All the Games on Our Shelves

 Here's another "oldie-but-goodie" that we pulled off the shelf recently.  This game, Clue , received a rather different reception that did our other recent "oldie-but-goodie," Yahtzee .  This is one our boys hadn't been SUCH fans of in the past but after giving it another try it is now considered better than they'd thought.  This is the granddaddy of all sleuthing games, and I think one of our boys suggested playing it because they were in the mood for a murder mystery.  (Uh-oh, maybe we've been on lock-down together in the same house too long during this time of pandemic!!)  The goal of this game is to determine the murder weapon, the murder location, and the identity of the murderer - all three of which are pictures on the cards randomly placed into the confidential case file seen below.  Players are dealt cards, which give them pieces of information, and then a time of question and answer and note-taking and logical deduction ensues.  Her...

We've been using such online tools as Zoom and Skype and Facebook's Video Calling in these days of the COVID-19 pandemic and lock-down in order to play games with friends and family.  It can be challenging to find a game that works well in this format.  So far we've played Scattergories , general trivia games, and  Quacks of Quedlinburg.  But we're sad about not be able to find a way to play some of our standards such as Pinochle, and we're particularly missing our Pinochle partners, the Fromuths, during this crazy time in our world!  Yahtzee was a recent suggestion from our friends the Kirks whose young sons (ages 4 and 6) have gotten very good at and have been playing with out-of-state family online.  David and I took them up on this idea, our sons, however, despite their love of playing games with the Kirk family, decided not to join in on Yahtzee.  One son described as "too much like school: both boring and stressful" -- a sentiment with which t...

The heart of me absolutely loves and adores games of pure strategy, but I don't often play them.  I think I'm often looking more for entertainment than for mental exercise these days, and maybe I simply like it when games include some chance elements so that I don't have to take full responsibility for falling behind or losing.  I also think that because I'm a mathematician people have expectations of me being able to absolutely crush my competition with games of pure strategy such as Chess and Go, so playing them can feel more like being in a pressure cooker than like any sort of enjoyment.  Given this sense, then if I win, it's just expected, and if I lose I've REALLY blown it!  Anyway  .  .  .  it was more than time to grab a game of pure strategy off the shelf, and so out came Octi .  David and I have played it twice in the last two days, and I sense that we haven't explored anything near its full potential yet.  The wins came quit...

Probe is a game David and I picked up decades ago at either a thrift shop or a garage sale.  It's a game David had played in childhood, and it's something that we always have fun with as a family.  Mostly we end up joking with each other or giving each other a hard time about what words we've chosen.  In years past I would get razzed about, supposedly, choosing words that other people didn't know, but that hasn't happened in quite a while, and I feel my boys have given me a very serious run for my money in recent years.  In fact, I lost spectacularly tonight!  In case you're not familiar with it, it's pretty much a fancied-up version of the pencil-and-paper-game of hangman.  Here you use cards to spell out your words, and there is also a stack of "instruction" cards in the center of the table.  Each player draws one of these cards from the central stack at the beginning of their turn and follows the directions, which might be "Reveal a blan...

 It has been way, way, WAY too long since we've played a not-yet-posted game from our shelves!  It's been too long since I've played pretty much anything, honestly.  I'm on sabbatical, and my college is sure getting its money's worth out of me given how hard I work at sabbatical studies!  Anyway  .  .  .  this is a GREAT game.  It could be that I enjoyed it that much more, being my first recreation in a while, but I actually requested to play two back-to-back games and would have liked to play more because I felt immediately addicted to it.  It's pretty fast-paced.  Also, everyone plays at the same time, so you're never waiting for anyone.  There are lots of options even in the basic set-up, but the game comes with what I would consider built-in expansions, so there's a lot of variety already without having to buy another box of stuff.  I lost the first game by a significant margin, but I tied my son in the second game a...

 I'm on sabbatical this semester, studying the lives and works of three mathematicians whom I call "The Sorcerer Mathematicians of the Renaissance."  One of these mathematicians was deeply involved in alchemy, so I decided to visit the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose, California today.  I had heard that they have an alchemy wing, and if I'm going to understand John Dee's life and work I need to know more about alchemy than I currently do!  But what does this have to do with gaming?  Well  .  .  .  as I was walking the grounds I came across a large outdoor game board for the ancient Eyptian game of Senet .  I always get very excited when I stumble across a game when I am least expecting it!  We do have this game (smaller version!) "on our shelves," but it is one we haven't gotten to yet in our "count."  After walking the grounds - including their labyrinth (this is quite a cool place!) - I went back inside to ...

  This was a recent Christmas gift to me.  Our friends the Kirks introduced us to this game months ago, and it's been on my gift list ever since.  Barenpark is a rather compelling and addictive game, or at least I and my family members are finding it to be such so far.  There are various elements to try to balance as you move toward your goal of most victory points, and the timing of the choices you make impacts your score as well, so it's definitely and engaging game.  The idea is that you are constructing a zoo of bears - polar bears, panda bears, kodiak bears, koala bears (not really bears, but OK) - a bear park or "barenpark."  Actually, each card represents a different country/language, which you can see from the titles in the last few pictures on this post.  There's a bit of set-up involved each time as the pieces are placed on the central board.  Each player will be taking one or more pieces from this board each turn based on certai...