Tag Archives: games

Pile of Games

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It has been a while since we have all been home together. And it has been even longer since we have all been home together for this long. We all get along well, two adults and two teenagers, so mostly things are copacetic. We help each other when needed and stay out of each other’s way at other times. We watch movies together and eat dinner together and play games together.

LIFE has been a favorite for a while. As you can see from the photo above we have several versions of it. We have a more classic version–the 50th anniversary edition which has updated graphics from the one from the 1960s. We have the electronic banking version–everyone has a “credit card” that uses a card reader to keep track of the dollars.

Then we have the Despicable Me version–branded to match the movies with minions instead of cars for pawns. That one is designed for younger children so it is a quick game. And then we have a more modern version with pets. In this last one everyone has car or a dog in their car and there are cards with specific pet themes (“You’ve won a pet beauty contest! Collect $50,000!) Seems a lot for that but I’ll take it.

The Escape Room games are fun. They are challenging and rewarding, but I can’t deny I find them a bit stressful. The clock literally ticks, with dramatic music that gets faster as the clock runs down. It is pretty great to solve those, of course. Better than winning a pet beauty contest for sure.

Recently we got the retro version of Pay Day. We have not actually played that yet but we seem to have plenty of time to get to it. And we have a whole bunch of other games as well, just not pulled out of the closet yet. So we have plenty to keep us busy. I keep hearing about people doing jigsaw puzzles. We tend to do those when we are away from home, on vacation somewhere, so it seems wrong to do them now, when we are home quarantined.

We are making the best of our situation. We connect with friends as we can. My wife and I encountered several neighbors yesterday when we were out for a late day walk. We chatted with them from opposite sides of the road. For friends who are farther away we use Face Time and Zoom and Facebook video calls and Google Hangouts. We also play video games. And we play board games. We do our best to keep things interesting. And we stay home safe.

Care to Play?

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We took a trip into Burlington today and visited the ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center. We go to ECHO often enough that we have a membership. Seeing the fish and turtles and ocean touch tank are interesting pretty much every time. They also, however, have a rotating exhibit. The current one is called Playing Together, which is all about games. They have games on display, such as a giant chess board and hopscotch and, one of my favorites, skittles. All of them are available to play, so whether the ancient game of Senet or the more modern Backgammon, fun can be had.

We wanted to play chess on the giant board, but it was never available. That thing is popular. My children played Bubble Hockey, which is like foosball, but hockey instead of soccer. My wife played hopscotch several times. We did not come close to playing all the games. We will have to go back.

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Skittles uses a top to knock down pins–the harder the pins are to reach the more points they are worth.

I love games. Before children games were a major source of fun in our house. We still play them at home, but different games and not as competitively. One winter night our pipes froze and my wife and I stayed up all night trying to thaw them out. While we waited for steam to do its duty, we played Quiddler. We played hand after hand and got such high scores we were impressed with ourselves with such an amazing display of wordsmithing. Then we realized we had played several hands too many. We stayed up way too late that night, and the pipes never thawed anyway.

I taught my son chess a few years ago, and then gave him a chess board for Christmas. We play occasionally. I don’t cut him any slack but when I stop paying attention he sneaks up on me. I am not all that good at chess so I imagine he will surpass me if we play enough.

We should get back into playing games more often. We have played a few of them this week, as we are all off for the school break. It would be a good habit to keep up. Maybe another visit to ECHO will inspire us again to make it a regular activity in our house. The exhibit was inspiring. There are just so many fun games to play. Games night anyone?

Kakuro

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A while back I wrote about my new interest in Kenken.  I had tried sudoku and had some fun with that, but kenken was way more interesting for me.  I still am hooked.  My wife has recently borrowed my book of puzzles and has been plowing through them.  Good for her.  I am a little concerned that I will have none to do in that book when she ends her spree, but no matter.  At the moment I am into kakuro.

My parents, in their wisdom, gave me a half dozen puzzle books for father’s day.  One of them was a book of kakuro puzzles.  I had never done them before, never even seen them before.  The book describes them on the back cover:

Kakuro are half sudoku, half crossword, and use a combination of logic and arithmetic.  They will require you to focus, think carefully, and reason your way out of missteps.

It is a good thing these are math based puzzles, otherwise I might not forgive the split infinitive in the description, but why be picky?  I managed to flub the first puzzle in the book, making an error somewhere that I finally just left behind, but once I got the hang of it, I couldn’t stop.  They are a blast.  Here is a sample, from kakuro.com:

Sample Kakuro Puzzle

Sample Kakuro Puzzle

Both this site and kakuro.net have some good samples and online puzzles and links. The idea is to add each row across so it adds to the number written at left without repeating any digits 1-9.  Then do the same for the vertical rows with the number at the top.  So if you look at the top left, you need to add two numbers to get 4.  Only 3 and 1 work.  Then you need to figure out which order they need to be written.  It is good fun, simple to understand yet often challenging to solve.

I still am jazzed on crossword puzzles and kenken, and those books still litter the house, but at the moment, kakuro holds my interest the most.  In fact, I need to stop typing now.  I have a puzzle left unfinished from earlier.