inconsequential ruminations

I just returned from a week’s rowing holiday on the North coast of Scotland – a wild, fierce place.

None of the guys were gamers, and packing had been too hectic to be able to print off any piecepack rules, so I contented myself with some general gaming.

Go
To my surprise, my host used to be a regular Go player. He lived in Japan and had weekly Go lessons for six months at a proper school. Apparently he has a handicap of seven kyu, which he thought was very average, but which sounds pretty reasonable to me. He was very happy to play with me and taught me quite a bit. Hopefully he’ll pop over after work occasionally and give me some more lessons. I think I’ll buy a cheap, compact Go set, if such a thing exists. Maybe I’ll be able to persuade him into some more exotic abstracts, especially if I can buy a Go set with pieces that can stack.

One of the girls on the trip enjoys crossword puzzles, so I managed to persuade her into a couple of paper and pencil word games out of New Rules for Classic Games. Both went down very well.
Crossword Squares
This is played on a 5×5 grid. Players in turn call out letters and try to build words by entering them into the grid, the longer the better. It’s so simple and so good, I’m amazed it’s not more common.
Jotto
Each player writes down a five letter word with no repeating letters. In turns, they then attempt to guess their opponent’s word, by calling out five letter words, the opponent then tells them how many letters are shared by the guessed word and the target word.

Suit Yourself
This Nim-like card game, came from A Gamut of Games. I admire it, as it requires look-ahead thinking, but it was not fun.

Fictionary
This was the hit of the holiday. Everyone laughed a lot. I think the guys who refused to play regretted it and were quite envious. I’ll definitely play this one again. A true classic.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 18th, 2004 at 23:02 and is filed under boardgames.