How inexorably cool is that?

There are two things that make Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction such a fun read: 1) every "weapon" is made out of common household objects, and 2) the instructions are exceptionally clear and well-illustrated. OK. There are three things: 3) the sheer ingenuity of the designs. It's the very kind of book MacGuyver might have read during his training course. For fun. Of course.

Want more? Visit John's site. Learn a little about him. Print out a few targets. Get instructions for building more. Meditate on the nuances of "implements of spitball warfare."

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Q-bitz

2010-03-08T05:01:00.000-05:00

You get a wooden tray with 16 identical wooden cubes. One face of the cube is light, the opposite, dark. Another face shows a light circle on a dark background, the opposite, the opposite (a dark circle on a light background). The other two faces are half-and-half, diagonally divided. And with 16 of them, you can make at least 120 different, and often beautiful patterns. You can tell that, because there are 120 pattern cards, each different, each composed out of the simple shapes on the cubes.

Mindware's Q-bitz is a game of visual perception for 2-4 players. A pattern card is revealed, and players race to be the first to echo the pattern on their own board. That's one way to play. The designers suggest that you play in three rounds (or not), each round a variation. The second round, you have to roll the dice, use what you can, then roll the remainder, then use what you can, then continue rolling, using what you can, until you've made the pattern, and, hopefully, are the first to have done so, correctly. Finally, the third round: After the pattern card is revealed, and everyone has an agreed-on time to look at it, it's turned over. Face-down. And then everyone tries to replicate the pattern, from memory!

Q-Bitz turns out to be a remarkably challenging game, no matter how you play it. I, in the fullness of my 68-year-old maturity was able to win the first card. We tried the second with the rolling variation, but quickly decided to continue the way we played the first round. It was difficult enough. I won the second card. Then we played the third round - the one where you were supposed to be able to remember the pattern. Looked easy until we tried it. So we tried it again. And then continued the way we started. And I los the next four. It was suggested we stop after that. I think out of compassion.

We loved how challenging the game turned out to be - how simple it was, and yet how deeply it engaged our perceptual skills. It was as fun losing as it was winning. We didn't play long. Maybe 20 minutes. But that was about all we could ask from our perceptual skills. At least for this time.

Easy to learn, well-made, cleverly designed, for 2-4 players, 8 and up. Major FUN.

An introduction to the Neodymium magnet executive puzzle toy

2010-03-07T09:47:00.007-05:00

The four following reviews are almost identical, each featuring a different rendition of the same magnetic puzzle/toy concept. There are minor differences, and, depending the player's preferences, one might prove definitely more, shall we say, "attractive," than the rest. But comparing them to each in any effort to determine which was truly best only led us to the kinds of thinking that this website is not designed to support.

When we find an exceptional toy or game, one of sustainable play value, our goal is simply to add our bit of recognition and support, to recommend them as something worthy of your playtime. Our goal is not to tell you which is, for example, the best chess set you can buy, because chess is chess. And though the look and feel of different chess sets may appeal to different people, the fact is, if you want to play chess, it's still a good game, even if you're playing in with bits of paper. Rarely, we find a newly invented toy or game available, almost simultaneously, from 4 different sources. Given our mission here, the only solution we could arrive at was to create 4 different reviews, awarding each the Major Fun seal.

We think you'll enjoy this toy a great deal. Read the reviews. Check out the websites. It really doesn't matter which you end up buying. Each will bring you hours of challenging, engaging, and, hopefully, major fun.

Neocubes

2010-03-03T08:12:00.002-05:00

We've been taking a very close look at a puzzling phenomenon, known as The Neo Cube. The website alone is sufficiently filled with invitations and incentives for purchasing these extremely attractive technical marvels to explain why we've been looking so closely.

Attractive indeed. Attracting curiosity, creativity, dexterity, ingenuity. Visually and tactually engaging. They are executive wonder toys. Moderately expensive investments, that payoff in hours of meditative, and sometimes significantly aggravating play.

Neocubes are made of Neodymium magnets - the strongest, longest lasting of rare earth magnets. These magnets really, really want to stick together. Assembling them into any of the amazingly attractive configurations shown on the web or featured in their documentation sometimes requires very strong fingers and deep, abiding dedication. Assembling the 6x6x6 cube (a challenge so fundamental that it has become a magnetic-ball-puzzle industry standard to include at least 216 - or 6-cubed balls) can get significantly frustrating, not because it is conceptually difficult, but rather because the balls can offer surprisingly strong resistance to being pulled apart or forced together in any way other than that which seems to appeal to them at the moment.

Neocubes comes in a blister pack that includes 8 extra magnets, instructions and a drawstring bag. The back of the pack contains ample warnings about the dangers of swallowing, heating, or handling these magnets should their coatings be compromised. The manufacturers strongly and understandably advise that these magnets should not be played with by children younger 12.

The spectacular variety of sculptural puzzles that these magnetic balls lend themselves to can be found everywhere on the web. On flickr you can find image after image of Neocubes. On Youtube you can watch a minor myriad of people making mini-metal-marble magnetic magic with Neocubes. As you watch, it is clear that making these extremely attractive configurations is as much a performance art as it is an act of conceptual mastery.

Until this review, the story of these amazing magnet balls has been uniformly focused on the many marvelous puzzle-like activities available to the magnet-ball-empowered few. Our explorations have revealed equally marvelous toy-potential. Here is a very simple example - showing what happens when you roll one ball at another, with appropriate speed and something like aim, on a plate. Turn up your sound to appreciate the fullness of the inherent glee.

With this very preliminary foray into the "toyetic" qualities of it all, we hereby invite your contributions of similarly jolly, playworthy discoveries. This first is but a taste. (Actually, more of a hint than a taste as the frame speed of the video doesn't show the full spinning glories we experienced. But a tasty hint, nonetheless.)

image by Frans (3Djavu.nl)

Buckyballs

2010-03-03T05:01:00.002-05:00

We've been taking a very close look at a puzzling phenomenon, known, in this particular instantiation, as Buckyballs - a puzzle made of 216 (count 'em) extremely attractive (read "magnetic") balls.

Attractive indeed. Attracting curiosity, creativity, dexterity, ingenuity. Visually and hapticly engaging. They are executive wonder toys. Moderately expensive investments, that payoff in hours of meditative, and sometimes intensely aggravating play.

Buckyballs are made of Neodymium magnets - the strongest, longest lasting of rare earth magnets. These magnets really, really want to stick together. Assembling them into any of the amazingly attractive configurations shown on the web or featured in their documentation sometimes requires very strong fingers and deep, abiding dedication. Assembling the 6x6x6 cube (a challenge so fundamental that it has become a magnetic-ball-puzzle industry standard to include at least 216 - or 6-cubed balls) can get profoundly frustrating, not because it is conceptually difficult, but rather because the balls can offer surprisingly strong resistance to being pulled apart or forced together in any way other than that which seems to appeal to them at the moment.

Buckyballs comes with ample warnings about the dangers of swallowing, heating, or handling these magnets should their coatings be compromised. Noting quite clearly that the minimum recommended age is 13.

The spectacular variety of sculptural puzzles that these magnetic balls lend themselves to can be found everywhere on the web. On flickr you can find image after image of Buckyballs. On Youtube you can watch a minor myriad of people making mini-metal-marble magnetic magic with Buckyballs. As you watch, it is clear that making these extremely attractive configurations is as much a performance art as it is an act of conceptual mastery.

Cybercube

2010-03-02T17:59:00.003-05:00

We've been taking a very close look at a puzzling phenomenon, known as CyberCube. We tried to look no further than their amazing, lovely to look at website, filled with invitations and incentives for purchasing these extremely attractive magnetic marvels, but couldn't stop there. We had to have one, at least. The very shiny silver one. Though the gold one looked at least as attractive, and the nickel and black at least as playworthy as the others.

Attractive indeed. Attracting curiosity, creativity, dexterity, ingenuity. Visually and haptically engaging. They are executive wonder toys. Moderately expensive investments, that payoff in hours of meditative, and sometimes moderately aggravating play.

Made of Neodymium magnets - the strongest, longest lasting of rare earth magnets, the Cybercube magnets really, really want to stick together. Assembling them into any of the amazingly attractive configurations shown on the web or featured in their documentation sometimes requires very strong fingers and deep, abiding dedication. Assembling the 6x6x6 cube (a challenge so fundamental that it has become a magnetic-ball-puzzle industry standard to include at least 216 - or 6-cubed balls) can get profoundly frustrating, not because it is conceptually difficult, but rather because the balls can offer surprisingly strong resistance to being pulled apart or forced together in any way other than that which seems to appeal to them at the moment.

They also all come with ample warnings about the dangers of swallowing, heating, or handling these magnets should their coatings be compromised. CyberCube recommends that they most definitely should not be played with by children aged 8 or under.

The spectacular variety of sculptural puzzles that these magnetic balls lend themselves to can be found everywhere on the web. On flickr you can find image after image of CyberCube. On Youtube you can watch a minor myriad of people making mini-metal-marble magnetic magic with CyberCube. As you watch, it is clear that making these extremely attractive configurations is as much a performance art as it is an act of conceptual mastery.

CyberCube come in a variety of packages and colors. You can get them in tins - which are fun to build on and, when the balls are stored inside the tin, helps eliminate the magnetic field. You can get them in boxes. You can get them in boxes (the magnets are a little smaller and cost a little less). You can get enough to make a 6x6x6 cube (with a few extras) or a 7x7x7 cube.

Zen Magnets

2010-03-01T15:25:00.002-05:00

We've been taking a very close look at a puzzling phenomenon, known as Zen Magnets. Actually, you need look no further than their website to be delighted and enticed by a myriad invitations and incentives for purchasing these extremely attractive technical marvels.

Zen Magnets are made of Neodymium magnets - the strongest, longest lasting of rare earth magnets. They are also exceptionally lovely to behold in all their reflective, mirror-polished glory. These magnets really, really want to stick together. Assembling them into any of the amazingly attractive configurations shown on the web or featured in their documentation sometimes requires very strong fingers and deep, abiding dedication. Assembling the 6x6x6 cube (a challenge so fundamental that it has become a magnetic-ball-puzzle industry standard to include at least 216 - or 6-cubed balls) can get significantly frustrating, not because it is conceptually difficult, but rather because the balls can offer surprisingly strong resistance to being pulled apart or forced together in any way other than that which seems to appeal to them at the moment. Which explains why Zen Magnets comes with a plastic card that can be used as a prying tool.

They also come with ample warnings about the dangers of swallowing, heating, or handling these magnets should their coatings be compromised, advising, in no uncertain terms, that these magnets should not be played with by children younger than 12.

The spectacular variety of sculptural puzzles that these magnetic balls lend themselves to can be found everywhere on the web. On flickr you can find image after image of Zen Magnets. On Youtube you can watch a minor myriad of people making mini-metal-marble magnetic magic with Zen Magnets. As you watch, it is clear that making these extremely attractive configurations is as much a performance art as it is an act of conceptual mastery.

Zen Magnets also comes with a drawstring velvet bag (which is especially useful when you don't have the time or wish to make the effort to get them into any particular formation) and six extra magnet balls.

Piece o' Cake

2010-02-25T05:01:00.000-05:00

They call the game Piece o' Cake, though any mildly discerning eye would immediately perceive that what we're playing with here is plainly cheesecake, with clearly graham-cracker crust.

Before we go into details and rationale, let us pause for a moment of mutual assurance. Though it may not be apparent at first taste, Piece o' Cake is Major FUN. In fact, once you have whetted your appetite with a preliminary round or two, everything about it becomes fun, from beginning to end. For 2-5 players of strategic playing ages, Piece o' Cake is cunningly designed by Jeffrey D. Allers to provide the aforementioned players with 30 minutes of sometimes excruciatingly delicious conceptual glee. Allow me to reiterate and perhaps repeat - a preliminary round or two, despite the apparent clarity of the rules and this review, is everso wholeheartedly recommended.

There are 8 varieties of cheesecake. A whole cake, is made of 11 pieces - very nice, thick, well-finished, brightly colored cardboard pieces, which look quite delicious, actually, while remaining firmly, and somewhat disappointingly inedible. There are two attributes of strategic note about each variety of cake: the number of each variety (plainly inscribed thereon), and the number of whipped-cream-like dollops).

To prepare for the game, the 57 pieces are turned face-down, mixed (but not beaten), and assembled into 5 stacks of 11. The two extra pieces are returned to the box. The 5 stacks are then assembled, still face-down, in pie-like fashion. The first player then prepares the first cake, turning over the pieces of one stack, carefully maintaining the randomness in which those pieces have been ordered, to create a whole, multi-pieced cake, appearing, should one require more tempting vividness, much like one of those sampler cheesecakes one sometimes acquires at the fancier of cheesecake stores.

That same player then divides the completed cake into slices, each slice containing one or a multiple of adjacent pieces. This slicing is not in the least arbitrary, but chock full of tastily strategic implications.

Here, we require a bit of elaboration.

The point value of each slice is determined by two different factors - the number of dollops, and the number of that particular variety. Chocolate cheesecake slices, for example, are the most tempting. Each has three dollops, and hence, when eaten, is worth three points. Should one choose to collect, rather than eat one's chocolate cheesecake slices, and, should one manage to have, by game's end, collected a majority of said slices, one would have gained 11 calorie-free points.

Thus, though perhaps not immediately apparent upon the first foray into the goodiness of it all, the very first stage of each round of the game - the division of the cake into pieces (as many as there are players) - is crammed full of deliciously strategic implications, and evermore crammed every round of the game as it becomes evermore vivid which varieties of cake each player is hoping to collect. The slicing player, as tradition has it, gets the last piece, making this process of division tinged with a taste of abstract agony.

Once a piece is selected, that player may choose to eat (turn over and collect the dollop-score) any of the slices in that piece, or keep those pieces face-up in hopes of collecting more of the like kind. The game continues with each player getting a turn to be slicer. With each turn, what each player is hoping to collect becomes evermore obvious, and the significance of the slicing similarly evermore strategic.

When it becomes clear that you have no hope of collecting a majority of a given slice, you may choose to forgo a turn, and eat (turn over) one or many of your pieces, thus collecting dollop-score for each.

O, the choices, the yummy, yummy strategy-filled choices. The palatable pleasure. The luscious, mouthwatering, delectable, ambrosial, toothsome delight. The appetizing, scrumptiously finger-licking, lip-smackingingly melt-in-your-mouth-and-mind fun of it all.

Should you need to further whet your theoretical appetite, you can always download the complete rules, thoughtfully provided as a further customer service by Rio Grande Games.

Great American Puzzles from Fundex

2009-12-29T08:00:00.000-05:00

One of our favorite puzzle companies has merged with one of our favorite game companies. The result is a wonderfully comprehensive offering of invitations to play.

The art of a good puzzle depends on two things - OK, maybe three: the graphics, the cut of the pieces, and the quality of the construction (of pieces and box). Classic American Fire Trucks is exemplary of all the above, and of the kinds of puzzles you can almost always expect from The Great American Puzzle Factory collection.

Classic American Fire Trucks is, first of all, shaped like a fire truck. This is cute. What's even cuter about the fire truck shape is that the borders of the puzzle (you know, the part of the puzzle you generally do first, because they're the easiest to find) are irregular. So, to find an edge piece, you frequently discover yourself turning it in every possible direction before you finally find the fit. Then the pieces seem to be somewhat deviously cut - often ending, as if on purpose, just at the edge of a line that you had hoped would prove instrumental in helping you find the piece it's connected to. And sometimes, a space you'd be absolutely sure can only be completed by a piece with a straightish edge turns out to need a curvey-edged piece.

Then there's the image - a brightly colored collage of eleven different fire trucks, each beautifully rendered and intricately detailed - in itself a kind of puzzle. And the box, which includes information about all the trucks in the illustration - adds yet another level of interest and engagement.

It's not a puzzle for little kids. It's significantly challenging, visually and intellectually absorbing, and often deeply satisfying. All 730 pieces of it.

Super Circles

2009-12-08T05:01:00.001-05:00

Super Circles is another easy-to-learn, quick (and I mean quick) card game from Out of the Box (in this instance, a lovely metal box) that will challenge the speed, spatial and color perception skills of 2 to 4 players, pretty much extremely.

Each of the 73 cards shows 4 concentric rings, each of a different color. The rings are numbered (to guide the mind as well as the eye), but the game has nothing to do with numbers and everything to do with your ability to perceive which of the 4 rings on any given card matches the same ring on another.

The game begins with the distribution of the cards. The first card is turned over and placed in the center of the table, face-up, starting the target pile (the cards looking everso graphically target-like). The rest of the cards are distributed evenly, face down, between the players, forming their play pile. At a signal from the dealer, players begin to draw cards from their deck, competing to be the first to find a card whose ring matches the corresponding ring on the card on the top of the target pile. At each turn, players must match a ring that is different than the last ring matched. If the first player matches, for example, the second ring of the current target card, players then compete to match the first, third or fourth ring of the new card.

The first player to run out of all but one cards wins the game.

The visual challenge, combined with the need for speed, can easily become so intense that, from time to time, your mind just refuses to keep up. This feels better than it sounds - like a shiatsu massage for your perceptual skills.

Super Circles is an elegant, challenging little card game, demanding brief spurts of very intense focus. Designed by Maureen Hiron and Ron and Caron Bodkin, with art by John Kovalic and Cathleen Quinn-Kinney, it turns out to provide a unique challenge, one that will prove as engaging to a seven-year-old (no arithmetic, no spelling, no knowledge required other than color and the numbers 1-4) as to a parent or grandparent of renown visual acuity and acknowledged color-discrimination skills.

It is difficult to avoid comparing Super Circles to 7 ate 9 - another Major Fun Award-winning card game, also from Out of the Box, also designed by Maureen Hiron. The only significant difference between the two games is the part of the brain they tease into action. 7 ate 9 plays with numbers, so it leans left on the brainscape. Super Circles plays with colors, so it feels more rightwards leaning. For this reason, Super Circles can be played successfully by slightly younger children. But by no measure can we say that one game is better or more fun than the other. Though we might not play both of them in the same game session, our family games collection would certainly be richer for having both of these games.

7 ate 9

2009-12-07T17:41:00.000-05:00

7 ate 9 may be the traditional explanation for 6's profound fear of 7, but it most definitely doesn't explain why it is such a fun family game. The responsibility for this welcome transformation lies squarely on the shoulders of designer Maureen Hiron, the art of Cathleen Quinn-Kinney and John Kovalic, and the acumen of the once again inspiringly playful folk of Out of the Box.

7 ate 9 is a card game of speed and calculation, similar to Spit, but significantly more excruciating - in a good way. A very good way.

Two to four players begin the game by taking the top card from the shuffled deck, placing it face-up in the center, and then distributing the rest of the deck evenly between players. Since there are 73 cards, after the first card is played on the table, the rest divide into satisfyingly even piles whether you're playing with 2, 3 or 4 players.

The cards are numbered from 1-10. In addition (or subtraction), each card also has a number, from 1-3, in the corner. That number is added or subtracted, at the player's discretion, from the main number, which determines what number card can be played next. So, if the top card is a 7 and the small number is a 2, the next card can be either a 5 (7-2) or a 9 (7+2).

The cards are also color-coded, to help direct your attention to the added (or subtracted) value - all plus-or-minus 1 cards being green, plus-or-minus 2 cards blue, plus-or-minus 3, red.

No turns are taken. Players simply draw cards from their face down pile, one at a time, if they can play a card, they announce the number and place it on top of the center pile, if not, they draw another card until they have found a playable card or someone else has. In the latter event, they must now look for a new match. The first player to get rid of all but one of her cards wins.

So it's like Spit - players playing simultaneously, as quickly as possible, trying everso assiduously to be the first to find the next playable card. And yet, it's not quite Spit. Not with there only being one pile, and the challenge of having to add or subtract in order to calculate what card is actually the next match. And then, say, you throw a 9, with a plus or minus, say, 2. Well, if you subtract 2, it's simple enough - you can match it with a 7. But if you don't have a 7, and you're fast enough, you can add the 2, which, arithmetically, would make 11, which is patently absurd since the highest card is a 10. If not for the "round the corner" rule, by which you can legitimately play a 1 (which, in a circular sequence, would be the next card). Similarly, if a 2, for example, is played, a 2 with a plus-or-minus 3, shall we say, you can play either a 4 or a 9. This logical bit of round-the-cornerness is wonderfully exasperating, making you have to think generally when you are least ready to.

Yes, yes, people will tell you that it's an educational game because it uses numbers and arithmetical operations, and yes, children who are weak in these particular skills will most definitely find themselves hovering on the other side of exasperation. But no matter how good you are with numbers, and how mature and experienced you are in the ways of life and games, you can easily find yourself succumbing to the speed and flexibility of an 8-year-old opponent. Yes, there is a modicum of luck involved - just the modicum needed to keep hope alive, keep the game fun, and make you want to play again and again.

Siam

2009-11-27T05:30:00.002-05:00

Didier Dhorbait's abstract strategy game Siam is so beautifully crafted that you will treasure it even before you learn how to play it. Which is a good thing for two reasons: 1) the English translation of the rules is, well, very, shall we say, challenging, in a French kind of way; and 2) the rules are what some may call "unconventional," requiring you to exercise some conceptual effort before you fully appreciate the cleverness and complexity underlying their comparative simplicity.

Fortunately, Arthur Reilly has written a satisfyingly clear English description of the rules - clear enough to help you through most of your preconceptions to a truly remarkable strategy game - one that you can play in ten minutes with anyone old enough to appreciate a good, abstract game.

The lovely wooden board is inscribed with a 5x5 matrix. There are three kinds of pieces: the elephants and rhinoceros figures are beautifully rendered, the elephants rearing on their hind legs, the rhinoceros sitting and looking like something out of a collection of Victorian grotesquerie. The other pieces look vaguely like mountains. And since the mountains are as big as the elephants and rhinoceros, the whole set conveys a sense of the fantastic.

One player plays the elephants (and moves first) the other, rhinoceroses.

The game begins with the three mountain pieces in a line in the center of the board. Players take turns doing one of the following: bringing a piece on to the board, taking a piece off the board, reorienting a piece, moving a piece (one space horizontally or vertically, in the direction being faced), or pushing other pieces. The object of the game is to be the first player to push a mountain off the board.

The pushing is where the conventions begin to get un-. If one of your pieces is facing a mountain, it can push the mountain in the direction in which it is facing. If two opposing pieces are facing each other, they cancel each other out. So neither can push or be pushed. If one your opponent's piece is in line with yours, and you are not facing it, you can get pushed. If two of your opponent's pieces are facing yours, you can also get pushed, even if you're facing them. In fact, you can have a whole bunch of your pieces (well, up to 5) in a line, all facing the wrong way, and one of your opponent's pieces, facing the right way, can push them all.

Then there are the rules about the edges of the board (all important, since that's where you're trying to push the mountains off of, as well as where your pieces can get pushed off and where they can be re-entered). Since they surround the board, it means that, unlike chess, checkers and the rest, you're not playing in any specific direction - a major convention-breaker, chock-full of strategic implications. And the subtle but significant consequences of being able to take pieces off the board and later bring them back into play on some other edge, add yet another chock-fullness to one's cup of strategic nuance.

Remarkably deep for a ten minute game. Remarkably lovely. Major FUN.

(Siam is available in the US via Fred Distribution, and in Europe through Ferti)

Sketchy

2009-11-18T11:00:00.004-05:00

Sketchy is a drawing and guessing game for 4-8 people from Fundex Games. It is cooperative, competitive, challenging, and laugh-provoking. It makes you feel closer to the people you play with. It can get very intense. And if you win, you not only feel good about your brilliance, but you also realize that it really didn't matter who won. Playing Sketchy was so much fun, that it's all the reward you needed.

The components are simple enough - 8 golf pencils, playing/scoring pads (ample enough for many replays), a deck of cards, a die, and a wonderfully annoying, batteries-included, electronic timer (the kind that ticks faster and faster every 15 seconds).

Each card has a list of six different categories. For example:

Kinds of soup
Sports where individuals compete
Items on a teacher's desk
New England US states
Foods that are eaten on a stick
U-pick

Each page of the drawing/scoring pad gives you room to draw up to seven examples of the randomly chosen (by the roll of a die) category. Imagine that a category has been called, and the timer started. Now imagine everyone furiously drawing what they hope will be vividly clear illustrations of things that fit the category. When the timer runs inexorably out, and the annoying buzzer of finality finally buzzes, you use the column to the right of your drawings to name each of the objects you hopefully illustrated.

When you're finished, you sit with your partner for that round and compare your answers, looking only at each others' drawings (you fold over the column with the verbal descriptions of the objects so that your partner can't see them, and you can't change your mind about what your drawings actually depict). The timer is once more started, and you and your partner pro-tem decide which drawings on the two answer sheets are describing the same item. You can't talk about what the items are. You must make your judgment solely on the drawings. And then you take score - 2 points for each item that appeared on both of your sheets, less one point for each item incorrectly selected. ("That was supposed to be chicken? I thought it was an artichoke!")

You determine your scores. Write them down on a sheet somewhere. Change partners. And begin the next round. So see, even though you only score when you see eye-to-eye, as it were, with your partner, your cumulative score reflects your performance as an individual.

Designed by Brian S. Spence, Garrett J. Donner and Michael S. Steer, Sketchy is, by every measure, Major FUN. It is everything you'd want to see in a party game - absorbing, challenging, creative, intelligent, easy to learn, easy on time (a whole game can be played in 20 minutes), bringing people together, making people laugh.

PitchCar

2009-11-16T09:50:00.000-05:00

PitchCar is a puck-flicking, car-racing game of skill and cunning for people as young as six and as old as can still walk around a table. It can get as tense as the Indy 500 without ever getting too serious to laugh about. It can be played as a race against everybody or a race between teams, as a polite game of luck and skill or a cutthroat game of strategic blocking and violent crashing. And there are at least as many ways to build it as there are to play.

The building part is wonderfully easy, though it just as easily can become a studied, exacting, and creative exploration. The tracks fit together with ease, like large jig-saw pieces. Grooves on the sides of the tracks easily accommodate flexible plastic rails. The basic set consists of 16 pieces of track: ten curving and six straight, 16 "safety barriers" - lengths of plastic railing, and eight cars (wooden pucks), each of a different color. There is also a sticker sheet used to decorate the pucks and create the start/finish line. This is enough for you to create ten different "circuits," each a serious twelve-feet long. The "cars" are propelled by any appropriate finger-flick - though some may prefer a finger push or slide.

With a little imagination, and the select incorporation of pieces of cardboard, Popsicle sticks and other household miscellany, many different kinds of tracks can be build. And, if you can find any loose checker pieces or bottle caps, you can significantly expand the fleet. If you need a little more than your collective imagination has to offer, we'd strongly recommend that you consider the additional purchase of, say, PitchCar Extension 1.

Designed by Jean du Poël, PitchCar is what people call an "heirloom game" - a term frequently used to describe a game, the purchase of which approaches a serious investment, and the promise of which is generation-spanning. It is easy enough to build and play to prove of interest to most first-graders, yet it can just as easily be made complex and challenging enough to be taken quite seriously by the mature gamer.

The designer also suggests two variations. One, called "The Pursuit," is played by two players or two teams of players. One team starts ahead, the other tries to catch up. Another variant, "The Trash Variation," players can try to knock each others' cars off the track (in the standard game, you would lose a turn). These two variations hint at another dimension of the game that can be readily explored, namely, the rules. What if we played in teams of two, one player always trying to position their puck to block other players? What if we played in two different teams, started at the starting line, but each team driving in the opposite direction? How about if we each had two moves per turn? What would happen, wondered a few of our Tasters, if we had fashioned special sticks for puck propulsion. Could we become yet even more skilled, our control even that much more precise, the distance covered in a single turn even that much greater?

At a games party, PitchCar offers a welcome balance to the more serious and sedentary strategic entertainments. At the dining room table, it provides a rewarding after dinner, after homework opportunity for the whole family to relax and celebrate each other. Competitive without meaning anything important about anyone. Cooperation without becoming tedious. An invitation to experimentation and creativity. An opportunity for genuine, good-natured fun. Fun of just the right, as it were, pitch. Major FUN, that is.

The Caravan Game

2009-11-12T05:01:00.000-05:00

The HABA Caravan Game looks like a game for kids. Don't get me wrong, it really is a game that kids will play, and enjoy. The cards and thick, folding board with funny illustrations by Gabriela Silveira, the cute little wooden camel playing pieces (which are easier to play with when they're lying down)...all appeal to people who think of themselves as kids. But the game proves to be deep, engaging, and challenging enough to attract serious consideration from those who think of themselves as adults.

Each of up to four players gets a set of 12 cards. The cards are the same for every player. You shuffle your cards, place your them, face-down, in a stack in front of you, and then draw three of them for your hand. From then on, you play one from your hand, discard, and select a new card from your pile.

Seven of the cards show either one, two, three, or four palm trees. These are the Oasen-Karten. Oops, excuse me, I was reading the German rules. Oasis cards. These cards tell you how many spaces you can move a camel forward. Three of the cards are cartes de mirage. O, silly I, those are the French rules. Mirage cards. Each of the three depict one, two or three palm trees, shimmering in a mirage-like manner. These cards let you move any one of your opponent's camels backwards the corresponding number of board spots (not literally squares, but they function the same way). Then there's one Cameleer card, which allows you to move any one of your camels one board spot in front of the lead camel - anyone's lead camel. Unless, of course, that camel has already reached the oasis. Finally, and most interestingly, there's the carta della tempesta di sabbia (or, as the English say, "the Sandstorm Card"). When this is played, everyone must pick up all 12 of their cards, shuffle them, deal themselves three, and continue the trek.

Since everyone has the same cards, you can, more or less, predict (depending on how good your memory is) what your opponent/s might play. Since you always have three cards to choose from, you can delay using your more powerful cards for a more strategically significant moment. If you can save the Sandstorm card for just the right moment, you can get what will hopefully prove a better hand, and prevent your opponent/s from using theirs.

Hajo Bücken has designed a fascinating little game. It can be learned very quickly, and played in as few as ten minutes. One rule that significantly speeds up the game - when you're counting how many spots you can move, you don't count the camel-occupied spots. So, if there are, say, three camels in a row in front of you, and you play your one-palm Oasis card, you get, in one move, to move your camel 4 spots closer to the oasis. This is so much fun that we recommend that when you have only two players, you use two sets of camels each.

Finally, there's getting to the oasis. There are only six oasis spots. The furthest forward is worth four points, the two behind that three points, and the three behind those, two points. Once your camel reaches any of those spots, it can no longer move. Probably because it just doesn't want to. I mean, after that long hot trek across the mirage-filled desert, getting to all that cool water and delicious dates.... Which means that, strategically, and perhaps metaphorically speaking, it's not always so good to be the first camel to reach the oasis. Especially when you take into account the jumping-over-camel-occupied spots rule.

Fun of a surprisingly major kind for a surprisingly wide range of ages and abilities.

24/7

2009-11-10T05:01:00.000-05:00

24/7 is an easy-to-learn game of strategy and chance for 2-4 players.

There are 4 sets of 40 tiles, numbered from 1 to 10. The tiles look a little like dominoes, a little like playing cards. There's a folding board with a 7x7 grid. Each player fills her tile-holder with tiles drawn randomly from a bag. After one tile is placed anywhere on the board, players take turns adding adjacent tiles, diagonally, horizontally or vertically.

The object of the game is to place a tile so that it, along with tiles already played, creates diagonals, horizontals or verticals of:

a sum (of 7 or 24)
a run (a sequence of 3 or more numbers in, uh, sequential order)
or a set (of 3 or 4 of the same number)

At first, the scoring for each is a little difficult to remember (sum of 7=20, run of 3=30, run of 4=40, sum of 24=40, run of 5=50, set of 3=50, run of 6=60, set of 4=60, bonus=60). A quick referral to a page from the thoughtfully-provided score pad resolves that issue quite nicely. You get the 60-point bonus if, on the same move, you get the sum of 7 on one line and the sum of 24 on another. You also get a bonus if you are able to use 7 tiles in creating the sum of 24. Forgive me. I said "points." The recommended term is "minutes." Even though minutes are actually points, it does give you the feeling that you're, so to speak, "playing for time" - which, clearly, is the theme of the game.

There are a few other rules of note. Every, so to speak, "time" you create a 24 you place one of those red, jewel-like stones on the empty spaces on either end of the 24 line. This helps fill the board a little more quickly, remind players not to create a sum greater than 24 (which one must never, never do), and explains why that bag of gem-like splendor is included in the game. In addition to all these scoring considerations, there are "double time" spaces on the board (indicated by hour glasses), which, when occupied, double the value of the score for that play, and add further complexity to your strategic contemplations.

There is always an element of chance (you have no control over what tiles you are given to play with), and an equal invitation to engage in much stratego-arithmetico thinking. The balance between the two is finely tuned, and combines just enough tension to keep the game engaging, with just enough sheer luck to keep you from taking it too seriously. Hence, it is close to the perfect family game.

There are several variations to explore - just enough to encourage you to create your own. Some educators and parents will find themselves embracing the game because of the arithmetic calculations involved, but we found the strategic considerations far more interesting and challenging.

Designed by Carey Grayson, the game is actually quite easy to learn. The whole game can be played in half-an-hour or less, so it will fit nicely with the attention spans of most casual game players. For a family whose kids enjoy games like Scrabble and rummy, 24/7 will quickly become a favorite. The tiles lovely to the touch, the wooden racks flawlessly functional. Because you can place a starting tile anywhere on the board, every game is different enough to engage your curiosity and challenge your reasoning. Fun whenever you have time (as it were) to play together, and I predict you will want to find the time (so to speak) to play this game!

Bob Gregson - Defender of the Playful

2009-11-09T08:36:00.000-05:00

There's a work of art hanging on one of the walls of Bob Gregson's studio. It's a framed letter that Bob had notarized. It reads: "Bob Gregson has never done a work of art in his entire career or anything that remotely resembles one."

With this, he has managed to transform what anyone else would consider to a profound insult into what, oddly enough, is a testimony to the playfulness that he has brought to art - or is it the art he has brought to his playfulness?

In an earlier post, on Deep Fun, I called Bob an "artist of whimsy and delight." Most recently, Bob's nephew produced a short documentary that made me realize I need to write about him again - this time to grant him the much-deserved honor, benefits, and privileges of the title "Defender of the Playful."

The video is just long enough to hint at the depth of his playfulness - a clear enough hint to allow me to demonstrate why I have such a deep appreciation for his work, his lifelong struggle to share it, and his many delightfully provoking accomplishments.

Upon learning of this award, Mr. Gregson responded: "I am humbled at this honor. As you've taught me (and I think you said) 'play is a terribly maligned word.' And it is true – and when you make 'art' (or 'fart' which is 'fun art' as one 13 year old called my work) it is really hard to get people to understand. But then again, if they understood they would be very self-conscious of the subtle decisions that one makes to create a comfortable and safe play-space. But with all that said, it REALLY comes down to my selfish desire to have fun – and the more I can twist the rules around, the more I can get people to play – and thus allow me to play too. This reminds me of a student paper that someone did a few years ago when I was a guest teacher at a 'Creativity Class' (whatever that is!). At any rate, I had college students working in teams to make buildings in which the team could fit. Newspaper was the medium. One student wrote in her report that 'it was clear that Mr. Gregson could hardly restrain himself from participating.' And it's true. I can't help myself. "

Bob Gregson is gift. And here he is, for you to enjoy.

Kamisado

2009-11-05T10:40:00.001-05:00

Kamisado is a strategy game for two players. There are basic rules. There are advanced rules. The basic rules can be explained in less than a minute: you can move a piece any number of squares in a straight line, either diagonally or vertically forward. After the first move, you can only move the piece whose color is the same as the square that your opponent's piece landed on. The first player to get a piece to her opponent's home row wins.

Each player has eight pieces. Each piece is a different color, matching one of the colors on the board. Which explains why the game itself is so visually appealing. The board unfolds into quite a large playing field (20"x20"). The plastic pieces are also large (two inches wide). They look like castles, each with a dragon nesting on top. On one set of pieces the dragons are shiny black, on the other, gold.

You can play a game in less than five minutes. Victory is satisfyingly sudden. Defeat, mercifully quick. You can play it with anyone old enough to understand checkers, and yet it is strategically deep enough to intrigue a chess player.

At first glance, the eight-page instruction booklet (10" x 10" - the same size as the board when it is folded) looks forbidding. But all you need read to play the game are a few rules. Once you've played a few rounds of the game, you'll be more than motivated enough to read the rest of the booklet, as well as the accompanying eight-page booklet illustrating different moves. As you read more, you discover more possibilities and intricacies. You learn that a game can take many rounds to play. That the strange rings included in the game are used during these many-round games to crown a winning piece, and to give it extra powers for the next round. And on and on you go, discovering more and more nuances as your appreciation for the game, and your skills increase.

Everything about the presentation and packaging of the game reveals a deep appreciation for its play value and uniqueness. The size of the board and the pieces, the packaging, the art. Conceived by Peter Burley, with artistic design by Peter Dennis, Kamisado exemplifies the kind of thinking game that the Major FUN program was developed for - elegant, well-executed, easy to earn, appealing to a wide range of players, deep enough to play again and again.

Funnest Games for 2009

2009-11-02T18:04:00.003-05:00

We played these games and played them again, and though they weren't all new for 2009, they were new to us, and we enthused mightily. And so, behold - the ten funnest for 2009.

HABA Ball Run

Truth be Told - "The Laugh out Loud Pretend to Know your Friends Game

Before we delve too deeply into the nature and wonders of Truth be Told, let me ask you to fill in this particular blank: "The most expensive thing I purchased last month was ____________ " And by "I", I mean "me," majorly speaking, fun himself. Now, on your paddle-like, write-on, wipe-offable, nicely thick True Answer Paddle cards, write the answer that you think was the one I gave. Remember, you get one point for everyone who votes for your answer. And one point if you vote for mine. (If you wrote down my answer, I find myself that much closer to you as well, insofar as I get a point too.) And now, one at a time, in sequential order, everyone, except me, of course, reveals their answers. I then, with great flourish and conceptual fanfare, reveal my "true" answer. Scores are recorded on the convenient, also write-on and wipe-offable scorekeeping card. And then, on to the next Truth Teller.

Dixit - a party game of subtlety, sensitivity and creativity

Tumblin' Dice

Think of it shuffleboard with dice. You'd be wrong, but you'd understand almost all you needed to know in order to start playing. There are four sets of dice, each a different colors (and lovely colors they are). Each set has four dice. Players take turns flick/slide/rolling their dice, starting on the top level, aiming towards one of the three platforms on the lowest levels. If your die reaches the third level, you get exactly as many points as are on the top of the die. If your die reaches the fourth level, you get twice as many points; the fifth level, three times as many, and if you reach the lowest level, you multiply the face of the die by four.

Worm up!

There's something gently lovable about Worm up! O, it's fun, all right. Major FUN, in actual fact. But it's funny, too. And so spare in its design that it's what you might call endearing. The colorful little game box contains 5 sets (each in a different color) of 7 wooden hemispheres. These are used to make worms - take a set, put the hemispheres, hemi-side down, in a column, and there you have it, your basic worm. It's good for families whose kids are a precocious 7 or older. It's good for kids. It's a good game to play between more serious games. Gentle fun. A happy little diversion.

Word on the Street

Take all your consonants except for the ridiculous ones like Q, X and Z. Put them on your satisfyingly hefty bakelite tiles. Now, make a long game board, like a 4-lane highway with a divider strip just wide enough and long enough to accommodate all of your happily hefty letter tiles. Next, get together a deck of 216, often surprisingly laugh-provoking, double-sided category cards, like: "The Brand of Clothing Worn by One of the Players," and "Something that is Wasted," and "Something Used by Scuba Divers," and "A Word that Describes a Car Crash," "A Title Used for Males but not for Females." Add a cardholder and sand timer. And those are all the ingredients needed for a new and notably Major FUN word game called "Word on the Street" from those frequently Major FUN game publishers, Out of the Box. Everything, of course, except for the rules. And there in lies the tickle.

The Bilibo Game Box - a child's tool kit for game invention

The Bilibo Game Box is not just a toy. It is a tool kit for the very young game designer (age 4 and up) and an invitation to inventiveness for the rest of us. The Game Box contains a die with interchangeable faces and six sets of differently-colored discs that fit in each face. There's also a set of six, plastic, hand-sized "mini-Bilibos," in each of the six colors corresponding to the colors of the discs. The Bilibo Game Box is remarkably innovative and brilliantly designed, but the real value of it only becomes apparent when it is used as a tool for playful, inspired invention.

Monopoly Deal

Before I go into too much detail, let me tell you this: Hasbro's Monopoly Deal is fun. It's a card game that gives you that Monopoly feeling. You build monopolies and even put houses and hotels on them, and pay for them, in the millions of dollars - all with a deck of cards. But it's faster, and shorter, and easier, and at least just as much fun.

Bananagrams - a crossword tile game you can play everywhere with anyone

Bananagrams is a word game that uses letter tiles - 144 unusally finger-friendly, bakelite letter tiles. Basically, you draw a bunch of tiles and try to assemble all of them into a crossword array. If you succeed, you draw another tile. And so does everyone else. Because the game is so simple to explain, it is also simple to change - to adapt to different skill levels, different environments and time constraints. Read, for example, Lance Hampton's exemplary story of how he plays Bananagrams with his kids. We're working on variations for teams, and maybe even cooperative versions.

Consensus®

Consensus® is a party game - the kind of party game to which you will eventually be comparing all other party games. If your kids are old enough, it's just that kind of family game - the kind you'd want your family to play. It's a game that makes people laugh, think, talk and listen to each other. Most of all, it's the kind of game that brings people together and keeps them together.

HABA Ball Run

2009-11-02T17:14:00.001-05:00

The HABA Ball Track Building Set is, by all measures, a toy to treasure. Made of European Beechwood, the pieces are beautifully finished, and a pleasure to touch, lift, position, reposition. The basic set includes just enough ready-made sections of track and tunnels to make the purpose of the toy immediately accessible, and more than enough building elements to invite curiosity, imagination and endless elaboration. The HABA Ball Track Building set will engage children in hours of play, exploration, design, construction and, above all, experimentation.

The fact is, that any construction toy that involves building marble runways, even one made of plastic, provides children with a near perfect environment for gaining the basic understanding of and appreciation for the processes that are central to all scientific pursuits. Given a set with a variety of both construction and track elements, creating a marble runway that really works invites observation and testing, experimentation and patience, refinement and repetition, elaboration and further testing.

Children are sensitive creatures, and though they may not express a specific preference for wood over plastic, the warmth, heft and precision of this thoughtfully made wooden toy will deepen and enrich the play experience for as long as they continue to play.

Though the HABA Ball Track Building set provides everything needed for many, many hours of absorbing fun, there are supplemental sets available that extend the value of the set, renewing the invitation to play by introducing new properties and functions. We tried the Cascade (a zig-zag, waterfall-like box that makes a lovely sound as marbles drop through), the Speed Track (a long, high ramp, that, as advertised, makes the marble go very fast, prompting new explorations of what you can make the system do), and the Score Counter (adding a random, but fun way to compete). But were most excited by the HABA Games for HABA Balltrack an extension that significantly adds to the overall play value of the entire set. It, in fact, redefines the set by introducing the idea of games.

The ball run is not a game. It's a construction toy, the object of which is to build something - not play something. By adding games to the set, the entire toy gets redefined. Suddenly, there are rules, social structures, so many more variables to play with, which, in turn, get extended and redefined by the nature of the toy.

For example, the set of miniature nine-pins (wooden, of course - 8 natural color, one red). So now the child has something to aim for. How many rolls will it take before she can knock down all the pins? Who can knock down the most? Can you knock all the pins down except for the red one? Should you use the large marbles? Roll them down the special large marble ramp? Both ramps? Should you both roll your marbles at the same time, from opposite sides? Should you use the large marbles to hit the small marbles so that they roll into the pins? Should you use the small marbles to hit the large? Should the small marbles have to be launched from the very beginning of the entire marble run? Can you re-aim a ramp while a marble is rolling? And then there are the three arches - targets to roll through. One is worth three points, another only two, and a third, the widest, only one point. Where do you put those arches? Where does the marble have to come from?

And then there's the floor, the whole room - everything becomes a target or an additional obstacle or another ramp. With the game extension, the whole Ball Run takes its place in the child's world, becomes one aspect of a small universe of things to roll at and under and through, becomes even more of a shared thing, an invitation to play that your child can extend to his family and siblings and community.

Truth be Told - "The Laugh out Loud Pretend to Know your Friends Game

2009-10-26T11:38:00.003-04:00

Before we delve too deeply into the nature and wonders of Truth be Told," Buffalo Games' newest and perhaps most successful party game since Imaginiff, let me ask you to fill in this particular blank: "The most expensive thing I purchased last month was ____________ " And by "I", I mean "me," majorly speaking, fun himself. Given everything you know about me from all our years of virtual intimacy, what do you really think, honestly, was the most expensive thing I actually bought all last month? Wait, let me put it differently: what do you think I would admit, truthfully speaking, to be the most expensive thing, etc.? Got it? OK, now write it down, using one of the 8, write-on, wipe-off markers on one of those 8, thick, write-onable, wipe-offable cards so thoughtfully provided by those everso clever Buffalo Gamesters. Be sure you write your name on the top of the card in the assigned blank. OK, now put your card face-down and slide it over to me. Note, please, how I'm thoroughly mixing up everyone's cards, including mine.

Now, listen carefully as I read everyone's answers aloud - everyone's, including mine. Here they are, in no particular order:

A coffee pot
A subscription to the New Yorker
A pair of New Balance sneakers
A bag of marbles
A Panasonic TC - P50X1 - 50" plasma panel - 720p flatscreen TV

OK? Want me to read them again?

Now, on your paddle-like, write-on, wipe-offable, nicely thick True Answer Paddle cards, write the answer that you think was the one I gave. Remember, you get one point for everyone who votes for your answer. And one point if you vote for mine. (If you wrote down my answer, I find myself that much closer to you as well, insofar as I get a point too.) And now, one at a time, in sequential order, everyone, except me, of course, reveals their answers. I then, with great flourish and conceptual fanfare, reveal my "true" answer. Scores are recorded on the convenient, also write-on and wipe-offable scorekeeping card. And then, on to the next Truth Teller.

What actual fun! How comfortably unthreatening. How surprisingly well the scoring system works to keep the game light-hearted, fair and, uh, balanced. See, I want you to guess my answer, because it's a point for me, too. So I try to fill in my blank with something that's not only honest, but plausible, and predictable, even. And you really are thinking about me, reviewing everything you know about me, or can guess about me. The game is clearly not about trying to make me look bad, or you stupid, or trying to reveal something secret about me or yourself or anyone else who's playing, or trying to out-strategize anyone. It's not good for me or anybody to try to get you to guess wrong. When it's my turn, the game is all about me. Not about what you think of me. But about what you know of me, what you can guess about me. And then, when it's your turn, it's all about you.

There are a lot of party games that try to accomplish this "getting-to-know-each-other-better" experience. Few succeed like Truth be Told. Honestly.

Oh, by the way, it was a subscription to the New Yorker. Who knew?

Tayu

2009-10-22T05:01:00.002-04:00

Tayu is an elegant strategy game in which players take turns laying "river tiles," competing to build connected waterways from one side of the board to the other. One player attempts to create as many channels as possible from north to the south of the board while the other tries to do the same from the east to the west sides of the board.

Published by Goliath Games, designed by Niek Neuwahl, the game takes its name from the legendary emperor of China, Yu the Great, the founder of the Xia Dynasty, who, according to Wikipedia, taught his subjects how to control flooding along China's rivers and lakes.

There are 84 rectangular tiles. Each tile is inscribed with a branching line. These two attributes - rectangular tiles and branching lines - help to make the game as unique as it is.

There are three kinds of tiles. On some tiles, the line reaches three different sides. On others, only two. In most versions, players take turns drawing the tiles from a bag and placing each new tile adjacent to one that has already been played. The game continues until all the tiles have been played. Score is then calculated.

To determine the score, count all the tiles whose rivers end on one side of the board, and then multiply that number by the sum of all the tiles whose rivers end on the other (so you score even if your river only reaches one side, but you score much more if your rivers reach both). There are four raised circles on each side of the board. Rivers that connect to those circles count double.

The game is very easy to learn - it takes only a few minutes to understand how to play. The whole game can be played in half an hour or less. Like any good game, understanding how to win is quite another undertaking - one that can keep you intrigued for many, many hours of deep play.

The game is nicely made. The tiles have buttons on the bottom which fit nicely into depressions on the board, though some care has to be taken to prevent yourself from accidentally knocking a tile out of position once its placed on the board. The strong, plastic board comes in two halves that snap securely together. The large, hefty, drawstring bag filled with tiles and the disassembled board fit perfectly into the game box.

Tayu is essentially a two-player game, though the three- and four-player versions are all worth playing. In the four-player version, players work as partners, one team playing East-West, the other North-South. Since all eight of our Tasters were interested in the game, we played it in teams, four on each side, sliding the board back and forth across the table. The board slid easily and the pieces stayed in place. It turned out to be fun and surprisingly absorbing for all players. Considering how many people were involved, it was a testimony to the visual and strategic attraction of the game.

In the three-player version, the third player scores by trying to prevent each of the other players from succeeding. Players determine what constitutes success by a process of bidding, like in contract bridge, trying to guess ahead of time how many points they will score.

There's an "advanced" variation where tiles are taken out of the bag and placed face down on the table. The tiles whose rivers reach three sides are distinguished by a concentric ring design on the center button on the reverse side. With all the tiles face-down on the table, you can easily see which have river segments that reach three sides, and be a bit more strategic in selecting the kind of tile that you bring into play.

All of these refinements point to a game that has been carefully designed to provide its players with very good reasons to explore the game in depth, to share it with many friends, and to cherish it for many years.

Dixit - a party game of subtlety, sensitivity and creativity

2009-10-19T07:51:00.002-04:00

Dixit is a surprisingly lovely and subtle party game in which players try to guess which image was selected by the "storyteller." The rules are simple enough to learn in a few minutes. The 84 large cards are beautifully and evocatively illustrated. And the whole game can be played in well under an hour.

The subtlety of the game comes from the scoring system and from a growing understanding of the art of being a successful storyteller - for art is what it is.

The game begins with each player receiving six cards, dealt randomly from the deck. One player is selected storyteller. Once the storyteller has selected a card, she can give any kind of clue she wants. After she has given her clue, the other players try to find a card that will fit the clue well enough to get voted for. The storyteller takes her card and the other players selections, and lays them out, face-up, in random order. Everyone uses their voting chips to select the one card they think belonged to the storyteller. Players get the most points by voting for the storyteller's card. They also gets points for every player who votes for their card. In addition to the cards, the game includes a race track scoring board, voting chips, and 6 wooden bunny-like playing pieces, each of a different color.

What makes the game so intriguingly subtle is the result how the storyteller scores. If her clue is so good that everyone votes for her card, or so vague that no one votes for it, she gets no points. So there's an art here. If you're the storyteller (you don't actually have to tell a story, you can sing a song, utter a poem, act, mime, whatever you think will communicate your choice to almost everyone), it pays not only to be subtle, but also to have a good feel for your audience.

The need for both subtlety and social awareness makes Dixit a true party game. Though children as young as 8 can understand the game, unless they are compassionate and theatrically gifted (like my granddaughter), they will have trouble playing it successfully with anyone other than their peers. Though it may remind you of other games (Balderdash, perhaps? Apples to Apples?), it proves to be impressively unique, and hence a valuable addition to your games collection. Designed by Jean-Louis Roubira, with art by Marie Cardouat, Dixit invites strategic thinking, sensitivity and, most importantly, creativity. And for people who possess all these strengths, Dixit proves to be Major FUN.

(thanks to Marc Gilutin for recommending Dixit so strongly - he was right again)