An 11-year-old girl asked me to bring supplies and wanted to design games. Okay. Fine by me.

I'm an abstract strategy guy. She tried to make an abstract strategy game (she talks here and there about making a border guard game too). Things were back to front because I felt an urge to have her make a themed game like everyone else.

When making the border game earlier she jumped to making the parts ("manipulatives", as teachers would say), rather than sorting out the rules first. Creating a game begins with just quietly thinking, working things out in your head and eventually testing it with improvised items. But I can think of reasons to let her do what she does.

She did stream-of-consciousness tinkering and yapping with different ideas while working with glass pieces and a chessboard and a die. I grabbed some letter pieces (from Bananagrams). We came up with stuff that would not have happened if either of us were not there. One idea was to have pieces move on a grid based on die rolls. You roll the die, but choose piece and direction. Will your piece be corralled, or escape? I've been poking at making a word game, although I'm sure this area has been thoroughly explored by countless other people. So each of the players has a set of letters, visible. You are trying to spell your secret word, e.g., TURKEY. You use your own letters plus the letters of other players. However, you can only use someone else's letter if it is part of the word that player is trying to spell. Again, letters are visible, words are secret. Probably some trading, good for social interaction.
 
 
 
 

Game design involves getting inspiration, then rotating through different options for rules, which reminds me of the old combination locks for bicybles.

It's time for my annual failed attempt at making a prank/trap for Halloween. The original inspiration was to have a spider attack your hand, powered by elastic bands (including twisted elastic bands, which produce a steady pull). The big plastic figures made in China that move toward you and make a mechanical noise aren't going to cut it.

This is a complicated topic, with a maze of considerations. I think I will avoid it this year. But I will at least list the thematic options.

Spiders. The advantage of spiders is they are scary. Don't forget egg sacs. I won't address all the mechanical challenges, but I will point out that for a spider used for this to be scary it should look like a spider, move like a spider, and even feel like a spider.

Venus fly trap. The advantage of this is it's original. Two thumbs up for originality. Could look good too. Since an elastic band might run into someone's hand and could also be visible, we are looking at a metal mousetrap for power. "Handmade" might sound good, but this would be a bunch of work.

Hanging spectre. Those hanging upper body human-shaped figures you get from the Halloween store have the advantage of being practical, relatively doable. Grab a candy from behind its bony hands and under its (non) face, and SNAP! it kind of grabs you. Might there be a (perceived) (percieved) safety issue, with plastic fingers and eyes?
 
 

Actually this will almost certainly be done this year. There is a hanging spectre, an old hag with a mysterious, semi-veiled bowed head, and a couple of big bony (well, plasticy) hands.

When I was a teenager I took a line of lego pieces and wrapped an elastic band around it. It was volatile, and could and did explode. Don't attempt this without wearing glasses.

Wrap elastic bands between the wrists of the spectre. Put a line of wood or foam blocks between the wrists. Work a candy in there as bait. Camouflage things with some spiderweb. When a kid nervously grabs the candy - Snap! - the hands clap together. Several little details will be tinkered with, but it already works okay. I might buy a larger spider and spiderweb to get kids in a scared mood.
 
 
 
 

The jury's out on whether this will be done. It works, but someone pulling the bait can feel that they are pulling on something, and the blocks will bulge out before exploding. One alternative is to have string wrapped around something. There will be friction, so just a bit of force will start unwrapping things. A mousetrap could be used .. somehow. It is sensitive and uses leverage. The snap sound would be nice, scary. However, red flags are going up with little kids and mousetraps. However this is set up, it would be a Rube Goldberg device.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I'm actually not a big candy eater, for most of my life I avoided candies, but I'll save that speech for another day.

I purchased various candies (drinks too), to my taste. I did this for three reasons:

1) Candies (and drinks) are part of the package for Christmas. With shipping backed up, it's better to do it nower than later. Having trouble getting mixed Turkish delight.
2) Halloween. It kind of bugs me that kids keep getting the same old same old chocolate bars. What about trading candies with other kids? How about one of those wrapped purply Filipino ube cakes?
4) I've had a little goal for some time to put varied wrapped small candies in a glass bowl, for people to grab if they want.

So I got a bag of the Chinese coconut/milk candies mentioned below. Better than the average candies, more personality than just coconut. These are good and I ate one after the other. So why had I thrown out a bag? I think one gets fed up with them after having a number of these.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I've become very tempted to make a YouTube channel. I'd give it about a 75% chance it will happen.

1. The vast majority of videos would show one person playing an abstract strategy game. This would only show (expressive) hands. This is the standard model, but other things would happen too.
2. This would be relaxing in various ways. It's a game, the year is whatever, and you could fall asleep listening to this.
3. Talking could go in different fun directions, like this page. Something for the commenters to talk about.

A deaf person would come to the conclusion that this is a very niche channel showing this type of game being played. By the way, I find the abstracts easier to follow than other types of board games.
A blind person would hear brief explanations of games, a lot of discussion of movement options, and other game-related material. In addition a blind person would hear fairly brief discussion of diverse things, like "movie blips", or "What would it be like if you took all the people who hate you and put them together in one room?".

What I find interesting is what the channel is not. All the various stressors and time drains of having a YouTube channel would be gone. Stage fright (for lack of a better word) is minimized, money is who cares. Dis/likes, views, subscribers and in theory comments would be ignored. Schedules, sponsors, guests, marketing, and the relentless YouTube algorithm robot do not concern me. The demand for content would be ignored in favour of good content if and when and how I feel like it, and fancy production and editing - the real time vampire of a YouTube channel - would be minmized.

We made around five test videos: an outdoor channel introduction, a nominal game explanation, a magic card trick and a tik tok-friendly funny bit. There was also the intended first video "This is a penny", an odd bit of performance art which begs to be made into a meme.