Da Vinci's Challenge

To you, you lovers of strategy games, you appreciators of perceptual challenges, we present, with great pleasure, the latest Major FUN Award-winner: DaVinci's Challenge.

Each player has a collection of 72 pieces. There are two kinds of pieces: ovals (or lenses), and triangles (each side curving inwards). The circular board looks like something a playful geometer might have made with here compass - all curving lines, circles intersecting circles, hexagons and six-branched star shapes. The object of the game is to place your pieces so they form one of nine different patterns - the more complex patterns scoring higher because they are more difficult to form and easier to block.

One of the chief delights of the game occurs when you complete multiple patterns with a single move - placing one of your triangular pieces in a space surrounded by three of your lens-shaped pieces, for example, could complete a gem (for 5 points, or, if it's adjacent to another triangle, it could also complete an hourglass (for an additional 10 points). No matter how lost one gets in the strategic implications of it all, your eye is continually delighted by the visual challenge that comes from trying perceive potential patterns that you or your opponent might complete.

Score sheets turn out to be exceptionally useful for novices, helping them remember all of the different patterns.

Major FUN, in deed.

Palabra

Palabra is a word game that is easily as deep as Scrabble®, more competitive, more challenging, and yet requires only a deck of cards. 120 cards, actually. Cards with letters on them. And colors. And some even with special symbols. And some more special than that.

It's not just a word game. It's also rummy-like. So, if you really can't find a word, but if it just so happens that you can make a "straight" with, say, the letters J, K, and L, well, go for it. Since a J is worth 9 points and a K 6 and an L 2, you got 17 points right there. And if they are all the same color, you'd double your score. And if some of the cards have stars on them, you might double or triple the score again!

The competitive part, and I mean, really competitive, comes with the "shaving" rule. On your turn, if you have cards that match those the person before you just played, you can use them to take points off his score and add them to yours. Kind of a delicious moment in the annals of legally mean things to do in the name of fun.

I know. It sounds just too complex to be fun. So many other things to think about that it could take away the joys of word-making. And yet, it turns out at least as interesting for the word game lover as Scrabble, with all the fun of a really good card game.

The deck has been recently refreshed - the cards are a bit thicker and the color key on the side of the cards has a different shape for each color - a great help for people who have difficulty telling colors apart. If you have the old set, it's still worth getting a newer version, because with 2 decks (yes, 240 cards!) you can play with up to 12 people.

Major FUN? You bet! Hmmm. Betting. As one might do in poker. Hmmmmm. And hmmmm again. Given the 28 variations currently described on the remarkably thorough and generous Palabra website (which includes resources like the inestimably valuable 2- and 3-letter word list, vowelless words, and Q-words not followed by a U), given, in particular, variations 13 (called "All Poker") and 24 ("Texas Hold 'em), poker, most definitely. And there's, for further example, a more Scrabble-like crosswords (variation 12), of course. And, should you enjoy playing with yourself, so to speak, a significantly amusing solitaire (variation 21), even.

Shmuzzling - making jig saw puzzles jiggier

Cyber Shmuzzling is, well, Shmuzzling on line. Shmuzzles are salamander-shaped puzzle pieces designed by Sam Savage, who was inspired by M. C. Escher - especially by Escher drawings similar to these. Savage explains: "In the 1976 while teaching Management Science at the University of Chicago it occurred to me to cut some of Escher's tessellation figures out of wood. I hoped they could be re-assembled many different ways. But to my disappointment they did not fit well, because they were drawn free-hand. Ultimately I discovered a formula, which in theory would make for a perfect fit. Inspired by Escher's "Reptiles", I created a salamander design according to the formula, and made a dozen out of wood on a bandsaw."

We Shmuzzled with delight and occasionally with passion at the Games Preserve thirty years ago. "However," Savage explains, "the extreme accuracy required (to create Shmuzzles) made it expensive to produce. In spite of continued demand, it became financially infeasible to continue, and production stopped in 1983." Fortunately for the suddenly Shmuzzless world, in 2003, Professor Savage found a puzzle maker who helped him reShmuzzle the universe. And his new CyberShmuzzling is a gift to all of us immediate-gratification-seeking cyberfolk. 'Cause we get to play with them and experience first hand the deep Shmignificance of free-form Shmuzzling. And there's an actual CyberShmuzzle Puzzle, giving us exactly enough Shmuzzle Puzzle experience (putting the "jiggy" in the jigsaw puzzle) to imagine how much more gratifying it would be if we had spent the $15.95 plus postage and tax where applicable on purchasing any one of the many amazing Shmuzzle Puzzles. One thing to remember when Cyber-Shmuzzling - to rotate a piece, you click on it. It's logical, once you know how. Then again, what isn't?

TIPOVER

TIPOVER is only the second puzzle/game to receive a Major FUN Award. The first was also an ingenious, 3-D puzzle/game called "River Crossing." Oddly enough, both games involve 3-D pieces, which are set up in various positions, and in both games, the goal is to figure out how to reposition the pieces so that a cute little plastic man can travel across them from start to finish. It strains the credulity to think this is mere coincidence, but both games come with a set of 40 different "challenge cards," which give the puzzled one a range of challenges, from beginner, through intermediate, to downright genius. And, if you can accept the possibility that such serendipity could actually exist, you can even play TIPOVER online, in much the same manner that you can play River Crossing onlinearly. Much the same, but not quite as satisfactorily, alas, because, you see (well, actually, you can't quite see), the TIPOVER pieces are far more 3-D, ranging in height from 2-4, shall we say, "crates." Well, there is a one-crate-high piece, but that is the final destination in each challenge. The rest are positioned at their challenge-card-assigned places on the plastic grid, and don't get moved, but are actually and eponymously, "tipped over" to a vertically or horizontally adjacent position. And therein lies the difference, the uniqueness, the intrigue of this fascinating puzzle/game, challenging the visual imagination as much as it challenges reason.

The similarities in package, design and basic concept can be more or less sufficiently explained by the observation that both puzzle/games are produced by ThinkFun. However, the ingenuity, uniqueness and sheer Major FUN Award-worthiness of both of these puzzle/games goes far beyond similarities in packaging and presentation. Each is an invitation to hours of left-brain fascination, interspersed with moments of sheer right-brained glee. Each invites solitairy contemplation and collaborative kibbitzing. Each a welcome addition to the Major FUN Hall of Fame.

Matt Weinstein, Emperor of Playfair

Matt Weinstein, "Emperor of Playfair" has been advocating fun to colleges and business around the world. He and I started Playfair together at the Games Preserve, and he has taken it beyond our wildest hopes, and most ambitious dreams. Matt is the co-author of several entertaining enlightenments, like the book Work Like Your Dog

Perfect Timing

Perfect Timing is probably the first game that focuses on the ability to sense (or guess) elapsed time. The game (for 2-4 players) includes 4 electronic stop watches that measure time in hundredths of a second. The fun of the game lies in trying to predict, with great precision, exactly when one or two seconds have elapsed.

There are two versions available: a two-player portable set, and a 2-4 player board game. We played the board game. The board is used to help keep score and to determine the exact challenge to be played. There are two kinds of challenges in which you either try to estimate the time with your eyes closed, or you get to look at the stopwatch and test your reaction time. Timelines, on the perimeter of the board, are divided into 24 hours. Your success in a challenge determines whether you gain or lose time.

The theme of the game feels a bit like the old TV game "The Price is Right." If you succeed at a challenge (being very careful not to go over the time limit), you win any of ten different "prizes" (a calculator, dishwasher, microwave, etc.). Exceeding the time limit is like overbidding in The Price is Right. You don't win the appliance of your dreams. I had difficulty restraining myself from doing Monte Hall impressions.

Despite the many other nuances and events built into the game, playing with your ability to estimate time, and your reaction time, is such a novel and exciting experience that it overshadows everything else. Hence, it becomes the kind of game you may play only a few times before you have to put it away - at least until you find someone new to play with.

Perfect Timing - a perfect addition to anyone's collection of games that make people laugh.

Last Word and Faces - two more significantly playworthy party games

Buffalo Games, makers of the Major Fun Award-winning IMAgiNiff have come out with two new, note- and playworthy party games: Last Word and Faces.


Last Word might remind you of the kind of fun you get playing A to Z, but the game play is different enough to be worthy of any good party game collection. There's a deck of "Subject Cards" (e.g.: "Things Used by an Artist," "U. S. Cities," "All About Love"), and a deck of letter cards. When the letter and subject are revealed, an electronic timer is started (it's a random timer, so you never really know when it's going to go off, and when it does, it sounds like an air horn). Players say any word they think of that starts with the chosen letter and fits the selected category. The winning player is not, however, the one who is necessarily the cleverest or most informed, but the player who calls out the correct answer just before the timer sounds. Me, I happen to love games that ask me to be noisy, and I found having to balance my genius at trivia with my luck in timing added significnantly to my involvement and delight.

Faces is an Apples to Apples-type game, which is good and bad. The bad part of it is that it suffers from the comparison, the good part is that that is what makes it so party-appropriate. The main play element of the game is a deck of cards with vintage (turn of the 20th-century) images of men and women, and animals. Another deck provides characteristics, such as "the one who makes Christmas extra special" or "the one about to break some bad news." To play, six character cards are drawn from one of the decks, one of four pre-selected characteristic card is chosen and read, and players vote to guess which one the current player (the judge) might choose. A race track board is used to keep score. Every turn is followed by much discussion about who picked what why, which is what makes the game so party-worthy.

Charoodles

Charoodles is a game of charades with props. Four props: a foam tube, a foam ball, a foam square and a plastic cup. This, along with a deck of cards with over 3000 different charades, a sand timer, and some scoring devices, is pretty much the whole game.

It's exactly the kind of game you want to play at a party, or just about any time with your family. It makes peopple think. It makes people laugh.

You need at least 4 people, and they should probably be older than 10, mentally, at least. You play in teams, as in the Major FUN-winning Catch Phrase.

It was, unquestionably, fun. No, it's not Pictionary nor is it Sculptionary, which is the whole point. Like it says, it's a charades game with props, and given the limited number of props, the game becomes a unique and enticing challenge to creativity and cleverness. Amazing what you can do with so little, and how much fun it can be.