Brainripples

I stink at buying presents. It's very hard to find something that says "I know you and I value you and I want you to know how special you are to me." So it's a real treat when I can pleasantly surprise a loved one with something that she didn't even know existed and that turns out to be as much fun as I'd hoped.

Last night I gave introverte a copy of the "Girl Genius: The Works" card game. I think it was Treesong who had once mentioned it in an NPL chatroom. H is a big fan of Girl Genius. Since I'd arranged a very small surprise party last night --- to wit, I invited our good friends michelel72 and violetcheetah to come over for dinner --- and since michelel72 is also a big fan of GG, I figured I'd give it to H early and we'd try it out.

It was a lot of fun. Neither violetcheetah nor I knew anything about the GG universe, but that didn't matter at all in terms of gameplay. (I know we missed a lot of in-jokes on the cards, but it was still quite enjoyable.) The game mechanics are unique in my experience, but it didn't take too long to get the hang of them and they worked very well.

H was, as far as I can tell, very happy with the present, which makes me very happy because, first, as I said, I stink at buying presents, and, second, H's happiness is very important to me.

introverte and I played Quiddler and Pick Two this afternoon. We both agreed that restricting our words to those that would be legal in Scrabble(R) seemed silly; we instead instituted a house rule that anything findable in NI2 or 11C would be considered a legal play, even if it's an abbreviation, proper noun, or a foreign word found in a phrase common enough to appear in the dictionary. After all, those are crossword-legal; why not use them?

So I was wondering --- are we loosey-gooseys here, or do others out there agree that word games don't have to inherit Scrabble's limited vocabulary?

We also resolved an ambiguity in the Pick Two rules to mean that a blank may be swapped for any other tile that keeps the grid legal, not just for the letter that one intended when one initially played the blank tile.

And what other house rules would you recommend for word games? A three-letter minimum?

Last night I met mabfan and gnomi at the Card Games night sponsored by Eureka! Games and Puzzles at the Brookline Marriott. It was fun; I learned a few new games.

After half a hand of Quiddler all three of us were hooked. NPL people, if you haven't heard of this (I hadn't), check it out!

Killer Bunnies (no link on their site) felt overly complex to me; however someone told me that there's a more straightforward version called Kinder Bunnies that's a lot of fun (and age-appropriate for a six-year-old). I'll have to look for that.

There was a game whose name I unfortunately didn't catch, and which I can't find on their website, in which the goal is to swap cards until you can build a picture of your particular monster. That looked cool for the kids.

I played a round of cribbage. Ah, the classics.

Back at the store, not only did I buy Quiddler, I also treated myself to Pick Two, which bills itself as The Definitive Crossword Game. A misleading subhead, since definitions are not involved, but it looks like a rapid-play tile-based crossing-words game and, more importantly, it looks like a lot of fun. So that's my reward for Sunday's Times crossword.

From ericberlinblog comes a link to what may be the most addictive physics simulation game ever

Edited to add: So far, my best scores on the demo rounds are 34, 50, 56, 52, 170, and 68. I'm particularly proud of the 170 on the drop!