Quits

OK, you can call it "Quits," but you won't want to. Quit, that is. In fact, you'll want to play it again, and again, and at least again. That is if you like strategy games for two or four players. Especially if you like Major FUN Award-worthy strategy games.

You know those sliding block puzzles? If not (and especially if so) check out The Sliding Block Puzzle Page. Now take another look at the Quits board in the picture. See how it's made of blocks, and how the wooden-marble-pieces rest on those blocks? On your turn, you can either move a piece or move a row of blocks (you temporarily remove one of the blocks). The goal is to get your marbles to the opposite side of the board. And, of course, every time a row is moved, everything on that row moves with it.

Quits is one of several remarkably playworthy and innovative strategy games from Gigamic, represented in the US and Canada by Family Games. You'll be seeing more of them, and so will we.

Abalone

Abalone is one of those few, elegant, easy-to-learn, two-person strategy games. What makes it among the very few is a method of movement unique enough, and fun enough, to make playing the game a new, and utterly absorbing experience. Since utter absorption is the point of playing, Abalone is the kind of game the Major FUN Award was created for.

The movement principle? Knock your opponent clean off the board. How? By pushing a bigger row of marbles into her.

As you can kind of see from the picture, the board is made up of a hexagonal honeycomb of holes. Marbles rest on the holes. If you push a marble into any one of the six possible directions, and there's another marble or two or several in front of it, all the marbles move at the same time. Just pushing a row of marbles is kind of a fun thing to do, like the fun things you do when you're just playing with marbles. It's an even funner thing when you push a row of your marbles into your opponent's. And it's defnitely funnest when one of your opponent's marbles drops off the board as a result.

Abalone has been around since 1988. It's been around long enough to create an international following. And that following has followed long enough to develop an active online community along with a collection of highly playworthy rule variations.

For the non-Macintosh many, there's an online version. But nothing beats the delight of watching your opponent's jaw, and her last marble, drop into the pit of sweetly meaningless defeat.

Smart Mouth

Smart Mouth got the Major FUN Award almost before we started playing it. The design of the toy - I know, it's really a "game mechanism," but it's just so darn much fun to play with - makes a very simple word game concept into a genuinely fun, exciting challenge.

OK. The game first. It's a word game. You're given two letters. Your objective: to be the first to call out a word that begins with one and ends with the other. For example, S and T. You could call out "SIT," but you'd be wrong, because words have to be at least 5 letters. How about, um, let's see, "SMART"? Why yes, that's exactly right.

Easy to understand. Challenging to play. And there are variations, and more variations, so you can play it with the kids or with your friends or your parents, and everybody'll have fun.

Now to the toy part. There's a box on a base. The box has two sections - each rounded at the top, each holding 36 letter tiles, which are also rounded at the top, so they can only fit in their sections one way, which turns out to be exactly the way they need to be if they are to be displayed in the right direction. There are two different colored tiles (so that the letter combinations will all work), each color goes in its own section. Fill the box. Put its cover on. And slide it forwards. When you slide it back, you reveal the first two letters. Simultaneously. To all players. The first player to call out the correct word gets those tiles. Which is how score is kept.

Elegant. Easy to understand. A device that works so well you can actually throw out the nice, sturdy box the game came in. My only regret - I had so much fun playing with the toy that I had to be the judge for the whole game. Oh, well.

Fire and Ice is Nice

At our more-or-less weekly Game Tastings, we have come to have increasing respect for strategy games that are easy to learn, that challenge the intelligence, and are built on some unique principle. Primarily because there are so darn few of them.

Fire and Ice is one of the few.

One of a series of four, finely crafted wooden Masterpiece Games from Out of the Box Publications, Fire and Ice is a bit like playing seven games of tic-tac-toe, simultaneously. But only enough of a bit to make the game easy to understand. And then, the fun starts.

When you move one of your pegs, you have to put one of your opponent's pegs into the hole that you just vacated. The effect of this rule is to create a kind of mental tickle as you try to contemplate each move from the twin perspectives of your position and your opponent's.

There's a lovely, mathematical symmetry to the design of the board: "The board contains seven raised triangular islands. Each island has seven holes and the playing pegs fit into these holes. On each island, six lines and a circle connect the holes to make seven groups of three holes each. The islands themselves are also connected together in the same pattern."

Fire and Ice is a welcome addition to our collection of Major FUN Award winning strategy games - unique, easy to learn, a game that takes 20-30 minutes to play, and yet is deep enough for some deliciously deep thinking.

Tantrix

It's a puzzle. It's a strategy game. You can buy it online. You can play it online. It's called "Tantrix," and it gets the Major FUN Award.

The hexagonal tiles are made of Bakelite. Touching and smushing them around is almost as delicious as playing with them. The Tantrix Game Pack consists of 56 tiles. Each tile is unique. There are four different color lines - some are curved, some straight, some are even more curved. There are numbers on the other side of each tile. These are used to determine which tiles are to be employed in creating which puzzle. The Discovery Puzzles involve using tiles numbered 1-30. The Rainbow Puzzles require sorting the numbers into like colors. Then there's Tantrix Solitaire. And, of course, the strategy game for 2-4 players.

There's a bit of learning to do in order to play the strategy game, and the puzzles are the perfect training vehicle. Playing online is very satisfying - the interface is intuitive, the online chat adding a feeling of immediacy and community.

Invented in 1987, in New Zealand, by a New Zealish chap named Mike McManaway, Tantrix is a unique puzzle/game, deserving a position of prominence in anyone's game collection.

Amusing Mazes

If you found yourself drawn by Robert Abbott's mazes, featured in a recent issue of the Funday Times, Clickmazes might very well prove inescapably fun.

The site is a compendium of mazes, almost all of which can be played online. The illustration is from their section of Plank Puzzles, like those featured in the Major FUN Award-winning puzzle River Crossing. And this is only one of two dozen similar sections, each devoted to a different kind of maze. You'll be, well, amazed at how many different kinds of mazes there are, and how they collectively so clearly demonstrate yet another juxtaposition of mathematics, art and fun.

For further evidence of the fun/math/art connection, Andrea Gilbert, the site's author, explains her path from playful doodling to art and math: "As a child in the 70s I drew free-hand mazes, ever larger and ever more detailed, on 2D and then 3D surfaces. In the 80s I preferred form and structure, strong patterns that could be broken in small ways to produce elegant mazes. In the 90s I turned increasingly to rules and logic to add extra layers of complexity and push my skills to the limit."