Quads Classic - a puzzle, a strategy game for two, a work of art

Quads Classic is another beautifully rendered game from Gigamic, compassionately brought to the US by Fundex Games.

There are 36 square, wooden tiles, each of which is backed with a magnetic sheet. The board is made of metal and is supported by 4 wooden corner pieces. Printed on the tiles are geometric patterns made of lines and solid shapes. A drawstring bag is included to store tiles between games.

One player gets the tiles with solid shapes, the other gets the rest of the tiles. Two tiles (one with concentric squares and a solid border, the other with regular patterns of right angles and a border of broken lines) are the first tiles played. The game consists of placing tiles so that they are adjacent to at least one other tile. Adjacent tiles must match, making it illegal to place a solid edge next to an edge with an open pattern.

Players alternate turns. The player making the last legal move wins.

Though you can play a game in as little as 10 minutes, it requires deep, very focused strategic thinking. Our Games Tasters kept on likening it to Othello - probably because it is as visually engaging as it is conceptually challenging. As for learning how to play, it takes about as long as it takes to say "whoever makes the last move wins."

There are a couple recommended variations - to add an element of deductive reasoning, players can place their tiles on edge, rather than flat on the table for all to see. To add more challenge, players have to match the patterns on the edges of the board as well.

As a puzzle, it's endlessly fascinating. No matter how you place the tiles on the board, you get wonderfully satisfying, geometric patterns of light and dark. You can increase the challenge as much as you want, trying to make evermore symmetrical, board-spanning patterns. And even if you fail, it still looks good. What more could you ask?

Quads Classic is what you might call "museum quality" - at least as much a work of art as it is an invitation to play. And here's a little extra reassurance: Gigamic will replace lost parts, for FREE, for the first 10 years of ownership!

Captain Clueless - navigate your way to fun

Gather enough people so you can have 2 teams - at least 4, maybe 8. Kids, parents, friends, whoever feels like playing something that's a little like a team version of Pin the Tail on the Donkey, and maybe a little more like a team version of the Major FUN-award-winning Par Out Golf.

Let Team Two start for a change. They select one player. That player picks a Port Card, looks for where that port is on the board - a humorously drawn of a navigator's map of the Caribbean - checks one last time where it is relative to his team's home port, and then puts his blindfold on. Somebody from her team puts a marker in her hand, puts the point of the marker on the home port, while somebody else from the other team starts the 45 second timer, announcing the beginning of the turn with the proverbial "bon voyage." Her team can give her only one-word clues, how many clues depending on the destination number. The first port of call can get up to 5 clues, each subsequent port, one clue less, and the final voyage back to the home port has to be made with only 2 clues. According to the rules, if you are "able to draw a clear route and land your marker in the anchor icon of your chosen port of call, remove your blindfold and marvel at your achievement."

Designed by Ted Cheatham and published by Gamewright Games, Captain Clueless turns out to be Major FUN - for kids (as young as 8), for families (younger kids can do the drawing while the rest of the family helps with the directions), with anybody in a playful, party-like mood. You can easily change some of the rules to keep everyone in play - increasing the number of clue words per turn, opting to play without the timer, allowing only nautical-like clues (hard a-port!). Though it's possible to play the game with just two players, the teamplay aspect of the experience is what really distinguishes this game from anything you've ever played before. It's not Pin the Tail on the Donkey. You're not trying to succeed all by yourself. The other players aren't trying to confuse you or make things harder for you. You're being supported by your team. You're the Captain, and though you might be "clueless" you are most definitely not "crewless."

The board is large and fun to look at. It is finished so that it is very easy to erase. The markers are full-size, and, since you're not allowed to have any part of your body touch the board while you're sailing, help to keep the right distance from the board. The sailing fantasy reinforces the "adventure" feel of the game, conveying the tone as well as concept, adding humor, clarity, and an invitation to practice, or make up your own sailing jargon. It's very easy to learn, the rules are very clearly written (on one, thoughtfully laminated page), and it most definitely makes people laugh.

Kayak Chaos - play your cards, shoot the rapids, grow the river, watch out for boulders and whirlpools and cunning competitors

You're racing your kayak down-river. Maybe up-river. Well, not really a kayak. More like a brightly-colored wooden playing piece that looks a little like an iron with a knob in the middle. On the other hand, it's enough kayak-like to give you that kayak-racing feeling. And it's not actually a river, you know, but a brightly colored, pleasantly thick, nicely textured piece of cardboard showing something like a rocky river bottom divided into 5 different-colored lanes. One of 8 pleasantly thick river pieces, now that we're counting. Some of them have boulders in some of the lanes. Others have rapids. Rapids good. Boulders bad.

And then there's a deck of 54 action cards - also nicely textured, but sufficiently shufflable and dealable and hand-holdable. And, as advertised, it's in these very action cards where the action takes place - cards that let you move forward or sideways or reposition the river cards, even. Each of up to 4 players is dealt a hand of 5 action cards. On your turn, you get to play as many as 3 cards. Having this choice accounts for much of the fun, significantly enhancing the strategic depth of the game.

The cards are clearly illustrated and color-coded. There are single and double "paddle" cards that allow you to go forward or backwards one or two spaces. There are single and double "swerve" cards which allow you to swerve into an adjacent lane - one or two spaces, in either direction. "Weather Shift" cards allow you to shift any river card so that one lane becomes unplayable (preferably the lane your opponents are on). "Kayak Tipping" cards allow you to rotate a river card. "Whirlpool" cards let you exchange the positions of any two adjacent river cards. And Life Ring cards can prevent another player from playing any of the cards that affect the river cards.

The strategic value of each type of cards encourages players to think hard about what to play and what to keep for another turn. The choice between moving your kayak closer to the goal, or changing the course of the river to keep your opponents from reaching theirs, adds greatly to the tension and the fun of the game.

The name of the game is Kayak Chaos, but the game is only somewhat chaotic. Just chaotic enough to give you hope that you may actually win, but strategically deep enough to make you feel that you can overcome whatever obstacles the river, your opponents, and plain dumb luck send your way.

Designed by SDR Games and published by Simply Fun, Kayak Chaos turns out to be an original and compelling little game. Because of the different kinds of Action Cards and the nature of the river, it takes a little longer to learn (maybe 15 minutes), but it's a game just short enough (maybe 20 minutes) for even your short-attention-spanning computer-playing kids to want to play again and again. With just enough balance between luck and skill to engage kids over 8, and their families, Kayak Chaos proves to be absorbing, glee-evoking, and, from time-to-time, Major FUN.

Letter Roll® - a word game for just about everybody

It's a word game. It's a party game. It's a family game. It's even a kid's game. It's Letter Roll® - easy to learn, short, intense rounds (lasting one or two minutes each); easily adapted to different skill levels and play preferences, taking some of the best elements from some of the best word games (a little bit of Boggle, a little bit of Major FUN Keeper-award-winning PDQ).

Your Letter Roll® box contains seven, hefty, 20-sided (go ahead, count them) dice in three different colors. Two sand-timers (your orange one-minute and your blue two-minute timer), four commodious worksheet pads and four full-sized, sharpened pencils. The different colors of the dice identify the level of difficulty (letter frequency) each die introduces. The two white dice display frequently-used letters, the three blue dice less frequently-used letters, and the two orange dice the infrequently-used, and hence, the most challenging.

When it's your turn to roll, you select any four of the dice. This gives you some control over the level of challenge. Choose only blue and orange dice, and you have an extremely challenging round. Choose only white and blue dice for a refreshingly less challenging round. Just to keep power where it most comfortably belongs, an other player gets to eliminate one of your chosen dice, so that ultimately it's not totally your fault if the round turns out to be too easy or too challenging.

Once the final selection is revealed, the roller announces the letters rolled, and players race to write down as many unique words as they can think of that use all three letters. As long as each word uses all the letters, it doesn't matter what order the letters are in. (Having the roller announce the letters, by the way, is another welcome, controversy-avoiding touch - as determining which face of the 20-sided dice are actually showing can prove somewhat of a challenge.) Players race to write as many words as they can think of, knowing that at the end of the round they will only score for words that no other player has chosen. When the time is mercifully up, players take turns reading their lists while the rest of the players draw lines through any of the words on their list that get called out. This results in much, somewhat good-natured, but clearly mournful moaning as scoring potential gets graphically reduced. When all lists have been read, players announce and record their scores, getting one point for each unique word remaining on their lists. This encourages originality, cleverness and obscurity, all comfortably confused by a strong element of pure chance.

To further refine the intensity of the game, players can select either timer, the one- or two-minute sand timer, to be used during the duration of the game. The one-minute timer not only shortens the playing time, it also makes the search somewhat less excruciating. The less time you have to think, the easier it is for you to forgive your lexicographic lapses.

Designed by Tushar Gheewala, the challenge presented by Letter Roll is so wonderfully flexible that it can be played by kids as young as 7 or 8 (just reduce the number of dice) or by adults in the prime of their linguistic abilities (increase the number of dice, increase the number of letters required for each word). By allowing each player to determine which dice to be used, players can further refine the challenge as each round of the game is played. It's a great 2-player game, and, with only slight modification of the rules, you can have as many as 20 players happily engaged (team play takes the game to an hilarity-inducing level of collaboration and chaos). As with just about every game published by Out of the Box, the components are designed for years of play, the box for easy storage, the rules for clarity and durability.

Let those good times roll again. Letter Roll® is Major FUN.

Wordquest - probably the most fun you can have with word search puzzles

What would you call a word search game that is not just a puzzle, but a deeply engaging, and often laugh-provoking contest for 2-4 players? How about if it were not played with paper and pencil at all, but on a board - a very cleverly designed board that reveals the words you are searching for one at a time, and the first person who can find that word must be the first to squeeze a very silly noise maker, and only then can use her own contact-lens-like plastic chips to cover each letter in that word, every letter being connected in a straight line exactly as you would expect in a word search puzzle? And, to top it all off, what if, when the line in which that word was found crosses a word that another player had already created, that player's chips were removed from the board, and, should that result in another word that is already claimed to suddenly become incomplete, those chips as well were to be removed? So that you can never really tell who is winning, even though you might be 40 chips ahead of everyone else, until the very end of the game?

You'd call it two things. You'd call it Wordquest, because that's the name of the game. And the other thing you'd call it would be Major FUN, because it's exactly the kind of game the Major FUN award was designed for.

Like almost every game published by Goliath, every aspect of the game is designed for ease of use and long-lasting fun. Each of the 20, differently-themed word search puzzles is printed on a large, laminated disc. The disc is mounted on a round base. A transparent grid provides concave receptacles for the transparent, concave, playing chips. Because the chips and the receptacles are both concave, it is extremely easy to use a finger tip to place and remove them during play. A mounting ring fits on top of the grid and covers all the target words. Rotating the ring reveals each word to be found. Zip-lock baggies are provided for the chips, and four pits surround the playing area so that the chips are easily accessible during play. At the end of the game, everything fits back in the box with ease.

Being able to remove words that the opponents have already scored is probably one of the most compelling of all the clever mechanics that have gone into making Wordquest as fun as it is. Though there is no strategy involved in playing the game, when you successfully cross words with another player you get the same sense of smug superiority as you would if your victory were actually justified.

And then there's that squeaky, exclamation-mark-like thing that you use to announce that you've been the first to find a word. It makes such a perfectly silly sound that it's almost hard to take it seriously, even if you're the one who didn't find the word.

Younger children who are old enough to successfully solve word search puzzles might have difficulty with the small chips and the competitive aspect of the game. We'd recommend it to families with kids who are old enough to appreciate both. And, of course, to anyone who likes the visual and conceptual challenge of word search puzzles. Even if you don't like word search puzzles.

Carcassonne - a friendly game of strategic connections

Carcassonne is what you'd call a "friendly game." O, it's competitive, all right. You are most definitely trying to get the most points - prevent others, if you can, from getting theirs. But there's a background of actual cooperation, of genuine, supportive togetherness, which, as much as all the cleverness of the design, the intricacies of strategic implications, the loveliness of illustration, makes this game Major FUN.

It's connecting game, played with tiles. You take turns picking from the proverbial tile pile, and placing your tile next to another tile already on the table. You have to connect roads to roads and cities to cities and fields to fields, hoping to complete and occupy entire walled cities, roadways and, as near as possible, fields. Fields are very big.

Parts of roads and cities and farms and maybe other things are all found on tiles. Land tiles. 72 of them. Thick cardboard, lovingly illustrated squares, each showing parts of maybe a road, maybe a walled city (looking, uncoincidentally, like the French city of Carcassonne), maybe an entire cloister, all, in all likelihood, including part of a farm.

I say "land tiles" because in the basic set you also get the river expansion, which manifests itself as a collection of 12 river tiles. Not land tiles at all. And in other expansion sets, like:

• Traders & Builders
• The Tower
• The River II
• The Princess & The Dragon
• The Count
• The City
• The Castle
• King & Scout
• Inns & Cathedrals
• Hunters & Gatherers

and, most recently,

• Catapults

you get more tiles and more rules and more interesting wrinkles.

When you pick a tile, you are encouraged to ask other players for advice. As more and more tiles get placed, advice can become increasingly helpful. Though you don't actually have to accept the advice, and some advice may be not as well-intended as the advisor claims, this sets the tone of the game, and helps differentiate it from the majority of strategy games.

Once you place a tile, you may also elect to place one of your 7 "followers" (wooden, people-like playing pieces) on that piece, claiming your aim to complete something, depending on where you place the piece (on a farm, a city, a road, a cloister). You don't score, of course, until your follower is on a completed cloister, city, or road. In the process of striving for completion (a consummation devoutly to be wished), it is possible that you might have to share victory with some other player who has also played a follower on a connected, but non-adjacent tile. This is not such a bad thing, this sharing, because your points are in no way diminished by the sharing. You get the points. And so does your erstwhile colleague. So it's not what you'd call "zero-sum" nor is it even "everybody-gets-some-of-the-sum." It's something else. It's an everybody gets the whole, undivided sum. Which makes cooperating almost rewarding, and certainly not so bad.

The farms are especially interesting. They never get really completed. And they don't get scored until the game is over. But when they do get scored, they can get a surprisingly large score, because farms also get surprisingly large as the game evolves. On the other hand, when you complete a city or a road or a cloister during the game, you get your follower back to lay claim to something else. But since farms are never actually completed, you don't get your follower back, ever.

Wrinkle after wrinkle, strategic implication upon strategic implication makes this game interesting, challenging, involving to the very end. And the cooperative, and point-sharing aspects of the game keep it friendly, as in something you are actually playing together.

Designed by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede, Carcassonne is a great game for 2 players, and can be enjoyed by as many as 5. If you don't get into the particulars, you can teach the game and get everybody involved in maybe 5 minutes. Since it's so easy to learn, if you're old enough to play checkers, you're old enough to play, and to have meaningful fun while you're at it. Since there are so many complexities and possible goals, the game appeals to anyone who thinks of herself as a "real gamer." Since there is virtually no set-up - all you need is a flat, empty space - the game is wonderfully portable, and very likely to be something you bring with you wherever there are people with whom you like to play.

Go Nuts - press your luck, go ahead, go nuts!

Go Nuts is one more example of how much fun can be packed into a 12 Minute Game.

It's a dice game for 2-4 players. There are nine dice. Four of them, the Dogs and Houses dice, are distributed, one to each player. These dice have images of a house on five sides, and of a dog on the remaining side. We'll learn more about these dice later. The other five dice have three Squirrel sides, two Acorn sides, and one Car side.

On their turn, players roll all five dice. They get one point for every Acorn they roll. Then, if they wish, they can roll again. More Acorns, more points. Any of the dice that are rolled to their Car side are put aside. But the rest of the dice (squirrels and acorns) remain in play.

Towards the end of your turn, you may be rolling as few as one or two dice, because all the other dice have become Cars. This makes it increasingly likely that you will roll all Squirrels. At this time, you, well, Go Nuts. That is you shout "Go Nuts," lose all your accumulated points, but keep on rolling and rolling your remaining dice, scoring new points. While you're happily rolling and accumulating, the other players are all hastily and with great focus rolling their Dog and Houses die. Which requires a lot of hasty and focused rolls as, if you remember, only one side of the dice has a Dog on it. As soon as they roll a Dog, they stop rolling. When the last player rolls a Dog, you, too, have to stop rolling. You then take your total score (except for all the points you lost before you started to Go Nuts), and thus endeth your turn.

Needless to say, Going Nuts is in itself a moment of intense, and one might even be tempted to say, Major FUN, keeping everyone somewhat frantically, and most definitely hilariliously involved, no matter who's turn it is. Though it will especially appeal to kids, it's clearly worthy of serious adult consideration.

One more rule of note. If you have only one die left, and you roll an Acorn, you pick up all your dice, roll again and again (as often as you dare), and continue to accumulate points. On the other hand, if you have only one die left, and you roll a Car, you lose all your points, everything, entirely, the same way you'd lose them if you rolled a squirrel, only instead of getting to Go Nuts, you just stop going.

The rules of Go Nuts beckon you to roll just one more time, just in case. Gamers call this kind of game press your luck. I call it the kind of game that makes you, to coin a phrase, go nuts!

Designed by Brian Spence, Garrett J. Donner, and Michael S. Steer, Go Nuts is one more example of how much fun can be packed into a 12 Minute Game. It is one in a series of 12 Minute Games, as is a game called Thing-a-ma-Bots, which, as it happens, I happened to design. Though I can not claim to be entirely bias-free in this review, having Go Nuts and Thing-a-ma-Bots in the same game family is an honor for me, and a service to all playkind.

Trapdoor Checkers adds new levels of strategic fun to a familiar game

Trapdoor Checkers is a new board for an old board game.

Flanking both sides of the board are controls for 4 different slides. Each slide opens or closes one of two trap doors (as the name of the game implies). Which slide you can use, and when, is determined by spinning one of two cylinders embedded on either end the board. When spun, the cylinders offer their players one of three options: slide either a green or orange lever to its next position, or move a checker. When the lever is moved to the left, a trap door is opened; to the center, the door is closed; and to the right, another trap door is opened. On your move, can only slide the lever to the next position.

Each time a trap door is opened or closed, the board is redefined. Though it seems most satisfying to open a trap door underneath one of your opponent's pieces (a rather delicious moment, I must say), it is at least equally satisfying to open a trap door so that when your opponent makes the obligatory jump, she jumps over your piece into the pit of vindication. Every open trap door adds an almost palpable sense of peril. Almost, but not really perilous. Just fun. From time-to-time, the kind of fun that makes you laugh. Often, Major FUN.

To get a better idea of the game, watch this marketing video (originally for game vendors) showing how the game is played.

Designed by David Mair, Trapdoor Checkers proves to be easy to learn, especially if you already know how to play checkers. It brings checker-players a welcome opportunity to re-examine their basic understanding of checker strategies. It adds elements of surprise and unpredictability, combined with a certain, highly graphic opportunity for vengeance, that create new levels of fun and engagement, and necessitate the development of new strategies. Almost any variation of checkers can be played on the Trap Door Checkers board (for more variations, see my article Ex Checkers). For anyone old enough to appreciate checkers, Trap Door Checkers is a reason to appreciate checkers even more.

The Grass Stain Guru - Defender of the Playful

Read, for example, this blog post describing 10 More Can't Miss Childhood Moments. Then read the Ode to Dirty Sneakers. And then Kids Choice: Self-Directed Play. Then go on to read this entire gem of a blog. Then you'll understand ever so incontrovertibly clearly why Bruce Williamson nominated Bethe Almeras to join the much-honored ranks of Defenders of the Playful.

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.

It's what you might call a "voting game," where "right" answer is the answer that receives the majority of votes. This shifts the focus from being "correct" to learning about the people you are playing with. Since players end up focusing on each other more so than on the actual content of the game, it creates the kind of fun that unites people, regardless of who wins or loses.

There are currently two versions of Consensus®, both of which function the same way.

In the Movie Edition, (the one we would recommend for adult groups) a "Movie Question Card" is read aloud. For example: "Which of the following movies best conveys the concept of: "Anything's Possible?" Ten "movie cards" are then arranged on the playing board, in the spaces numbered 1-10. For example: (Field of Dreams, Jurassic Park, Braveheart, Pretty Woman, Rocky, Back to the Future, The Shawshank Redemption, The Ten Commandments, E.T., The 40-Year-Old Virgin.) Using the "Voting Cards," each player privately votes for the movie title which he/she feels best answers the movie question. After all private votes are cast, the players reveal their answers. The majority answer is deemed the "correct" answer, and all players who chose that answer advance their pawns one space. The player who advances to the end of the scoring track first is the winner and is crowned "The Greatest Mind."

There are a total of 11 spaces to move before you can get crowned, so the game can take a while to play - especially if you're playing with the full complement of eight lovingly argumentative players. The game can be played with as few as three, but it's one of those definitely more-the-merrier kinds of party games.

The Original Edition (the one we would recommend for a broader audience, 12-Adult) uses the same mechanics as the Movie Edition, but the subject matter is far more generic. Here you try to select the "Noun Card" that most closely satisfies the "Adjective Card." And although Consensus® may share some aspects with the ever-so-deservedly popular Apples to Apples, you'd really be comparing apples to oranges here. Consensus® is a voting game. There are no judges. It's the majority that rules.

The Original Edition proves to be as much fun as the Movie Edition, and because the subject matter is even more subjective, so to speak, and more accessible, the game proves equally inviting to your pre-teens, who have probably watched even fewer movies than you, unless you're talking about cartoons, which, thankfully, the Movie Edition doesn't. Furthermore, in Consensus® each player is voting from a common set of nouns, which allows player to compare answers in a more discussion-worthy way.

There are many subtle aspects of the game play. The rules for determining what constitutes a Consensus (you don't score if everyone votes for the same or if everyone votes differently, or if there is a tie) encourage players to learn more about each other so they can better anticipate who might vote for what the next round. The "movie cards" or "noun cards" that receive no votes remain on the board for the next round. This accomplishes at least several goals: it keeps more cards available for subsequent rounds, it keeps good, but neglected possibilities still possible; and it gives players fewer new things to think about and more opportunity focus on the real fun of the game: each other.

All in all, our Tasters' consensus was that Consensus®, the game, is Major FUN.

Marrakech

Marrakech, some say, is a deeply strategic contest between 2-4 players, in which carpet-sellers demonstrate their cunning by claiming territory, and, with some Monopoly-like glee, collecting vast quantities of their opponents' Dirhams. Others, however, will feel equally justified in saying that Marrakech is ultimately a game of luck, where success or failure is determined by the will of Allah and the toss of the proverbial die. In truth, it is the blend of luck and strategy that makes Marrakech such an attractive game, and extends its range of appeal from kids to adults to the entire family (the youngest being older than 6).

The board (Rug Market Square) is a 7x7 matrix. Each player has a collection of carpets (rectangular pieces of fabric that cover two squares), and wooden coins equal to 30 Dirhams. When the game begins, Assam the market owner (the one large wooden playing piece) is placed in the center of the board. The first player positions Assam in the direction she wants Assam to move, and then throws the large, wooden die, which will cause Assam to move in the direction he is facing from 1-4 spaces. When Assam has finished moving, the player lays a carpet down at Assam's feet (vertically or horizontally adjacent to Assam's position in the Rug Market Square). And yes, carpets can be laid on top of other player's carpets.

The game continues this way, players taking turns, positioning Assam, throwing the die, and laying down carpet. If Assam ends his turn standing on another player's rug, that player gets paid one Dirham for every square covered by connecting carpets. When all carpets are laid, the player with the most squares covered, and the most Dirhams collected, wins the game.

Our Tasters (teens, ranging in age from 12-17) couldn't stop playing the game. The older players were determined to figure out how much of one's success one could attribute to fate, and how much to one's carpet-laying cunning. The younger were equally determined to walk away with the vastest riches, regardless of whether their superior fortune was a result of luck or skill. Despite all the other games they could have played, and my urging them to at least try something else, they played Marrakesh for the entire two hours of our 90-minute Tasting. They strategized. They contemplated. They advised. They chortled. And they played again.

The rules are easy enough to learn in 15 minutes. The game simple enough for people to play intelligently almost immediately after they learn the rules. The rule book is written in 9 languages, and illustrated clearly enough to answer any questions.

Designed by Dominique Ehrhard, Marrakech is available in the United States through Fundex Games, Marrakech proved most clearly to be Major FUN.

Alexander Calder - Defender of the Playful

Sculptor, inventor of the mobile, Alexander Calder, receives our first posthumous Defender of the Playful award.

Watch the video to find out why.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Dr. Peter Gray, Defender of the Playful

In a previous post, I cited an article by Dr. Peter Gray, who writes a blog called Freedom to Learn, published by Psychology Today. After a brief, friendly exchange of emails, Dr. Gray agreed to share his entire paper Leisure Play is Important for Human Collaboration with us. You can download it here.

Coincidentally, his blog currently features an article of similar noteworthiness called "Social Play and the Genesis of Democracy," in which he writes:

"Children cannot acquire democratic values through activities run autocratically by adults. They can and do, however, experience and acquire such values in free play with other children. That is a setting where they are treated as equals, where they must have a say in what goes on, and where they must respect the rights of others if they wish to be included."

Clearly we have found yet another Defender of the Playful.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith