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Theme Week: The Need for Speed

There’s a time and a place for games that require a lot of planning, pondering, and chin-rubbing. That time is not this week, and that place is not this website. Here we present a half-dozen games that force you to play fast, fast, fast.

If you’ve watched more than 20 picoseconds of a psychiatry session on television or in the movies, then you’ve seen a troubled soul going through a word association session. The psychiatrist presents the patient with a series of words ("Father," “tool shed,” “hedge trimmers"), and the patient responds with the …
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November 22, 2006 | (9) Comments | Permalink

Theme Week: The Need for Speed

There’s a time and a place for games that require a lot of planning, pondering, and chin-rubbing. That time is not this week, and that place is not this website. Here we present a half-dozen games that force you to play fast, fast, fast.

Parents like to play games with their children to help them understand the principles of fair play, learn how to win and lose gracefully, and boost their brainpower. But unless the game is decided entirely by luck, parents and other adults often feel they have to keep their own brainpower …
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November 21, 2006 | (59) Comments | Permalink

The Princess Bride has many memorable scenes, but perhaps the one most quoted is the poison standoff between Westley and Vizzini, in which Vizzini tries to deduce which of two glasses contains poison. His logical arguments twist and bend as he first explains why he can’t chose this glass to …
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November 10, 2006 | (1) Comments | Permalink

Theme Week: New Games from Spiel 2006

Hundreds of games debut at Spiel, an enormous game fair held each October in Essen, Germany. While dozens of new titles await their turn at the FAB testing table, we’ve already found a week’s worth of games to recommend.

Most games tell you how to determine the starting player: If going first is an advantage, the youngest player will take the first turn; if it’s a disadvantage, the oldest player will start. Otherwise you’ll roll a die or spin a spinner or draw randomly from the deck for the …
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October 30, 2006 | (2) Comments | Permalink

Humans must satisfy four basic needs in order to survive: food, shelter, procreation, and the experience of watching teens being defenestrated by an unstoppable killing machine that wears some article of outré clothing like a facemask, a hook, or a striped sweater. How else to explain the weekly release of …
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October 27, 2006 | (8) Comments | Permalink

This simple bluffing game revolves around one question turn after turn, a question that happens to have its own soundtrack: “Should I stay or should I go now?”

Players explore a series of five mines, each of which is represented by a randomized deck of cards. Each flip …
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October 24, 2006 | (0) Comments | Permalink

"In this game, you play a bean farmer who plants beans, then sells them for gold.” I’ve taught Bohnanza to at least thirty different people, and I always enjoy the surprised look on their faces when I deliver that line. “Bean farmers,” their faces (and sometimes their mouths) say. “Why …
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October 1, 2006 | (4) Comments | Permalink