10 Days in Asia

I began my world travels years ago, where I spent 10 thrill-filled days in Africa, and I recall, even now, remarking at how remarkable it all was, how much fun we were having learning about where Africa has all its countries. Even though that wasn't really the point of the game, as much as the delicious dialog between luck and logic that this game, like all good card games, seems to be all about.

It's a card game, really - a tile game, even, for 2-4 players, maybe 9 to certainly adult. Not a board game at all even though you spend a lot of time looking at the board. You never really play on the board. You play on card holders, two of them, actually, one numbered 1-5, the other 6-10. You pick a card and place it into any slot in your card holder. And then another, and then other. Planning, all the while, to place each card so that when all ten are assembled onto your card holders, they will be in the right order, each country card leading to another, geographically adjacent country card, unless it's a boat card and the boat card is the same color as the ocean you share with that country card, and even, after that, if you get another country card of a country that happens to be on the same ocean, then you can probably take the train to that country, which is, in turn, a non-stop plane-ride away from Vladivostok, as the saying goes.

But, of course, it never goes that way, and you wind up having to discard and pick and replace and let me tell you the planning, the heights and clarity of logic one can manifest, only to be felled by something as stupid as luck, argh, it's enough to make you have fun. Sizable fun. Major FUN.

Anyhow, that was then. And that was Africa. There's been USA and Europe. And now there's Asia. And what does that mean? It means it's a whole new game, one that you know how to play, but with O so many, many Asian countries. And the board, isn't it subtly, and everso welcomely larger? And what about trains? Isn't this the first of the 10 Day series to have trains? But it's another 10 Days game, all right. You're on a trek as fun as your Africa ever was, or USA or Europe, even, but in yet another part of the world called "Asia," with so many Asian-sounding countries to learn about, and with such a fun way to do it, while you're having so much fun playing, thanks to the cleverly globe-spanning people who made these trips possible.

Stack revisited

I am certain you recall that Stack received a Major Fun Award a little over 4 years ago. In fact, it was a recipient of several awards: the Party Games award, the Thinking Games award, the much-touted Keeper award, and even, oddly enough, it was found most Senior-Worthy. And you probably even recall why.

I, on the other hand, have been exploring the game in greater depth, especially recently as I work more and more with various groups of seniors hereabouts. And what I have been exploring, actually, is the, shall we say, "Super Stack" set - two different sets of the Stack game (the deluxe, jumbo, of course), each set having different color dice, thereby enabling me to play a game with 8 people.

The large dice that come with the deluxe version prove to be especially comforting for senior eyes and hands. Easy to read, even at a distance, enjoyable to hold because of their greater heft, and easier to stack because of their larger size. Having enough for eight people makes the game ideal for building a sense of community and friendship. Because the group is larger, people don't can play at a safe distance from each other (psychologically safe), but because they're all sharing the same set of dice, they feel connected. If we need to, we can easily divide into smaller, more intimate groups. But having all those dice means that each player has twice as many options to consider. On the one hand, it makes the beginning of the game that much easier and more inviting. On the other, it makes the endgame that much more dramatic. Stacks get built, options constantly get fewer and fewer, the need to play strategically gets more and more vivid.

Stack, even with only 4 colors, has never disappointed us as a game for almost all ages. But having twice as many dice turns out to be more than twice as flexible, twice as interesting, for at least twice as many people.

Games Tasting at the Senior Center

Our first meeting at the Veterans Park Senior Center in Redondo Beach began with a game of Tumblin-Dice. It was at least as effective, and fun, as I had thought it was going to be - easy to learn, challenging, and yet with enough luck to keep people from taking it too seriously. Especially, given that people had come into the center expecting to learn more about how to play Texas Hold 'em. Even older people, who had difficulty standing, were moving around, waiting for their turn with very apparent glee. The only obstacle was keeping score - doing the arithmetic calculations of adding and multiplying the spots on the dice - which, of course, is part of the challenge for children as well as seniors. Since this was the first game we played, I helped with the scorekeeping. Trying to slide the dice into the scoring areas was more than enough to keep people focused on fun.

But the event really didn't become major fun, until we started playing A to Z. At first, there were just enough players so we could have one for each of the 4 boards. There are two dice - one, the category die, determines which of 6 questions you are trying to answer, the other, the timer die, determines how much time you have (15 or 30 seconds), and two special events - one that allows you to cover up any empty space, and second which lets you take chips off the board of any other player.

As I taught the game, I suggested that we ignore, for the time being, both of the dice. When it was someone's turn, that player would pick a card, select any one of the six categories, and start the timer (giving themselves 30 seconds). I think, because we knew we were ignoring some of the rules (cheating, perhaps?), the game became even more fun. Later, when more people came in, we had to share boards, so it became a game between teams. And this made the game even more fun. Individual players didn't feel so pressured because they were part of a team. We all knew we were kind of cheating (picking whatever item we wanted from the category cards, disregarding both dice), so the game became a shared thing, one that we had all adapted, for our own use, for our own fun.

And major fun it was.



from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Solitaire for seniors?

Dear Major Fun,

Do you have/know of any adaptive games for seniors to do on their own? My dear Auntie recently entered a nursing home at age 96 after having been independent her whole life. She now needs major assistance & can participate in very few group activities. Although they do have an activities director, that person does things like bring Auntie magazines. Auntie used to love to play Bridge; I was thinking that if she had a flannel board of some kind that could hold cards for Solitaire that would be one thing she could probably do in her wheelchair or in bed. I haven’t been able to think of other solo activities, nor have I been able to come up with anywhere to find a board like I’m describing for playing cards.

Major Fun replies:

I've been Googling around. I think magnetic playing cards might be your best alternative. I found them fairly widely available. The most often recommended seem to be these.

There are also, of course, many electronic games that she might find of value. I liked this Big Screen Poker game - looks like it's easy to see, easy to control.

However, since you asked, most seniors I know really crave people to play with, a lot more than things to play with by themselves. The real, life-restoring stimulation that they so much need comes from, well, living things.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Luck of the Draw

Luck of the Draw is described as "a game for the artistically challenged." And I am happy to tell you that this turns out to be a remarkably accurate description of the very people who will have the most fun playing it: the people who don't like games that make them draw.

Which is exactly what Luck of the Draw does. It makes you draw. Things like: a monkey or a space shuttle or a bad hair day; a piranha, a used car or a dream date (there are three things to draw on each card, see, and the roll of the die tells you which one).

But the part of the game that makes the drawing actually fun and the fun actually Major, comes from another deck of cards, called "categories." Categories like: "most over the top," "most dramatic," "stands out like a sore thumb."

For it turns out that these cards, these "category" cards, serve as the criteria by which the drawings are judged, don't you know. So, pretty much despite my assiduous efforts at a 45-second 3-D rendering of the Eiffel Tower in perspective with enticing hints of a chiaroscoro-like Parisian dawn, if the category turns out to be "Best Example of Minimalism," I have no myopic critics to rail against, and nothing to show for my outstanding efforts but unrequited artistic angst. Whilst you, who only managed to draw a large, narrow, and somewhat crooked "A," bask in the applause of your peers.

And for those players who have professional artistic aspirations, Luck of the Draw is a preternaturally poignant experience, capturing, with unavoidable clarity, the famously fickle fortunes of those who stake their livelihood on the currentmost definitions of "good art."

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.

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.

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.

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.

Bonkers

"Bonkers," you ask? Yes, say I, Bonkers, the game. A word game, actually. Not, as you might think from all that trivia-sized box of little cards, a trivia game. But a word game, in deed. And a funny one, too.

First, let's look at a card. Any card will do. This one has the word "HOUSE" on the top. Below that are four answers, marked "A", "B", "C", etc. The answers here are, no, wait. I'll tell you in a minute. First you tell me. Four words. Each beginning with HOUSE. I'll get back to explaining the card in a minute.

Then there's a racetrack board. There are also 4 spots on the board, marked A, B, C, and so forth. Now, somebody, or some team, gets together and decides how likely it is that the otherbody or team will guess which. And then distribute playing chips on the 4 spots, appropriately - most chips on the word that the person/team thinks the other/s will least likely say.

Oh. The words on the HOUSE card? Housefly, for example.

There are different kinds of question cards. Some ask you to list 4 things, like countries, beginning with a letter, like H, or maybe two letters, like ME. Some ask you for words that rhymewith something. Some for words that end or start with other words (as in the above example of the HOUSE card.)

Did you figure out the HOUSE word? Housewarming? Which one did you think was the hardest to guess? Housebroken? I dunno. Housewife, maybe.

When you're the person or team reading the question, you've got to listen very, very hard. Because answers come as fast as the other person/team can think of them, and if you say that they didn't say what they said they said, well, things can border on the less-light-hearted. This requires the maturity, minimally, of a 12-year old.

But a party game it is. And it's not trivia. And it's Major FUN.

Nerdy Wordy

Nerdy Wordy is a challenging word game for two players, based on the traditional children's paper-and-pencil game of "Word Square." Based, but better.

Each player has a tray and a collection of letter cubes. The letter cubes cover the whole alphabet, and are designed in alphabetic order. Thus, there are cubes with letters A-F, J-L, M-R, S-W, X and Y. There are also two blank (wild) cubes. Players take turns selecting letters. A selected letter can be dropped anywhere within the 5x5 matrix. Thus, though each player is using the same letter, what they end up with on their boards will be different.

Though the two trays make you think of Battleship, Nerdy Wordy is a completely different game. Players get points for each word they make (from 2-5 letters long) and get extra points if they are able to make five-letter words on all 4 sides of the grid. Though the cubes store nicely in their respective trays, it's not really a car game - as you need a surface on which to hold and sort your cubes.

The game can get very challenging. Especially if you count 2- and 3-letter words. And even more especially if you happen to be playing against a Scrabble player. The game can be made easier (scoring only 5- and/or 4-letter words), without disturbing the strategic interest.

The letter cubes, because they limit the letters that can be used, and because of the addition of two blank cubes, add great depth and interest to the game. For two word-loving players of equal skill, age 8 and up, the game will undoubtedly prove to be Major FUN.

Isolate

Isolate is an elegant little strategy game from Educational Insights (makers of the award-winning games Rumis, Blokus, and Space Faces) for 2 or 4 players, from first grade to adult. It can take from 20 minutes to an hour for a game. The two-player version is as good as the four, and the strategy different enough to make it worth trying both.

There are 4 tiles (housed more or less conveniently in the inside of the board) of each of 4 different colors. Each player selects a color. Players then take turns adding tiles to the board - the only rule being that a new tile must be adjacent to one already played. After all the tiles are placed, the object becomes to move columns of tiles so as to isolate your color tile from other tiles on the board. As soon as your color tile is isolated, it is removed from the board, and added to your wins collection.

The game continues, each player sliding a column of adjacent tiles. If more than one, or a cluster of tiles is isolated from the main group, all those tiles are returned to their owners. This adds to the strategic depth of the game as you have to constantly be on the lookout to make sure that your move doesn't inadvertently help other players (unless you find yourself in the thrall of self-defeating magnanimity).

The perceptual challenge is often as deep as the strategic - just being able to envision the consequences of a move requires you to perceive the entire array of tiles, in each permutation, as each possible move is considered. Just the kind of task that children are often better able to accomplish than adults - making the game of interest to the whole family. All in all, we found Isolate to be well-made, challenging and inviting.

Columns - a game of strategic stacking

Columns is another beautifully crafted game "PIN" from Out-of-the-Box's Masterpiece collection. The two-player "stacking game" involves building on a matrix of 3x4 wooden pins. Each player has a collection of wooden pieces: "L"-shaped, rectangular and square "blockers" and disk-shaped "roundels." There are 12 roundels, and they are the only pieces that can score, and they only score when they are placed on top of a column. Columns are built in five layers. A roundel can not be placed on top of an opponent's blocker.

Rule-wise, that's pretty much it. Well, you also can't put two of the same kind of blockers on top of each other. And you can't leave any gaps. Other than that, the game is one of careful anticipation as you try to build a foundation that will be topped by your roundels and not your opponent's.

At first, it's almost impossible to understand the implications of the different kinds of pieces. You place something in the matrix. You build. You are surprised. As you play repeatedly you get a growing appreciation for the strategic value of each different piece. If you are evenly matched, the subtleties continue to reveal themselves game after game. And you still get surprised.

For people who like 3-D puzzles and games of strategy, Major FUN, in deed.

Siege Stones

Siege Stones is a lovingly crafted strategy game for 2-4 players. Elegant and subtle, the game is easy to learn and the strategy deep enough to make it worth playing again and again.

It is difficult not to be impressed by the quality of the game components - beautiful glass markers add sparkling color to the wooden board and playing pieces. After a few turns, however, it quickly becomes apparent that the game is every bit as attractive as its components.

The object of the game is to lay claim to 4 of the 9 wooden "towers." To do so, you must surround a tower with pieces of your color. However, proximity to a tower weakens the value of your pieces. Thus, while you're engaged in a battle for a tower, another tower placed near your pieces weakens your claim. This makes the game strategically subtle - enough to give it a high replay value. Variations, including Siege Stones Charge, further extend the replay value, and invite players to create yet more versions of this challenging, subtle, and fast-paced game.

Siege Stones is one of the few strategy games that is as fun for 3 players as it is for 2 or 4. That discovery was the proverbial tipping point for us - making Siege Stones a most definitely Major FUN Award-worthy strategy game.

Rumis

Rumis is a genuinely deep strategy game for 2-4 players brought to you by Educational Insights. "Educational Insights," you probably ask, in potentially reverse discrimination, "how could an educational game, recommended for kids first grade and older, be of any interest to my mature self?" (A painfully parallel question to teachers who voice similar concerns about games like Apples to Apples and Ten Days in the USA). Perhaps it will somewhat clarify issues when you take into account that these are the same people who brought us the very Major FUN-award winning Blokus.

Though the game can be played by 2-4 players, it works best with 4. Each player uses a set of 11 3-dimensional blocks. There's one shape made of two cubes, two shapes out of 3 cubes, and the remaining shapes are each permutations of 4 cubes. Players alternate turns laying setting blocks on the board (you can use any of 4 different boards), the rule being that, after the first round, each piece (called "stone") must be placed so that it touches at least one face of any stone of your color that you already played. You do have to stay within the perimeter of the board, and you can't stack stones above the height limitation (which differs, depending on which board you use.

The base is a turntable, which becomes increasingly appreciated as more and more pieces are placed, and the configuration becomes more complicated. When the game ends, you look at the structure from top down, scoring a point for every face of your color that you can see.

The concept is strategically deep enough to keep even veteran gamers challenged throughout the game. At the Tasting, we had two different teams of players who wanted to try it, and each team wanted to play it again and again with different boards. The only complaint was that maybe a little too much dexterity is required for precise piece placement. This could have something to do with the age of the players and the amount of coffee consumed.

Blokus Beauteous

We knew the first time we played this, it was love at first sight. The rules are easy to learn....so easy that you don't expect it to play as well as it does.

There are complex decisions to make, figuring what your opponents might do and how to counter them and stake out some territory for yourself.

I must admit - since receiving my copy of Blokus (Educational Insights) I have brought it to every gaming event I've attended and nobody's had a bad thing to say about it.

My interest was first peaked when rather than setting the board up squarely (with a side facing each player) we set it up to look like a diamond (with a corner near each of the four players). Even this little touch alerted us to something special. Blokus is a beautiful game full of excellent, dramatic situations.

Blokus simplus:

The board, a 20X20 square. Each of 4 players (best) gets 21 pieces (blue, red, yellow, green). These pieces represent every combination of 1-5 blocks, touching orthogonally (I love this word! Never knew about it until I started playing serious boardgames...it's the [compliment] of diagonally). Your goal, starting in your corner, is to play all your pieces to the board and try to block your opponents from doing the same. And the only legal way to play a piece is diagonally touching another of your pieces. It may NOT touch any pieces of the same color along a side (here's that word again... "orthogonally".) Your play may, however, put your piece in contact with your opponent's pieces any way at all.

Note: Don't try picturing what I've just written. Look at this:

And the pieces are two-sided, so you can turn one over if it fits your needs better that way.

Players now take turns playing until no one can make a legal play. Everyone then counts up the total 'area' of their remaining tiles (I have one five tile, a four, and a three...my score is 12; you have a three and a four for 7.)

Because of its short play-time, Blokus fits easily into a gaming session. The entire game takes only 20 or so minutes. Heck. Many of the games we play take longer than that to read the rules! But, if you're anything like the folks I've played it with, you'll want to play it again.

If you start to feel you are a blockus expertus, there's a website where an obliging 'bot will kickus your behindus.

Our only concern was being slightly mislead about the age range of the game. The Blokus folks indicate that it's "suitable for 5 and up." We played with a very bright 7 1/2 year-old who couldn't quite grasp the game's strategy

We say Major FUN for 8 and up!"

Blokus Keepus!

Marc Gilutin
Gamestaster

Wildwords

On first glance, it could be easily mistaken for that highly popular word/board game, SCRA*LE. And, in truth, the similarities are close enough to make any SCRA*LE player to feel right at home. Of course, it's the differences that make it interesting - differences that are different enough to make it a completely new, and disturbingly compelling game.

Here is one play, illustrating the various possibilities inherent in a single turn of WildWords. You will note the SCRA*LE-like board. On closer inspection, you will note that despite the apparent SCRA*LE-likeness, there are differences - like the squares that say "Lose 20 on Play." Omigosh, you mean there are squares you don't want to cover? And the surprisingly many squares that say "Turn to Wild."

Which brings me to what may be the most clearly unSCRA*LE-like concept of "Wild" you'll ever encounter. A wild tile, indicated either by the * or by it's turned-overness, can be any string of consecutive letters. Not just any one letter. But any one or many letters. This change is radical. It's what makes WildWords into a unique word/board game. Uniquely profound. Uniquely challenging. Uniquely fun.

Then there's the whole thing about challenging another player - you know, when you think someone's spelling a word that isn't in the dictionary. That has also been most discerningly enwilded. First of all, with the possibility of a single wild tile standing for maybe seven letters, it's a lot harder to know whether or not there's a challengable word. Which makes it all the more inviting to bluff. Which makes it all the more necessary to challenge. But in WildWords, when one player challenges another, all the other players (SCRA*BLElikely, WildWords can be played by 2-4 players), must also agree or disagree. In either event, if they are wrong, they each lose 20 points. Harsh. In a beautiful kind of way.

Also, I gotta tell you, the tile holders are probably the best tile holders ever to hold a game tile. Smooth. Cool. Hefty. With wood-protectors, even. And the easy-to-read tiles are all packaged in a plastic bag inside a drawstring bag. With six extra tiles, just in case.

In sum, WildWords is the newest to receive the coveted Major FUN Award.

10 Days in the USA, or 15 maybe

The astute reader will all but immediately note that 10 Days in the USA is highly likely to be found Major FUN Award-worthy, given it's obvious similarity to the already Major FUN Awarded 10 Days in Africa.

What is of such noteworthy note, however, about the 10 Days in Africa and 10 Days in the USA similarity is that 10 Days in the USA is not actually identical to 10 Days in Africa. Of course, you may nod in your uninformed glibness, it is not actually identical to 10 Days in Africa. It's in the USA! But that, you see, is not the only difference. True, there are significant enough strategic differences necessitated by the immediately apparent differences in political geographies. But that is not all. There is, for example, the rule pertaining to Hawaii and Alaska and the color of the airports therein.

So noteworthy are the differences between these two sister games, that, for the first time in the history of the Major FUN Award, we find our royal selves recommending to those who have the therewithall: go ye and purchase either or both, 10 Days in Africa and 10 Days in the USA, because each is just different enough for each to be, separately, and together, found trans-globally Major FUN Award-worthy.

As to the 15 Day in Either Africa or USA variation, that, actually, applies to both, when only two people are playing, and gets our "Why Didn't We Think of That Ourselves" award.

This just in from an unamed source, purported to be the president and lead games designer of Out of the Box Publishing, distributors of the 10 Days series: "10 Days in Europe, 10 Days in Asia, and 10 Days in the Middle East are all in the works, and each will have unique features. Hint: a mode of water transportation."

Who can count the strategically geographic joys awaiting us?

10 Days in Africa

Ten Days in Africa is an innovative game of strategy and luck for 2-4 players. Definitely strategic, with enough luck to keep the game surprisingly fun.

Like Hasbro's RackO, the object is to put ten randomly selected cards into some sort of sequence. You fill the wooden card holders with cards one at a time. Once a card is placed, it can't be moved - only exchanged with a card from the deck or one of three discard piles. Unlike RackO, the sequence is topological, rather than numerical. A win depicts a path, by foot, car, and/or plane, that leads from country to country to country, spanning all ten cards.

At first, we found ourselves thinking more than we really had to, so playing time for the four of us was more than an hour. The rules are a paragon of brevity and elegance, but it took a while to gain a proper appreciation for the geopolitical innuendos of the African continent. And it took another while to understand the implications of the different modes of travel. Or the significance of the three, face-up discard piles and the strategic covering up or revealing of the cards thereupon.

It's a learning that is easily curved by playing. Just make the first game not count. Consider it an opportunity to play with a set of wonderfully thick little cards that fit everso handsomely into their wooden card holders; a chance to get a bit more familiar with the geopolitics of Africa; a learning experience. A learning-geography-like learning experience, as a matter of fact. As a matter of fact, the most fun I've ever had learning geography. Even though the map could have really been a map of anywhere. In fact, maybe precisely because the map could have been a map of everywhere. Which probably explains why you might also consider buying Ten Days in the USA, or, for that matter, Ten Days Almost Anywhere - the Paris Metro, perhaps? Downtown Kabul?

As we were finishing the first round of the game, one veteran Games Taster said: "let's remember this experience. It's a benchmark for the kind of excellence the Major FUN Award represents."

Doubles Wild

Warning! It looks like another game of tic tac toe. In fact, it looks like a game of tic tac toe where you roll dice to decide where you can put your marble on the grid. So, it's wooden. So it's really well-made and delicious to feel. But, so what? It's tic tac toe!

Well, it is, and it isn't. The tic tac toe part of it makes it easier to understand and play. The dice part of it, most surprisingly, elevates the game to something surprisingly unique, nail-bitingly exciting and, from time to time, pants-wettingly fun.

See, it's called "Doubles Wild." And it's the wild doubles thing that is at least partly responsible for the fun of it all. Because without the wild doubles thing, you just roll your the dice and move where they tell you to. But with the wild doubles thing, you can position your marble anywhere along the specified row or column. And if you get two doubles (it didn't happen to us during the Tasting, but we all acknowledged the possibility), then you can put your marble anywhere on the board.

And it's also the attack-defend thing. See, if you can land on someone else's piece, you can maybe remove it from play. Maybe, because you have do engage your opponent in the feared "battle of the dice" where you have three chances to try to roll the higher total. And the losing player loses a marble.

And even more surprisingly, it's the roll again thing. If you don't like your first roll, you can roll either or both pair of dice again. So you have to think of the odds. And the strategy. And how desperate you are to keep the other player from winning.

And, as you can almost guess from the first move, it's the more and more marbles on the board thing that really makes the game into what one could only call a Major FUN Award-worthy experience. Because as the board gets populated, so do the strategic implications.

You can play Doubles Wild with two, three or four players. We had six at the time of our tasting, so we decided to play the 3-player version, in teams of two. I wish you could have been there to hear the profundity of reasoning and the intricacy of pro- and con- measurement. We played for an hour, and were surprised by the depth of the game on the average of every three minutes.

Catch 22

Catch 22 will remind you of Parcheesi, which, as everyone knows, is a derivative of the ancient Indian game Pachisi, which has only a little to do with why this game is so darn much fun. The Pachisi-likeness of it all has something to do with the fun - it makes the game feel familiar and that much easier to learn. But let me tell you right now, what we got here is as much like Pachisi as chess.

Yes, there's a bunch of plastic pawns, but you get only one. And there's a die - only one. And there's a board with a track on it - only the track is much more complex. And then there's this bunch of plastic blocks - 5 for each player. And a big bunch of little plastic poker chips. And that, equipment-wise, is basically it.

But the game itself is far more than a race. It's a vendetta.

See, you roll a die and hope that eventually you land on a space with some chips on it. So you can get those chips. Which is cool. And then, once you get enough of them, you try to find the closest open path to one of the finish squares. So you can win. Except if anyone lands on you, that person gets your chips. Which means as soon as you have enough chips, suddenly you're everybody's meat, if you know what I mean. Oh, yes, people can also put their little plastic cubes in your way. And just when you're getting close to the goal, and around all those blocks, there's the possibility that someone will switch places with you and send you somewhere you really don't want to be. And then someone else might pounce on you. And then you can join everyone else trying to steal that guy's gold.

There's a lot more strategy than chance. Way more strategy than you need to keep the game interesting. And just enough chance to keep the game fun. The sudden shifts in fortune make winning unpredictable, and can keep the game going for an hour or more, even though you spent maybe ten minutes figuring out how to play it.

Catch 22 is an ingenious race and chase game, most Major FUN Award-worthy.

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.

3 Stones

Almost any game that is based on Tic Tac Toe is easy to learn. That's one of the things that makes 3 Stones so appealing. On the other hand, this is the very reason so many games are based on Tic Tac Toe - from the Japanese game of Go-Moku to Connect Four and Toss Across. Which makes it truly noteworthy to find a genuinely original game that has anything to do with getting three or four or five of something in a row. Which makes me especially delighted to present the coveted Major FUN Award to 3 Stones.

3 Stones is played on a lovely wooden board. And yes, there are black stones and white stones, and you have to be one or the other, and you in fact get one point every time you get three in a row. Included is this lovely fabric, draw-string pouch. And you start the game by putting all the stones into this loveliness. And then, on your turn, you draw a stone, and play it. I did mention that you put all the stones, the black and the white, into the pouch, didn't I? Which makes you wonder, doesn't it, what you would do if you drew a stone that wasn't your color? Why, you'd play it, of course. What else could you do?

Interesting. You don't know what color you'll get. And you have to play it, even if it's not your own. Already beyond Tic Tac Toe. Very beyond. Did I mention that there are some clear stones as well? And that they count for either player? I don't think I did. Neither did I mention that you have to put your stone in the same row or column that was last played.

Marc and Bob started playing 3 Stones at our last Tasting. Violating the very premise and significance of the "Tasting" concept, they didn't stop playing until they had filled the entire board. "No, no," I vainly explained, "we're only trying to get a feel for the game. We don't need to play it to it's very end. There are so many more to taste before we go." The ears upon which my words fell were deaf. The game, unique and completely absorbing. The award-worthiness, undeniable.

Muggins

They call Muggins "aerobics for the mind." Because you might need to multiply and divide as well as add and subtract, they call it a math game. And, yes, it's been reportedly a huge success in math classes. As they say on the home page, it's a game "for those who love math or those who hate math, those who are math challenged and those who are math geniuses, these games are guaranteed to challenge, build math and thinking skills, and increase self-confidence." But that's no reason for you to think of Muggins as anything other than pure fun.

Muggins can be played by up to four players or teams. Three dice are thrown. Players try to combine the dice through arithmetic operations so as to cover one of the 36 open scoring spaces on the board. You get a higher score if you have covered two or more adjacent spaces. And, if you throw a triple, you get the added, and deliciously vindictive opportunity, to remove your opponents' markers.

If you think you don't have a move (you can't figure out a combination of the dice that will result in one of the available spaces), you pass. If someone else can figure out how to use your dice to make a legal move, that person can call "muggins" and take that move for his or her own (hence, the name of the game - Muggins - as used in the game of Cribbage for a similar situation).

And, for those seeking the more, shall we say "participative" form of Muggins, we introduce the true meaning of Muggins, as found on Dictionary.com: \Mug"gins\, v. t. In certain games, to score against, or take an advantage over (an opponent), as for an error, announcing the act by saying ``muggins.'' In other words, when you find yourself not able to calculate your best move fast enough, just put your marker anywhere and see if anyone Muggins you. Of course you risk losing yet another marker, but, in the heat of the game, you can never tell what a well-timed bluff will get you.

The set (a wooden board, enough marbles for four players, three dice) also includes three polyhedral (12-sided) dice used in Supermuggins and, oddly enough, Muggins, Jr.

Yes, Muggins is just about your ideal educational game. Yes, you exercise arithmetic and algebraic skills. But it's the game part, even more than the educational part that makes Muggins so clearly Major-FUN-Award-worthy. It's a fun, challenging, exciting game for 1-4 players, or teams, that can be played by kids 12-up (younger, still, if using the Muggins, Jr. variation). The fact that it's educational is mere gilding on this highly playable lily of a game.

Stack

Stack is a strategy game you play with dice. A lot of dice. 14 for each player.

First, you decide on what color you want. Then, you spill all the dice onto the table, and smoosh them around in noisy, and gleeful anticipation. Then you take turns stacking dice (hence the name of the game), one die at a time, on any die other than your own. A stack can be up to four dice high. The die that is on top of the stack determines who gets the points. The higher the number on the top die, the higher the value of the stack.That's about all you need to know in order to play the game. Except that you can, if so moved, roll a die instead of stacking it. The rest is strategy.

And a very absorbing strategy, in deed. A stack that is three-dice-high is what you might call "attractive." Especially if it's a stack of 5s or 6s. Insofar as the next player who has a matching die can claim that stack permanently - or at least until the 15-20 minute game is over and score is calculated. Did I mention that 1s are worth 10? Then there are the two-dice stacks, which will wind up scoring for the player with the top die, unless someone puts another die on top of them, which then makes them a three-dice stack, which, as mentioned above, become dangerously attractive. As the game progresses, and there are fewer and fewer dice to play, the strategy changes accordingly.

For such a simple concept (easy enough for a 6-year-old), the game becomes remarkably deep (more than deep enough for this 61-year-old). And, because you're all playing together, with this big pile of dice, there's something about the game that makes you feel more together, as friends and family.

Stack is distributed by Talicor. The set comes with four different colors. Which means that you can have up to four different players. (Talicor offers yet another set with four more different colors. So, if you're a family of eight, you can still play together.). If you have the wherewithal to buy the deluxe $30, one-inch-dice set, go for it. The big dice add heft and a certain deliciously preparatory noisesomeness. Oh, yeah, there's even a velvitish bag for storage and transport, which you will probably do, often.

Sequence

Despite my declared prediliction for "games that make people laugh," every now and then I come across a "serious" game that is so unique, so playable, and so readily invites adaptation and variation, that I just can't let it go by without giving it a Major FUN Award- a game like Sequence.

Sequence is based on the Japanese game of Go-Moku - a kind of tic-tac-toe in which it takes five-in-a-row in order to win. Go-Moku is a classic strategy game, and you'll find a great deal about it on the Internet. This site discusses strategy and interesting variations of the game. There's a site devoted to Go-Moku and it's variations including the classic games of Renju and Pente. Here's the International Internet Go-Moku Foundation. And, for your immediate gratification, here's an online version.

Basing any game on Go-Moku is a fortuitous choice. It is an easy game to understand, even for a seven-year-old. And is strategically deep enough to attract adult play. An even more fortuitous decision is to introduce an element of luck. Suddenly, this game of pure strategy is as much about chance as it is about skill. Which levels the playing field even further, making it an ideal game for a very wide age range. It's a difficult line to straddle, the line between chance and strategy. Sequence not only crosses that line, but arrives at a uniquely playable game.

The Sequence board is a 10x10 grid. A playing card, with the exception of jacks, is depicted on each square in the grid. Jacks are wild. Also included are two decks of cards and three sets of playing pieces. Two to three players or teams can play. Cards are dealt, the squares available for play being determined by the cards that player is holding. Two-eyed Jacks are wild, allowing the player to add a piece anywhere on the board. One-eyed Jacks are called "anti-wild," and are used to remove any piece (the famous "screw-you factor"). The wildness of the Jacks is a prefect touch, adding an extra layer of luck, strategy and interaction.

Given these elements, it is easy to see how readily we can generate new variations and modifications. In addition to the classic Go-Moku variations, we also have cards to play with - cards that can be used to level the playing field (winners have to start the next game with fewer cards), cards that can be declared wild - with all sorts of wild possibilities (reposition one or more of your or your opponent's pieces, reverse direction of play, exchange colors...).

Sequence is an ideal family game. Even for a very large family. The board is well-made, the pieces sturdy, the cards easy to shuffle and hold. And the game is deep enough to withstand hours of play, variation, exploration and invention.

A to Z

There's nothing funny about A to Z, and yet, this game made us laugh, almost non-stop, for an entire hour. Each player or team gets an alphabet board. Dice are rolled. A category is selected from a card. And then that player or team has fifteen or thirty seconds (depending on the dice) to name items that fit the category. As soon as an item is named, its first letter gets covered on the alphabet board. Name as many items as possible within the time limit, each starting with a different letter, and then name more, in a different category, when it gets to be your turn again. The object is to be the first player or team to complete the alphabet. Transparent discs are used to mark which letters have been used.

There were eight of us, so we played it in teams. It turned out to be so much fun to play with a teammate that I'd recommend, even if there are exactly four players, that you play it in two teams. Some of the categories are excruciatingly difficult. Like, names of foreign newspapers, or famous military leaders. Others are delightfully easy, especially for us average American folk - like snack foods or fast food restaurants. So, you might think that success depends on the luck of the category drawn. And you'd continue thinking it until someone throws the dice and the hand symbol appears. Then, when naming items, instead of trying to find things that begin with one of the ever-dwindling assortment of available letters (like Q and Z), you select someone else's board, and remove their discs. Since the letters already covered tend to be those that are easiest to use, things have a way of evening out with depressing rapidity.

The mechanical timer ticks and flips noisily when the time limit is reached. It's a little difficult to see the fifteen second mark (there are only two time limits - either the full 30 seconds or the painfully brief fifteen), affording the opportunity for the only negative criticism I could find for this remarkably absorbing, unique, challenging, easy to understand, and genuinely fun word game.

SET gets a Major FUN award

Today's Major FUN Award goes to a SET, a card game of perception and logic for one or more players, age six and up.

SET is such a fun challenge, so absorbing, so elegantly designed that it got the Major Fun award even though it's not really a party game (though, conceivably, there's no upper limit to the number of players), or a particularly new game (it was invented about twenty-five years ago) or the kind of game that makes you laugh.

Each card has from one to three symbols of one of three different shapes, of one of three different colors, either outlined, shaded or solid. This outlined, shaded or solid bit makes for yet another complication, so the SET makers, if I may so designate them (actually, it's SET Enterprises) have thoughtfully packaged the cards in two separate decks. The smaller deck conta