Keep those games alive!

And we bounce back!

2009-06-16T15:56:00.001-05:00

So it's been a long while. The inventing genes have happily passed on to the younger generation, and I catch the kiddo doing his own bit of inventing. Here's one of the first games I saw him play all by himself.

This involves getting all the stuffed animals you have on a big bed, and engaging them in a free-for-all wrestling match. Every animal that lands on the floor is 'out'. The winner of course, is kiddo.

This was a year ago.

He's now 4, and is game for some cerebral activity. We were waiting at the doctor's and the "Keep Silent" board gazed at me reproachfully as kiddo's voice touched new decibels. What else could I do but invent a game. This is like a rapid fire quiz round. I rattle off names of colours and he says "YES" or "NO" depending on whether this colour is in the Rainbow. Variations include saying "Frog" instead of green, "Sky" instead of blue, etc. You could also think of anything other then a rainbow.

I don't think we noticeably reduced decibel levels, but we sure had fun waiting :)

And this is it.

2006-11-02T13:56:00.000-05:00

I'm done with the games for now... might be back, might not. So, boys and girls, seek your entertainment elsewhere!

Pic of LEGO Klutz Race car that I made after making sure the kiddo was asleep. Zooms 6 feet on rubberband power alone. The record, I am told, is 9 feet after waxing the axle.

~~~

My mother went to market...

2006-10-20T14:36:00.000-05:00

Again, this one's a contribution by Bharath... (Bharath's mom, really). I have so many by him that he is a co-blogger on this site now!

When you have a bunch of kids visiting, this game is guaranteed to keep them all in one place! Have them sit in a circle, placing hands palms down on the floor.

Pick a GameMaster. The GM starts off by reciting, "My mother went to market to buy me some ribbons. What colour did she choose?", while ticking off each finger on the floor. One finger for each word in the recitation above. The person whose finger the GM has stopped at names a colour. Say "Green". Or if you want to be smartie pants, "Light Green".

GM continues along the fingers, spelling out the colour. The finger that the GM stops at is folded, and is no longer in the game.

The person who gets to fold all their fingers first wins. Then you can continue playing until there is one loser or start a new game.

As my intelligent readers have no doubt fathomed, the challenge here lies in coming up with a colour that lands on their finger! And a challenge to the GM is to decide if colours such as Orangeish Purple are permitted...

The 'tag' game

2006-10-10T13:36:00.000-05:00

And I'm 'it'.

Tried to put it off for as long as I could, but Adi said 'please' and you can get anything out of me if you say please. Especially in italics. There, that's already one thing about me. Now for 7 more.
Why 8, I wonder? Why not a nice round number like 5 or 10? Possibly to alert the subconscious of the 'Eight wonders', or 'The Mysterious Eight' (think Mandrake) and thereby get to the ego of the tagged, all subconsciously, of course. See, this can't just be any old 8 things - they have to be something so unique that people will gasp. So getting to the ego is important.

OK, I'll stop rambling. 7 more, right? Here goes:

When I was 12, I came out a circus crying because all I could think of when I saw the animals performing was 'How Cruel'. Came home and wrote an indignant letter to the newspaper, which never got published. Possibly because I used the word 'torcher'.

The fact above may have led you to believe that I am a great animal lover, have pets, and will pick up any dog/cat on the street. You could not be more wrong. While I have shed many a tear for the abused animal, I have never ever picked one up. For some reason, that is something I can't do.

I just finished hand stitching a cap for the kiddo.

The fact above may have led you to believe that I am an accomplished seamstress, and like Sunshine, can make my own clothes. Again, you could not be more wrong. I can't sew a dress to save my life. Fact is, sewing is a stress buster. I get into a sewing frenzy every once in so many years, when I need to de-stress. I don't do it knowingly, I realise after a sewing bout how light I feel...

So that's done, right? All 8 facts done? No? Have always been bad at counting - there's another fact for you.

Paper Football

2006-09-11T07:41:00.000-05:00

I felt just like a little kid who unexpectedly receives a box of chocolates, and having finished them, finds there is another layer underneath, when Bharath sent me this crazy game.

Here's his introduction to the game:

This is a paper and pencil game... a ruler or similar object with a straight edge helps a lot! Although you can play it by yourself... it's a lot more fun to argue and heckle another person as you snap your pencil to footballing glory.

Step 1:

Draw the goal post and half way line like this:

Step 2:

Each person then alternates to draw their players on the paper. Now if you want to make your field pretty, you can actually draw mini-players, or if you just want to get down to the game draw circles and colour them!

Bharath's tip: It generally helps to have one player in the goal

Step 3: THE GAME

How to kick the ball:

Use a pencil. Place it on your player closest to the half way line, with the pencil head on the player, and snap it in a quick motion towards the player you want to pass the ball to. The pencil makes a straight mark on the paper. Here, Bharath says:
The motion has to be a snapping motion... otherwise you can control the direction a little too well...

Next, use a ruler to determine if the ball makes it to the other player. If the mark is curved, settle it with a nice fight ;-)

If the ball doesn't make it, the opponent's player closest to all this action gets the ball.

So basically you keep passing until you decide to "take a shot" at the goal and evade the goalkeeper. If you do then you score.... Player with the most # of goals wins. :)

______________________________________________________________

And the layer underneath? The paper cricket game! But that, dear children is for another day. Or, if you're curious, just peek into the first comment of the previous post!

101 ways to play cricket - Part 2

2006-08-30T13:47:00.000-05:00

This one is all about Innovation.

Have badminton racket, but in the mood for cricket? No problem. Just play "French Cricket", as suggested by Arun Iyer, of Iyer Education. (Why French, Iyer?) To score runs, just rotate the racket around you. This is all Iyer Ed has to say, woefully short of the details. But does that faze me? Not a chance. Years of cooking up stuff for my exam papers comes back to me - time to see if the old skill still remains.
I assume even the bowler has a badminton racket with which to launch the shuttlecock - merely tossing it is no fun at all. So the batsman hits it, and furiously starts rotating the racket till the shuttlecock comes back. If he can't hit it, he's OUT! (Is that the way it goes, Iyer?)

Have a football, a cricket bat and no one to play with except a baby who can't quite throw? No problem. Get baby to kick the football, and hit with bat :)

Have nothing, but still want to play cricket? Adi, of delhidreams to the rescue. Crumple up newspapers, squeeze them very tightly with the help of rubber bands and you have a cricket ball! He says it comes to shape after a few beatings. For water-proof version, just wrap some polythene over it.

Now for the bat. Just use - anything!!! (Long notebook, table tennis or badminton racquet, bare hands) But the best one, he says was his mother's cloth-beating wooden 'thapi' - Perfect shape, size and necessary solidity.

And here's something a kid I know used to do - Having outgrown the hollow plastic bat bought off a roadside vendor, but not possessing a proper bat yet, this is what the kid did: Sliced the top off the handle of the bat, stuffed it with shredded paper, poured water in and left it in the sun for a day to let the paper harden. I am assured that great results were obtained.

The Paper Video Game

2006-08-22T13:57:00.000-05:00

The Inventor: Bharath, who is Bored out of his mind.

This is pure genius - read it in his own words and pictures (I merely lifted it from his blog)

Something original for a change. My very own game! I'm sure there must be plenty of other ppl that have made something similar to this, but until they come and pull me up on this, I am the proud and sole creator of the PAPER VIDEO GAME!

This was something that I had created sometime in 5th or 6th standard, when hand held video games were a craze in India. I wasn't able to get my hands on one, so well I created one with whatever resources I had plenty at the time - namely paper and pencils.

First how to create one. You need:

A piece of paper (ruled or otherwise)
Pencil and Eraser
A fertile imagination
Another tiny piece of folded paper/aluminium foil tightly curled into a small ball with a flat bottom.

STEP 1

First fold the sheet of paper as illustrated. There are two folds required. This gives it a kind of springy effect. Don't press too hard to make Fold 2. Otherwise the paper loses it's springiness.Repeat for all 4 edges of the sheet of paper.

STEP 2

Now draw your beautiful game on it. I generally created courses that my little paper/foil ball had to make across, with alternate courses and bonuses etc. Draw your controls on the paper and voila... You have your paper game like so!

STEP 3

Now place the little ball at the start and navigate it through the meandering courses with your controls. Like I mentioned earlier, making your paper/foil ball flat at the bottom gives you better control. Otherwise you tend to lose control if it is completely round.

Practice makes perfect. It is quite difficult to master this game, so a little patience is required in the beginning. But once you master the art of moving your little ball, you can never get bored at airports :).

The Word Version of Cows and Bulls

2006-08-13T14:10:00.000-05:00

As a teenager strapped for cash, but with an insatiable appetite for books, my only resource was a small second-hand bookshop in Bangalore. It occupied a dingy little stall, sandwiched between a condiments store and photocopy place. I have gone ice-cream-less for weeks, to invest my little all in its treasures.

So what, my dear readers ask, has this to do with games? I will tell you.

Among the treasures this place contained was - 'The Complete Works of Lewis Carrol'. The attraction was twofold - it was 3 inches thick, ensuring the summer vacation would be well spent, and it cost less than a hundred. Brought it home, and discovered that it not only contained stories and poems, but also ORIGINAL GAMES by Carrol himself.

One of those games is the Word Version of Cows and Bulls. A comment on the previous post by Bharat brought to mind this great game. (Let me know Bharat, if this is the one you are talking about) You can play it with a friend, or all by yourself.

Let's start with a 3 letter challenge that goes:

Put the PIG in the STY

You write 'PIG' on a paper, and change one letter at a time, till you arrive at 'STY'. All words in between have to make sense. Like this:

PIG

PIT

SIT

SAT

SAY

STY

There you go! :)

Cows and Bulls

2006-07-20T13:50:00.000-05:00

For all those who wear the hat of a six year old while reading this blog, PREPARE TO UPGRADE! This is a cerebral game, contributed by Shyam.

He says, "The whole concept of the game 'cows and bulls' is hitting the bull's eye - hence the name."

Will explain the rest of the game using a scenario. Two players needed, and two players you shall have - call them Veeru and Jai.

Veeru writes a 4 digit secret number on a piece of paper, the Jai starts guessing the number. Veeru has to follow one simple rule while making up the 4 digit number - No repeating any digit. As in, numbers like 1918, 2020, 1124, 6188 - NOT ALLOWED.

So Veeru writes 1947 on the paper. Jai has NO clue what that number is for the first 2-3 chances. Jai tries a random guess - 2468. Writes it on paper and shows Veeru.

Veeru says, "1 cow, 0 bulls".

1 cow because on correct digit i.e., '4' appears.
0 bulls because, there are NO numbers which are at the same spot as Veeru's number(1947).

From this first clue, Jai writes his next number - again random - 1357

Veeru says, "0 cows, 2 bulls".

Jai hit 2 bulls because, "1" and "7" are at the right spot.

Then, Jai takes a third guess: - 1349
Wrong guess, he thinks "1" and "3" are the bulls. And this is how the rest of the game went:

1349 --- 1 cow, 2 bulls
1392 --- 1 cow, 1 bull (Jai: 'Either 3 is a bull OR 1 is a bull, not both')
1952 --- 0 cows, 2 bulls (Jai: 'I thought from my old 1357 guess, '5' is there')
1054 --- 1 cow, 1 bull
1954 --- 1 cow, 2 bulls
1974 --- 2 cows, 2 bulls ( Jai: 'Now I got ALL four digits, 2 in correct place, 2 misplaced')
1947 --- 4 BULLS !!!

And finally, an end-note by Shyam on this game:
This game requires analysis of each guess and discarding numbers in the right fashion. Usually, average is 6-7 guesses. If beyond this, something is really wrong - either the guesser is getting things wrong OR, the one who says 'cows and bulls' is messing things up.

ENJOY!

Dark Room and Dabba Eyes Spice

2006-06-14T12:52:00.000-05:00

These are variations of Hide and Seek, and a lot more interesting!

Dark room, if you haven't guessed already, is Hide and Seek played in a dark room. The kid who is out (henceforth referred to as the out-kid) stays outside the room, and counts to a certain number before announcing that she will enter. The other kids meanwhile hide in various dark corners. The out-kid has to find every single kid without having an "accident", and the first kid found is the next out-kid.

Now, why does this out-kid have to find every other kid, when the rule states that the first kid found is out? Just for fun.

Here are some of the ways in which we caused "accidents": (Works better if the room is in TOTAL DARKNESS)

Balance a pillow on the door (kept ajar) so that it falls on the out-kid as he opens the door
Hide near a cassette player and switch it on full blast as the out-kid enters. If this kid is prone to nervousness, the merrier
Place a skateboard at the door, and wait for the unsuspecting out-kid to put her foot on it and have a nasty one
Hide just behind the door with a bedsheet and throw it on the out-kid as soon as he enters
Throw pillows on the unfortunate out-kid as she enters... and so on...

Grown ups viewed this game with great suspicion and almost always interrupted the screams!

On to another interesting way of playing Hide and Seek - Dabba Eyes Spice. This is expertly shown with a diagram at bombaylives and I will not take the liberty of re-writing it. I played it too, but without a dabba, and called it Ice Pies. Read all about it here.

Ways To Amuse a Baby - Part 2

2006-05-15T13:09:00.000-05:00

Baby and me are back in action! This time we present to you:

1. Ballroom dancing

Hold baby in position, and play some swaying kind of music. Put one of baby's hands on your shoulder, hold the other hand... And sway... This is heaven.

2. One...Two..Three.......JUMP

This requires a baby who likes to climb (and fall). This type of baby is usually referred to as "Hey Monkey", rather than by his or her real name. Anyway, here is how to make falling fun.

Before you let your baby do this, read these VERY IMPORTANT instructions:

Don't try this if your sofa doesn't have a nice flat broad backrest. How broad depends on the broadness of your baby's backside.
Make sure your baby is a monkey. Non-monkeys HATE this game.
Sofa seat should be soft and one single unit - no separate cushions.
Sofa MUST stick to a wall.
And use a BIG sofa, please.

OK. Here's the fun part. Perch baby on top of the backrest. It will be amusing to see the half confused, half frightened, half excited face. (OK, one-third of each) If baby is an aforementioned monkey, it wont be long till he/she jumps onto the seat with glee. After some time, a really really monkeyish baby will learn to climb on to the backrest himself - first maybe with the help of a pillow or a big teddy bear, later all by himself. And the result, most likely, will be this:

101 Ways To Play Cricket

2006-05-02T13:00:00.000-05:00

OK, I'll admit I haven't reached 101, but with a little help from my friends I soon hope to. Here are 3 to start with:

1. Galli Cricket - Contributed by every school kid, inspired by Roshan
Usually played in a small residential lane with a dead-end (or galli). There are dozens of interesting rules, most of which pertain to getting out. Such as Pitch-catch out, hit the window, hitting the ball over some Aunty's compound who wouldn't return the ball, not scoring any runs for a long while (you were declared "retired"!!!). And those 1-D, 2-D calls that just "declared" 1 run or 2 - you didn't have to run for them!

2. Book Cricket - Contributed by Callous Crab - Read the original here (Callous Crab, I've re-written it because the rules were a little different the way I played it)
This is usually played by the desparate-to-be-outside-but-stuck-in-class kid. And another kid of the same type.
You need a nice fat book - not a problem to obtain while in class - and decide who want to "bat" and who wants to "bowl". The bowler opens a page at random, and depending on the page number, this is what the batsman does:

Page number ending in:
1,2,4 or 6 - Scores that many runs
8 - No ball/wide
0 - OUT!

3. All by yourself
Essential to have a bare wall and a parent who is sound asleep/doesn't mind noise/absent.
Just toss the ball on to the wall and hit it!

Ways To Amuse a Baby - Part 1

2006-04-23T13:58:00.000-05:00

Bachaooooooooo! (Help me!)

Required: A baby who can kick, a dramatic parent (or anyone, really)

Place baby on bed and get him in a nice playful mood. Like Figure 1 below:

Place his feet near your tummy and encourage him to kick you. It tickles...hehehe. At some point he will land a nice powerful kick and this is the time to let out a dramatic cry and fall. Like Figure 2 below.

Then, with exaggerated dramatics, extend your hand towards baby (who will now be looking over the bed to see what happened), while yelling "Bachaoooo" in a typical action movie climax style. Chances are baby will lend a hand, maybe even pretend to pull you up after a couple of tries. Once you're up, if the baby has enjoyed this game, he will send you right back over the cliff :-)

First Reader Contribution - Ants Vs. Humans

2006-04-12T13:55:00.000-05:00

Contributed by Tin Tin :-)

You take 5 ants and put them down somewhere near the Start Line. Keep a close watch on their movements, because that dictates your destiny in this game.

If an ant strays into the blue squares, he becomes a pawn in your hands. You can move him to any other square.

If he strays into the red square, too bad, he's out of the game.

If he enters a green box, you HAVE to move him to the row closest to the Human Area.

If he enters a yellow box, you become a human giant wheel and give him a giant wheel ride for a whole 10 seconds. Note that you become completely powerless during this time. Ant can go anywhere he likes - red box and even out of the game area and back in, and you are powerless. Rules for other boxes don't hold either.

So these are the Ant Movement Rules, now how do you win?

Simple. If at least 3 ants enter the red box, or just give up and go out of the game area, you win.

If at least 3 ants enter the human area they win.

Note that Tin Tin is a great animal lover and wouldn't harm an ant to save her life. For some of the rowdier elements reading this however, there is a STRINGENT RULE: NO SQUASHING THE ANTS!!!!

Kappe Aata (Kappe = Frog; Aata = Game)

2006-04-04T12:41:00.000-05:00

If the Bunk Bed game was described by TCP as good for someone with the brains of a 6-year old, this one takes your grey matter further down memory lane. I'd peg this at 3 or 4.

Requires 2 people and some cushioning material. Position yourselves as shown in diagram. Make sure you have cushioning. Place feet together and... PUSH! If you can squeeze your opponent against the cushioning and have him/her begging for mercy, consider yourself the winner.

One important rule - NEVER to be broken - No, ABSOLUTELY no kicking in the crotch!

On another note, I guess a number of you have played your own games, or games that not too many people have played. I would love to hear from you! In other words, Readers' contributions welcome! Tin Tin has sent me a unique game already, and Shyam soon will. So dear children, put your games down on paper, and believe me, writing about them is fun :-)

An engineer by birth

2006-03-28T10:04:00.000-05:00

The sand pit under the guava tree brought out the engineer in him. His apprentices carried out instructions - "dig there", "leave that place level", "make a hill here"... and so half a day went by. At the end of it, there was a big water body, with a dam, bridge, a forest on one side (foliage decoration by me!), and whatever else we happened to think of.

Diwali was when the engineer put his skills to test. The dam was built for demolition. Small holes were made at strategic points and bombs inserted. Took us a while to actually demolish the dam with Diwali bombs, but we managed it... sometimes :-)

Real fun was when we climbed the guava tree and jumped into the muddy water! (Glee for us, grief for our mother when we entered the house in this state)

Soon, I guess we outgrew the sand pit. Also, digging sometimes resulted in unearthing half an earthworm or two. A mixture of "ugh!" and "ohhh sad" made us look for other pastimes. So when the younger set of cousins landed and demanded to play, they weren't so lucky.

Bunk Bed!

2006-03-20T13:33:00.000-05:00

Full Action-adventure!

Requires at least 4 kids and a number of pillows greater than the number of kids. Place a few kids under the bed, a few kids on the top bunk. Lower bunk is not used. Best results obtained if there are more kids below.

Kids on the top bunk are armed with pillows. As many as you can get. They are The Guards. Kids below are The Prisoners. The prisoners hide so that no part of them is visible to the guards. If a guard hits any part of the prisoner, prisoner dies. The aim of the prisoners is to get out from under the bed, and run out of the room without getting hit by the guards’ pillows. No mean task. Loads of fun. And leaves room open for more innovation as you play along – what happens to thrown pillows? Can the guard retrieve them? Can the prisoners do anything to prevent that?

Be warned - most often, this game ended up in fist-fights!

Punch Cards

2006-03-18T22:00:00.000-05:00

This is strictly speaking, not a "game". But who speaks strictly here, anyway? I enjoyed writing, hope you enjoy reading about...

The Punch Cards

We've been around computers since the time of punch cards. Just been around them, never actually used them
(For those who have never heard of or have forgotten what a punch card is – it is a rectangular piece of thin cardboard, about the size of an envelope. Small holes at predefined intervals indicate data interpreted by card readers.) Looks like this:

We had a ton of punch cards at home – junk from dad's office regularly brought home for the amusement of the kids – and they certainly did provide amusement. The Inventor filled an entire room with a vast city – fortress, roads, canals... – built entirely with these punch cards. No glue or staples. Just the cards.

They had a particular quality that made them superior to mere cardboard – when folded in half and placed end on end upon another one similarly folded, would hold surprisingly strong. A few more of these and you have a moat for your fortress.

That was before we discovered Lego. But that's another story...

The War Game

2006-03-16T13:14:00.000-05:00

He must have been about 12 when he invented this game. It required a smooth floor (no designs), chalk and some pieces of scrabble. We drew on the floor a battle ground that looked like this

Two teams are indicated as the adjacent Red and Blue battle squares. The small squares in green are soldiers. The yellow squares are Politicians.

Objective of the game: Clear your opponents pieces off the board!

Playing it is a bit like carrom (but I liked it a whole lot more then carrom) - use your pieces to hit the opponent's and if your piece goes off the boundaries, your opponent's comes back in.

This is the simple version of the game - there's no politician.

The more complicated version was... well, more complicated! I don't even remember all the rules. When I consulted with The Inventor, he said we had to make up rules as we played to keep the game from disintegrating! But here are the rules as I remember. If you want to play this, go ahead, and just make up the rules!

Each soldier here is made by stacking 3 scrabble pieces. He has a similar stack of ammunition next to him. You hit the enemy soldier with the ammunition from your soldiers. If you scatter 2 or more scrabble pieces from the enemy's body, the enemy is ‘dead’ (otherwise just wounded) and his scattered body and ammo become yours! This is where the complication comes in - Is a wounded soldier allowed to attack, or just stay there? And the weapons you acquired from a killed enemy were not for immediate use. They became "auxiliary" weapons (I had heard the word for the first time), and there were some rules about when to use them - such as a certain level of depletion of your own ammo. As I said, just make up the rules as you go along!

The politician, as you can see is heavily protected. His scalp is the ultimate prize.

We had loads of fun playing this on lazy summer afternoons, unaware of the addictive powers of the television and internet.

And if you have more kids, just draw a battle square for each kid!

When I started writing this, what really intrigued me was – a 12 year old thinking of placing the politician behind flanks of soldiers, making him the ultimate target (and not a very popular figure in the impressionable mind of his sibling). On second thoughts, not much of a surprise. This was around the time of Indira Gandhi’s assassination, and the Inventor would have soaked up dozens of dinner time political talk.