Cover Up

Cover-up is a tic-tac-toe-like game, for all the best reasons: easy to learn, quick to play, and different enough from tic-tac-toe to make you have to think. It's made of heavy plastic, also for all the best reasons: the pieces feel good in your hand, the playing board is 3-dimensional, and the base of the board serves as a storage compartment for the pieces.

It's a two-player game, like its forebearers. Each player gets 12 discs: three large, four medium, and five small. The board is a 5x5 grid, but each space actually has three different levels. The lowest level accommodates the smallest pieces, the middle the medium, and the top level the largest. Players take turns placing discs in available spaces. Or moving the large discs. Once a smaller disc has been played, it remains in position until the end of the game.

Four-in-a-row wins. Not four-in-a-row-on-the-same-level. Just four-in-a-row. Of the same color. Now, as you move around your big guys ever so freely, covering what lies beneath with abandon (there only three of these pieces, so you need the smaller ones also in order to win), you do have to be alert to what you may uncover in the process - like one of your opponent's pieces, which happens, now that you notice, to be exactly the fourth piece in a row, which means, alas, the victory is hers.

So it's strategy, and just enough memory to make you have to pay closer attention, and it's easy to learn, and it's fast, and it's well-made - everything you'd want in a majorly fun thinking game.

Major Senior-Worthy Fun Award

It started with this article in Newsday - Racing to Play. It's about the kinds of games seniors play. You know what kinds the reporter talks about? The Mah Jong, Scrabble, Bingo kinds. The reporter actually interviewed me. She had already done a lot of research and was convinced that she had a fundamental grasp of what seniors (that's me, too, you know, your very Major Fun) play.

Me, I was majorly stunned that anyone could make such a conclusion about seniors and the games they play. Here's the only quote she got out of me:

"Fun is "noble" in the eyes of California-based game-maker and guru Bernie DeKoven, 64. "I think a lot of older people are reclaiming their need to play," he said, "and they're looking for opportunity and finding places that foster a certain amount of playfulness."

You can almost hear the horror.

I've been mulling and stewing and then, from Jac Rongen, came these wonderfully affirming photos. Spurred to action, I, your local Defender of the Playful, have created yet another Major Fun award. For games that are good enough to interest the grown-up mind, without making too many demands of a somewhat outgrown body. I am calling this award the "Major Senior-Worthy Fun" awards.

So I started with games that have already been recognized in a Major-funlike manner, and singled out those games that don't require too much speed or dexterity. Each and all a genuine challenge to mind and wit, all and each an invitation to mature, skilled, senior-like play.

Match of the Penguins

Match of the Penguins (no, not MARCH, MATCH, get it, MATCH) is a lot more fun than it sounds like. And, for kids who've seen or heard of the movie "March of the Penguins," the game already sounds like fun.

You get: one deck of penguin cards (64) and three penguin pawns (two black, one white). In the penguin deck are, as you would correctly assume, penguins. On careful deck-scrutiny, you will notice that there are penguins that are exactly alike and penguins that have the same color umbrella or sunglasses or shirt or umbrella (yes, these are the Umbrella-Toting, Lei-Wearing penguins of central Penguinia). And some have the same color umbrella AND sunglasses AND even a lei, too. And don't forget the fish pails, either. Because, though all penguins carry fish pails, only a very very few have two fish in their pail.

And as the cards are laid out, one at a time, if you happen to be the first person to see a penguin with a double-fished pail, you knock on the table and win all the laid-out cards. And if you're the first player to notice that there are two penguins that are exactly the same, you don't knock, you grab the white pawn, and get all the laid-out, face-up cards. And if noone else has noticed anything yet and you are the first to observe that there are two penguins with several matching items, you, of course, grab a black penguin pawn. And since there are two, the next person to notice the black penguin pawn grab as another black penguin pawn to also grab.

And, of course, if you're the first to notice two penguins with the same attribute, and the first to name that attribute out loud (saying something similar to, for example, "Umbrella!"), you'd get all the face-up laid-out cards, unless someone notices that there are a couple penguins with several matching attributes and makes a black penguin pawn grab, which would win, of course, unless someone else happens to notice in those same cards two identical penguins and has grabbed the white pawn, which would then clearly win, unless the round is brought to its conclusion by the knock of the double-fished pail.

So, you see, it's not just a matching game. It's a complex matching game, where you have to look not only for matching attributes, but also weigh their value according to different criteria.

When games are advertised as being fun for kids ages 6 and up, "up" usually means 7. Our kids' games tasters were 8-12, and this was the first game they wanted to play, and remained one of their very favorite, most Major Fun ones.

Zig Zag

Zig Zag is a strategy game for two players, though we played it with two teams. The goal of the game is to be the first to line up 4 pegs in a row. The pegs, however, can only be moved along certain "tracks." Tracks that each player has laid down, one turn at a time, patiently, o so patiently.

And that's exactly what they were, our kids' games tasting group, playing Zig Zag: patient. Thoughtful. Focused. And often taken completely by surprise.

Zig Zag is a well-made and well-conceived strategy game that can be played in as little as 5 minutes or as much as a half hour. The sturdy plastic bridge pieces - a longer one to reach diagonally adjacent holes, and a shorter one for the orthagonally similarly adjacent and also holes - fit smoothly into slots alongside each raised peg hole. Storage trays help keep the pieces sorted.

Any invitation for people to think together, kids, adults, is something you almost can't afford to turn down. Especially if it's fun. And challenging. And just complex enough to take people by surprise. And short enough so no one takes it seriously, this winning or losing thing, so everyone can focus, instead, on the fascination, the delight of the game.

Combo King

Combo King is, from time to time, a game that makes you laugh. Sadly, what you are laughing at is someone else's failure.

A failure of very little significance in the scheme of things, mind you. Which, I believe, is precisely what makes this game as fun as it is.

You have these dice. A significant number, actually. Eight, to be precise. And you have these cards. And on these cards are somewhat Yahtzee-like tasks. A remarkable array of significantly different Yahtzee-like tasks. Like "Use three dice and up to three rolls to get a multiple of five." And if you succeed in this task as described on a card that was in your hand and is now on the table, you get to get rid of the card, and you get chips. You get more chips, wouldn't you know, depending on the odds, you see, against your success. The first player who is out of cards wins.

Amazing how different some of the cards are from each other, and how compelling it is to try to figure out the odds. Similarly intriguing is the fact that the chips you win can be used, don't you see, to purchase things like, say, another roll, or perhaps get another entire turn, or make one of your opponents pickup another card or trade a card with you or, well, you see, here you get to experience, in all its fullness, the "screw" if you'll excuse the expression, "you effect." Again, the oppressed oppress the oppress giving themselves totally over to luck and vindication. It's great fun.

Giza

You get this board, see, with a map showing the location of three pyramids and the Sphinx. And all these easily punch-out-able (I mean, so easily punch-outable that it makes the punch-out ritual itself a delight of great sheerness), thick, cardboard tiles. You each get four. At a time. Some of the tiles aren't so good. Some of the tiles are explosive. Some are worth many more points. Some many less. And you try to build up your entire city, as it were, one card at a time. And perhaps the most shall we say "fascinating" aspect of this game is that, at every turn, you have the choice of of using one of your tiles to do something good for yourself or bad to any of the perhaps 5 other players who also have the choice, on their turn, to use their tiles do something good for themselves, or bad to you. While at the same time, you win just about entirely by the luck of the shall we say "draw?."

It is at least cosmic in its implications, and deeply revelatory of the human condition.

Giza as serious gamers might say, is a "filler." Relatively easy to learn (depending on who's doing the teaching) and fundamentally what one might call a "light-hearted" game. In fact, I'm going to call it that:

"Giza, the light-hearted game of mutual betrayal." - Major Fun, Himself

Speedy Eddy: Beyond Chutes & Ladders

Speedy Eddy is just enough like Chutes and Ladders so that you almost don't have to learn anything at all in order to play it. If you're a kid, and you have trouble with the whole winning and losing thing, you probably shouldn't be playing either game.

On the other hand, if you're a Chutes & Ladders (et. al.) kind of kid, Speedy Eddy is very interesting, in deed. Much more interesting, in fact, than either Chutes or Ladders.

As we have come to expect of games made by Blue Orange, Speedy Eddy is what you might easily call "lovely." Made of wood, intricately illustrated and carefully themed. In this case, we have a game about racing snails, so the board is a snail-likishly spiral race track, the pieces look like snails and shells, even the pips on the big wooden dice look like snails.

But here is the really interesting part, wherein the nigh-unto Major fun is to be found: your snail (your piece) is wearing a shell that is actually anybody's piece. As long as your snail has a shell, it moves the total of both dice. If your shell is blown off (by landing on a space whereupon shell-blowing-off forces abide), you can only use one of the dice to determine how far your actual snail goes. And, with the other die, you can move any shell. Any shell, see.

Very interesting. As game-wrinkles go, this one is subtle and rife with strategic implications. It's also a little difficult to understand, a little frame-braking. Especially for little kids who play games where your piece is your piece and that's all you can do anything about. Especially since at the beginning of the game, each snail starts with a shell of the matching color. A shell, like all shells, delightfully magnetically attached. Making the losing and replacing of shells part of the whole, shall we say, attraction.

MixUp

Let me tell you about MixUp, the game.

It is a two-player, multi-kibbitzer kind of strategic-like game. If you've ever played or seen a game called "Connect Four," you'll figure out the game more or less immediately, until you begin to realize the implications. Ah, the implications. There's a board with chutes, you could say, and it stands up, and you take turns dropping pieces into any channel, even on top of your opponent's tiles, in a familiarly Connect-Four-like manner.

Oh, your opponent's pieces, which are, actually, just like yours, except from the opponent's perspective they are mere shapes, while perhaps similarly from your perspecitive the tiles are mere colors, depending on who plays what. And you see, yes, of course, you are trying to get four-in-a-row of your what-have-you, but also, with all this color/shape craziness, you can get four-in-a-box. And then you win.

And then you slide all the tiles back into their compartment on the back of the board. And you slide the legs off and use them for the lid. And there you have it. Well-made. Well-played. Yet another fascinatingly Major Fun experience, from designer Maureen Hiron.

Tumblin-Dice

Think of perhaps shuffleboard with dice. Think, for example, of a shuffleboard that is on five levels, with, where there were once pucks to slide, dice to, well, slide perhaps or flick or shove. A shuffleboard looking pretty much exactly like this.

Think further of the role, or roll, of luck - how the dice, even though you try to slide them everso carefully, tend to change faces when they descend a level. There's an intimation of the possibility that one could control all of this, making the die land 6-up even by the time it reaches the X4 level after having knocked all the opponents' dice to off-table oblivion. On the other hand, there's an unavoidable element of luck which makes a 7-year-old often as successful as a 57-year-old. Think of this, and you'll understand, almost immediately, why Tumblin' Dice has received a Major Fun Family Game award.

If you know shuffleboard, you'll know how to play Tumblin' Dice. When I introduced the game at the Tasting, I asked my fellow Tasters to play the game without looking at the rules. With almost no discussion, they played almost exactly the way the designer had intended them to. Because the game was so easy to figure out, it is exceptionally welcome in a variety of settings, especially recreation centers, classrooms and my house.

Speaking of classrooms, the game requires enough arithmetical calculations to make it actually useful in almost any elementary school setting. When a die lands in special scoring sections of the board, the face value of the die is multiplied by a given factor. So, in figuring out a total score players exercise both additional and multiplication, and, one might argue, even algebraic skills.

But don't let its educational implications fool you. Tumblin-Dice is an invitation to minutes or hours of play, for kids, for adults, for the whole darn community. Did I mention adults? The kind of adults who might be interested in playing, um, professionally?

It's made as well as it plays - a big, polished, two-piece all wood, table-worthy game that you might never put away. Ever.

You Must Be an Idiot

You Must Be a Idiot. Not that I mean to demean you in any way by saying "You Must Be An Idiot." Please, don't take me seriously. It's a game, see. And the only reason I think you might be an idiot is because you picked a card from a deck of cards, and in that very deck are cards that tell you that you are in fact, for this round only, well, not exactly an Idiot in any perjurious sense of idiot-like, but rather that you are actually obliged to be wrong.

"You Must Be An Idiot" is the answer to the question: "What would happen if you mixed a game like To Tell the Truth with a game like Trivia?" The other answer is: "you'll probably laugh a lot."

True to trivia games, one player reads a question, the others write down, and then read their answers, and it is clearly pointworthy to have the correct answer. Two pointworthies, to be exact. Unless you're the idiot. After the right answers are scored, the game crosses into the To tell the Truth category. Any one of those wrong answers might have been wrong on purpose. On purpose? Precisely what you'd expect from an idiot. Of course, no one, other than the Idiot (or Idiots), knows if any of the wrong questions are purposefully wrong or just plain uninformed wrong. And so, while to identify the Idiot may be two-pointworthy, being the undiscovered Idiot is three!

A must for anyone either in or seriously considering public office.

Knowbody Knows

Knowbody Knows, for example, exactly how many hours Tom Hanks sleeps in a week. Probably not even Mr. Hanks knows that. So, OK, so you don't know. You can still guess.

Now, can you also guess what everybody else is going to guess? Can you guess if your guess will be, heaven forfend, highest or lowest? Actually, you can. Because, see, it's only a guess, and, as the designers of the game are so ready to remind us, Knowbody, actually, Knows.

Everybody gets a different pad of paper - each pad color-coordinated with the player's peg-like playing piece. Each sheet of each pad perforated to easily be torn into slips. Why do I go to such great lengths to describe a score pad? Because it's a devilishly clever way to make the game work as well as it does. See, that way, all you have to do is write down your guess (did I tell you that all the questions can be answered with numbers?) so all the answers are on different slips of paper, that can be sorted from highest to lowest, and you take off the highest and lowest and everybody can tell, at a glance, whose guesses are in the middle (and hence scoreworthy).

And not a negilgible bit of deviltry is added by the design of the question cards them very selves. Each question is framed with a blank, like: "How much would ____ pay for a pill that: A) Improves Memory Two-fold, B) Doubles the Power of Sleep, C) Eliminates Unwanted Hair Forever, D) You Pick." When it's your turn to read the question, you fill in the blank with the name (did I tell you about the list of 12 names, the one everyone makes at the beginning of the game, using their own names if they want, filling in the extra blanks with any name they think would be fun thinking about?) that is selected by the roll of a 12-sided die. This keeps the questions interesting and potentially open-ended. It also made us comment, separately and collectively, when discussing a particular answer and the significance thereof, "It really doesn't matter. Knowbody Knows."

We played. We laughed. We experienced the kind of fun the Major Fun award was designed to be awarded for.