Rip. Off.

Oh people, are you KIDDING ME? They want to charge TWENTY DOLLARS for the little game we played with a piece of paper, a pen, fingers and our own brain cells?

Wikipedia calls it a paper fortune teller. I've heard it called MASH for Mansion-Apartment-House-Shack, and also Cootie Catcher, but this company sells it as Cahootie.

And if you are buying one, call me, because I will sell you accessories for tag, for hide and seek, and other childhood games that DO NOT NEED PURCHASED ITEMS.

Elbow on Donna's neck!

Matt of X-E sorts through some awesomely bad old board games, but the highlight of course is 90210 Twister!

Excerpt: " Okay, I'm going to try to explain the directions, but if I fail, please understand that it's a failure I share with the company who crafted this travesty. The one-page tutorial on how to play reads like an Emily Valentine freak-out, but as far as I can tell, the large arrow tells you which part of your body is to be placed on the mat, while the smaller arrow points to the body part of the particular character to throw it on. Doesn't make sense? I know! Isn't it great?!"

If we market it, they will buy it

Seriously, if you were going to have a sack race, would you need to buy a Sack Racing Set?

Wouldn't you just, I dunno, get some sacks? I mean, I know not everyone has potato sacks sitting around anymore, but...sleeping bags, those reusable grocery bags everyone has nowadays, or something?

This just seems like an unncessary, hey, let's try and mass-produce a childhood game idea. But I did laugh when I saw it, so hey, there's that.

Creepy games

Matt at X-E has found some super creepy games in his time.

The Nightmare on Elm Street game lets you kill people with their worst fears.

And this totally bizarre yet kind of cool spider game from 1988, Spider Wars!

Says Matt: "Since a single game of Spider Wars could conceivably last for seven hundred years otherwise, there’s a second way to win. You can skip past your opponent’s spiders and simply get one of your own spider’s legs into the opposing player’s “nest,” which is represented by a peg hole on the other side of the board. This speeds the game up manifold, but it’s pretty cheap to win just by getting to the other side of the board. True Spider Wars enthusiasts would never stoop so low, so for the sake of brevity, it’s a good thing there are no true Spider Wars enthusiasts."

Awaiting "Connect Four: The Movie"

I posted that "Stretch Armstrong" was going to be a 2011 movie, and people on my Facebook page were all over it, suggesting movies based on Weebles, Lip Smackers, Etch-a-Sketch and more.

But we thought we were being FUNNY.

Turns out that Peter Berg is on board for "Battleship: The Movie" in July 2011, and it's just part of a deal with Hasbro in which "Clue," "Candyland," and "Ouija" will ALL BECOME MOVIES.

Oh man, they better use the "You sank my battleship!" line.

I actually just watched my niece and her boyfriend play electronic Battleship, It is very different from the cheapie of my youth...it actually talks and makes shooting sounds. She tells me they once had a version with a squirt gun, and with each turn, you rotate it to point at the other player. If their ship gets sunk, they get squirted.

Water on knee! Charley horse! Bread basket!

Remember how the game Operation taught you all these weird (and, as it turns out, mostly outdated and useless) "medical" terms? Bread basket! Water on knee! Charley horse!*

I wonder if kids play it today and it's all modernized up with Botox and nose jobs and the like?

Anyway, Matt at X-Entertainment found one of the weirdest product tie-ins ever...Operation fruit snacks.

As he notes: "Looking at the snacks, I realize that it’d take a psychotically advanced mind to connect Operation to them without the clues provided by the box and foily wrappers. There are frogs, birds, bells, dogs — all stuff that ties into the board game, but not in any remarkably iconic way. Really, it’s the sort of inane assortment you’d expect from a generic brand of fruit snacks found at the comically ethnic closeout store on the wrong side of the tracks."

*Charley horse is actually kinda useful, as I got those a lot when I was pregnant, although I usually just yelled "OW! LEG CRAMP!"

Rattle rattle thunder clatter boom boom boom

My friend Stephanie and I were talking about how we've both played pachinko in Tokyo, but neither of us had a clue what we were actually doing...only knew that a pachinko parlor is possibly the LOUDEST place on earth, maybe even louder than Vegas.

So I went and read over Wikipedia's instructions on how to play pachinko, and I am not one bit more clued in on what the heck I should have been doing. But it was fun to observe!

I'm game

Matthew of Defective Yeti writes about board games at the Morning News today, and one that he mentions, Say Anything, sounds awesome.

It's a lot like my beloved Apples to Apples, but instead of a judge picking the best word-match, everyone has to answer a question like "What's the most overrated band ever?" and the judge reads all the answers and chooses the best. This sounds incredibly awesomely fun to me. I guess you could make your own version of this game if you just come up with enough fun questions.

Cross that bridge when you get to it

Although I am actually not old enough to remember the Boer War, I admit, I am kind of fascinated by by contract bridge.

In my all-time favorite book, "The Secret History," Donna Tartt writes about how there was once a bridge fad at (fictional) Hampden College, to the point where bridge rooms were set up and devoted to the game, with tables featuring the four card suits carved into them. The fad died and no one took the tables away, and the rooms end up being used only for drug deals and secret trysts. (Or for discussing the weird murderous habits of your Greek-class pals, but I digress.)

Tartt's point is well-taken: Bill Gates and Warren Buffett love it, but realistically, bridge is never likely to come back amongst college students or anyone younger than 50 (if that). But newspapers still run bridge columns and old folks get irked when said columns are messed with. (Or when they're called "cranky retirees" -- scroll down for that.)

Bridge sounds so complicated, too -- I fear that it's one of those games, like "Settlers of Catan," where you need to play it with people who love it and understand it rather than pick it up on your own. (Friends of mine play "Settlers," which Rob and I have dubbed "Cuttlefish of Satan" for our own weird reasons. I haven't tried it yet, but plan to eventually.)

This New Yorker article from last year takes a fascinating look at the game, and inspired me to buy this book: "The Backwash Squeeze and Other Improbable Feats: A Newcomer's Journey into the World of Bridge."

Don't be cross

I recently re-watched "Wordplay," the wonderfully endearing documentary about Will Shortz and his crazy crossword-puzzle-solving buddies. It's such a lively, likable movie that I even watched it again with the commentary on. (Hey! I might have to also buy the companion book, which contains the puzzles shown in the movie. Cool!)

The movie inspired me to tackle the Sunday (I know, I know...the toughest* day of the week) New York Times crossword, with Rob's help. Ooh boy. In the movie, people finish those things in just a couple minutes, faster than I could fill in the squares even if I knew all the answers off the top of my head. Needless to say, we didn't do very well.

I was thrilled, though, to find this Weblog, all about one man's daily NYT crossword puzzling. He dissects each puzzle, listing the clues that tripped him up and the ones he especially liked. It's fun to tackle the puzzle yourself and compare notes. Of course, the one we wrangled over, he listed as "easy-medium.' Right. Heh.

*As my many sharp-eyed, crossword-sweating commentors noted, not the hardest...Sunday is the longest, Saturday is the hardest. Heh, am I discussing porn here, or crosswords?

Apples to Crumpets

We're big Apples to Apples fans in this house, but I had no idea there was a British Isles version.

Infusing our game with some specific Britishisms would be a lot of fun, even though there are sure to be plenty of terms even we Anglophiles would have to look up.

There's also a kids' version, a Jewish version, and a Bible version.

Meow mix

Cute online game: The cat tries to escape off the board, hopping one circle at a time. Once you click on a circle, the cat can't use it.

However, as someone on Metafilter points out, imaginary cat is smarter than me.

CheckMUNCH

Edible chess. How fun is this?

In eighth grade, chess was our school's most popular elective, and we all played. It was a good game to learn, and a good time to learn it. I don't play hardly at all anymore, but I imagine I'll never forget how.

(Via Web-Goddess.)

Cat walk

"Cats" is a really sweet online game where you have to make all the cats follow the actions of the leader cat.

Yeah, pretty much herding cats. I love how cute they are.