"top family games" YouTube search
I find a YouTube search is preferable to a Google search because you will be hearing from board game specialists.
Dice Tower
Some of those wood and string puzzles. The construction and background is likable. Made by the Orang Asli people of Malaysia.
I'm suddenly attracted to puluc, a traditional game from Guatemala. A one-dimensional game.
It's a bad game. I wanted it to be good, or at least entertaining, but it is not.
(Waiting on a picture. At least the construction was good.)
Let's get going with some game ideas.
"Dice" are small cubes, used in games. "Ice" sounds very similar. Ice can take the form of small cubes.
And .. I don't know what to do with this.
Zero degrees celsius is the freezing point of water.
Blehh!
A guy at work had a Bag of Holding. I just had a sack of crap.
While asleep I came up with a game idea, not for the first time. When I woke up, still half asleep, it seemed worth pursuing.
You've got the usual pieces on an 8 x 8 board. The yellow pieces for one player only move from top to bottom, while the other player has blue pieces that only move from left to right. They capture other pieces when they land on them.
You probably use yes/no dice to determine the amount of movement. This might work out well. On the other hand this might reduce the number of good moves, so the game "plays itself".
When you land on an opponent's piece you dominate and can move that piece, and the tower of any other pieces that might be below. These towers can change hands and move around. This is borrowed from puluc/bul, above.
This has not been tested.
Are you chasing a puck, or is it just attrition?
You know that classic trope of digging in the sand to find buried treasure? You could dig here and that spot and there until you find your valuable treasure.
So how about each of the 4-7 players has ten letters, visibly laid out in front. There are envelopes on the table, each containing a player's name (maybe a "nobody" or two). On the outside of the envelope there is a word like TURKEY, PICKLE, AROMA, BEAVER.
During your turn you can trade a letter with a willing player, or draw and replace a letter from the deck. If you can spell one of the words, like PICKLE, you can secretly look at the name in the envelope. If it is your name, you win. If not, well, that's where things get complicated.
It may be a pedestrian game. On the other hand, there may be various shenanigans regarding information.
This game could be called Letter Treasure.
The quality of this game is unknown. The rules are simple, and it shouldn't be
too hard to get people to try this around the holidays. It is easy to make. You
could even make it on the day. I plan to, with assistance.
I think I'll make a Half-Baked Games section on the Games page, with an eye toward Christmas. These will be games and puzzles that are not quite constructed, not quite tested, no photo.
Q: You've got a traditional-style game you want to try out using yes/no dice, but you have to figure out how to make the dice. Quick and functional, not fancy. How do you do this?
A: Buy little wood cubes from Michael's. Make half the surfaces black using a
black Sharpie pen. Done.
Paper Towel Roll & Pom Pom Challenge
This is a jumping off point on pinterest for handmade games for little kiddies.
The currency of Malaysia is:
A) renminbi
B) rimau
C) ringgat
D) rupee
The French word for puzzle is
casse-tête.
The French word for velvet is velours.
The Malay word for man is orang. I could explain the pronunciation, meaning and plural, but I'm afraid of corrupting it. Nouns are repeated, doubled, to show plural in the Malay language. Yes, orang is part of orangutang. Orang = man, hutan = forest/jungle.
Malaysia consists of peninsular Malaysia
map
plus the less developed territories of Sabah and Sarawak, orangutang country.
Both Malaysia and Indonesia are multiethnic places, but the dominant culture is
Malay. The version of Malay spoken in Malaysia is called bahasa Malaysia, while
the version of Malay spoken in Indonesia is called bahasa Indonesia.
(I figured Australian lady Stella from The Dice Tower/Meeple University had origins
in Malaysia or Singapore. She appears to have roots in
Indonesia.)
So .. is a virus alive or not?
some slippery Assyrians
I'm giving my friend a six pack of exotic non-alcoholic drinks for Christmas. I mention this because you might want to consider it as a gift.
It's a weird one. This might actually be a virtue, as you can get it for that
person for whom you don't know what to get. Aunt Ralph can be hard to read.
J. Gasco cinotto. Check out your Italian shop.
Fentiman's dandelion and burdock. An English drink I've had luck finding in Italian shops.
Ginseng Up. You might find this at your Caribbean shop.
Caribbean Cool mauby. Caribbean shop.
Malt drink with ginger. It goes down easier than normal malt drinks.
I had a dilemma about what to do for the sixth drink.
Alex Trebec died. People really liked him for some reason. I never watched the show.
Anderson Cooper, who has belittled the show Big Brother, was himself a host of a reality game show called The Mole.
Anyway, this Alex Trebec takes us on a rabbit trail of Mr. Trebek, Jeopardy, other game shows, old Canadian television, old music, old Canada.
Ryan Reynolds is doing all right
John Campea ("The John Campea Show") has a project about movie trailers. Mr. Campea is a rugged product of Hamilton, Ontario "Steeltown".
Looking for some entertainment? You could check out Canadian animated television
show
Fugget About It on their YouTube channel. It's about a New York mafia family that
moves to Regina, Saskatchewan.
If you want to learn about Quebec television you could look into
this talk show.
The French word for talk is parler, pronounced parlay.
You can hear how to pronounce
Céline Dion, la
plus grande chanteuse du monde.
You can snorfle up some of that Quebec body language. As for language,
that reminds me of those nightmares where you go down the hallway and can never quite
reach the end.
Star Wars is about violence. It's in the title.
flatfish toy
For all your flatfish needs.
A Steve-flavoured idea I had during the novel first wave of the pandemic.