Cuboro is what people in the trade call a "Grandparents' Toy." What they usually mean by this is that it costs more money than most parents are willing to spend for a mere toy.
As a grandparent myself, I, too, would classify Cuboro a Grandparents' Toy. However, I'm not planning on giving it to my kids. Or my grandkids. I'm keeping it for myself. I figure it'll be another ruse I can use to get the grandkids over. And, in the mean time, I get it all to myself!
Cuboro is a beautifully made wooden construction toy that is used to create marble labyrinths. The blocks are made of beech, precision cut and sanded smooth. In the Standard set (54 blocks, $122.95), 26 of the blocks are just that - well-made, solid wooden blocks that serve as the foundation for the constructions. The remaining 28 provide an assortment of 12 different "functions." By carving channels and tunnels into the blocks, the designers create the elements of wonder. Each of the functional blocks provides part of a marble path. Some channels and tunnels curve. Some cross. By assembling the elements in just the right way (and there are literally hundreds of "right ways") you get a complete marble track.
Playing with Cuboro is a process of building and testing. Adjusting. Testing again. Adding. Adjusting. And again, testing. It challenges mind, eye and dexterity. It combines creative play with scientific exploration. This is really what makes Cuboro such a deep, playworthy toy. It engages the players on so many levels. And, just when you think you've exhausted the permutations and combinations of the Standard set, you can purchase sets of new elements, each of which combines with every other set, each providing a whole new collection of possibilities.
It's important to note that Cuboro is very different from construction toys like Lego and Erector Sets, and equally different from dedicated marble run toys like the beautiful Scalino system. It's open-ended. There are no plans included for creating specific structures (though a clear and well-conceived book of such plans is available to the appropriately desperate). Cuboro is designed for both flexibility and complexity. It lends itself to creative, scientific exploration as well as a more closed-ended puzzle-solving approach. This is part of the reason why I feel this toy is so valuable. Its open-endedness and intricacy is a paradigm for the kinds of experience I find most conducive to building playfulness and community.
Cuboro is the most expensive toy so far to earn a MajorFUN Award. The elegance of its design, craftsmanship and functionality create a new standard for the kind of games and toys we hope to be reviewing in the future. As you become more familiar with the standard set, consider investing in an expansion set. Cuboro Duo ($84.95) adds double tracks, so you can race two marbles at a time. As amazing as it is that they managed to carve all those curvy tracks and tunnels into hardwood, the added game play is even more amazing. The words "quantum leap" come to mind. There are also "Six Packs" available, at $19.95 each, for yet more amazement.
Finally, trivial as it may seem, I also really appreciate it that the manufacturers invested in a box that was hefty enough to store this significantly hefty toy.
In case you were wondering, "Cuboro is manufactured...by a small, family-owned woodworking and toy company in Switzerland. The beech wood that the Cuboro blocks are made from is harvested by the family in an ecologically sound manner. The excess wood left by the manufacturing process is not discarded; rather it is burned in the kilns that methodically dry the blocks to ensure that they maintain their precise shape and character."
Last Thursday's piece about Playfulness, Invention and Mathematical Thought set me thinking about all the fun things I've done that belong to this math-fun connection. Which reminded me about one of the most mystifyingly magically mathishly fun toys I've so far encountered - the flexagon.
It's a thing you make out of a folded paper strip that's divided into triangles. You fold and fold until you get something that looks like a hexagon. You glue one of the edges and get this ever-unfolding thing. Then you go so far as to draw pictures and stuff on this ever-unfolding thing, and when you ever-unfold it, the pictures change and change and, well, change. It's kinda like a folded moebius strip. Which is also amazing, fun, and ticklishly puzzling. And it's the ticklishly puzzling part that makes this whole thing so mathematical.
The hexahexaflexagon is no secret. There are many World Wide pages devoted to its mysteries. This site includes a cool Java simulation of a hexahexaflexagon flexing hexishly. This site gives instructions for building tri-, tetra-, penta-, and, of course, hexahexaflexagons. And here we even get hexahexaflexagon-making software.
Time is one of the biggest challenges we face every Game Tasting. So, the games that we tend to like best are those that have the fewest rules, are the easiest to understand, and the quickest to play.
Every now and then, we get a game that is too complex for us. It's promising, but we simply don't have time to give it what it deserves. Sometimes, we get a game that is not only too complex, but also somehow falls short of our combined ideals. The rules aren't really clear enough. The materials not attractive enough. And sometimes our players are just too jaded, know too many other games to view something with a fresh enough eye.
Proclaim is one of those games. It's a word game whose rules are just a little too complex for us. We got impatient. But we did play it, and, though we couldn't give it an award, we also couldn't let it go unnoticed. There's something about it that's unique. It's like a lot of other games we could think of, but after a few rounds, we discovered that to play it well, we had to be unusually thoughtful. There's an economy that's required - a finesse, a cleverness, and a knowledge of langauge and of the other players - that is unlike any other word game.
It may not be a perfect game, but it is undeniably fun, challenging, memorable. And so, though you won't see Proclaim! on the Awards page, it is more because of the restrictions of the Tasting process than it is because of the game itself. I decided not to create a "runner-up" or "second place" category, because that could be too easily misread as a game that's not "good enough" to get the award, when it's just as likely that our Tasting process is not good enough to give the game its due.
To get your own "taste" of Proclaim, check out this sample game.
Shut the Box. You roll the dice. You look for all the unused numbers that could, in fact, be used to total up to the number rolled. You move the slides over the numbers you've chosen, hoping to cover all the slots before you come up with a number you can't play.
Each number can be used only once, so you have to more or less strategize (as much as you can, given the random roll of the dice). A popular pub game, Shut the Box is often played for money, but it is interesting enough to play just for fun. There's even a free demo software version for kids.
No matter who plays it, Shut the Box is a game worth knowing. There's enough depth to make the game worthy of mathematical analysis (read Durango Bill's Shut The Box Analysis for a complete description of the game, its strategies, and its inherent mathematical properties), and enough plain luck to keep the game fun.
You can play the game online for the cost of a couple pop-ups.
Playing With Time - from the sublime to the well-nigh ridiculous
Click on this girl's face and watch her age 50 years in 20 seconds. Presurfer led me to this rather remarkable site called "Playing with Time." What I found myself rather remarking about was how I hadn't, until this site, quite realized that all this high-speed-slow-to-stop-motion time-lapse stuff was exactly that - playing with time. Go to their Gallery for an inspiring collection of QuickTime clips, ranging in span from 20 microseconds to 240 million years.
For a sublime perspective on time-shifting, take a look at the Lunar and Planetary Observation and CCD Imaging site. For yet further sublimity, with a definite touch of humor, try the Bio-Perceptitorium where you'll find the much-vaunted, and somewhat yucky Sea Slug movie. And then, for a taste of the ridiculous, try these time-lapse road-trip videos from Speedy Cam
You can purchase clips for your own library from Time-Lapse.com. Many of these are commercial grade, and, even if you're not in the market, it's worth the browse.
As this search for signs of fun progresses, I seem to be including more and more of the arts. So far, two MajorFUN Awards have been given to artists: one to a poet, the other to an event artist.
Recently, thanks again to the vigilance of Ultimate Insult for catching signs of the art of play and play of art on the web, I found Yellow Tail - a simple, unique, animated drawing toy that borders on genuinely interactive art. This turns out to be one of many "works by golan levin and collaborators" on a site called "Flong." Among their many projects, I happened to catch this RE:Mark & Hidden Worlds of Noise and Voice - an interactive art exhibit that looks like what one may clearly call "fun." See this video for further evidence.
Somewhere along the same continuum is this exceptional collection of games from Orisinal. Maybe not so artsy-playsy, maybe more basically fun-and-gamesy, but even more to be admired for their aesthetically delicious environments - blending subtle colors, sounds, and music with honest humor. I guess for many these games are simply too much fun to be called "art." Which is a loss for the art world.
Playfulness and invention as aspects of mathematical thought
I serendipped my way to these "Notes from a session discussing Mathematical Thinking: October 16th 2002," sponsored by the University of Oxford Center for Mathematics Education Research. It's been a long time (maybe 35 years) since I thought about math education. Probably because when I last did, I found that my uses of games and play resulted in massive parental angst. I may have been helping kids develop a love for mathematical thinking, but I was doing them a disservice by not focusing their love on the SATs. So the following extract comes as a much-welcome, though somewhat belated balm to my faith in the fun/learning connection.
A treatment of imagination as an integral component of thought, rather than as a separate type of thinking, led us to see playfulness and invention as aspects of mathematical thought. Indeed, these aspects help us avoid reducing thinking to a list of things one must show the teacher one can do. Freedom to play, to look for many possible methods and answers, may be hard to use at first if students have not been used to it. Sometimes they react by playing well outside normal mathematical parameters. But we retain the word ‘play’ to indicate this creative dimension to mathematics, believing it to be an important approach to learning and working. We did several exercises to explore the effects of being asked to ‘imagine’ and ‘visualise’. (One exercise was to imagine identical twins imitating each other.) From these we found that the ways in which we imagine are very varied, and the norms we choose to impose on our imaginations come not only from knowledge and intellect but from emotional and social directions as well.
"Playfulness and inventions as components of mathematical thought." Yeah, baby.
They call Muggins "aerobics for the mind." Because you might need to multiply and divide as well as add and subtract, they call it a math game. And, yes, it's been reportedly a huge success in math classes. As they say on the home page, it's a game "for those who love math or those who hate math, those who are math challenged and those who are math geniuses, these games are guaranteed to challenge, build math and thinking skills, and increase self-confidence." But that's no reason for you to think of Muggins as anything other than pure fun.
Muggins can be played by up to four players or teams. Three dice are thrown. Players try to combine the dice through arithmetic operations so as to cover one of the 36 open scoring spaces on the board. You get a higher score if you have covered two or more adjacent spaces. And, if you throw a triple, you get the added, and deliciously vindictive opportunity, to remove your opponents' markers.
If you think you don't have a move (you can't figure out a combination of the dice that will result in one of the available spaces), you pass. If someone else can figure out how to use your dice to make a legal move, that person can call "muggins" and take that move for his or her own (hence, the name of the game - Muggins - as used in the game of Cribbage for a similar situation).
And, for those seeking the more, shall we say "participative" form of Muggins, we introduce the true meaning of Muggins, as found on Dictionary.com: \Mug"gins\, v. t. In certain games, to score against, or take an advantage over (an opponent), as for an error, announcing the act by saying ``muggins.'' In other words, when you find yourself not able to calculate your best move fast enough, just put your marker anywhere and see if anyone Muggins you. Of course you risk losing yet another marker, but, in the heat of the game, you can never tell what a well-timed bluff will get you.
The set (a wooden board, enough marbles for four players, three dice) also includes three polyhedral (12-sided) dice used in Supermuggins and, oddly enough, Muggins, Jr.
Yes, Muggins is just about your ideal educational game. Yes, you exercise arithmetic and algebraic skills. But it's the game part, even more than the educational part that makes Muggins so clearly Major-FUN-Award-worthy. It's a fun, challenging, exciting game for 1-4 players, or teams, that can be played by kids 12-up (younger, still, if using the Muggins, Jr. variation). The fact that it's educational is mere gilding on this highly playable lily of a game.
Among the many delightful resources found on the website of the Child Research Net is this collection of responses from an Interview Project on "what is playful?" Here's a sample:
"When there are playful people around me, I feel playful. Playful is infectious. And, it is necessary to work on the playful nature that you have so you can react to a playfulness of other people. And, to make other people feel playful, you have to take the initiative in feeling playful yourself."
"To enjoy making others happy. To enjoy being made happy by others. It can be a smile during busy hours at work, a nice surprise in the mail, or just going starting a conversation with people around you. I think you need to be comfortable with yourself (without serious concerns, feeling low, etc) in order to think about wanting to make others happy, so playfulness is something that is very important to yourself as well as others!"
"To be free in soul and action. To have the heart to laugh at yourself. That's playfulness."
The Child Research Net is "...a non-profit, internet-based child research institute and operated as an activity of the Fukutake Education Foundation under the auspices of Benesse Corporation in Japan" is the first research-centered organization I've found that takes itself lightly enough to go beyond the restrictions of carefully footnoted, scholar-appropriate scientific methodology, and dive headlong into collecting source material, from children and from adults who play with children. Though there is an ample supply of scholarly papers and the majority of the advisory board members are highly-accredited and accomplished academics, the focus is clearly on the pragmatics of play. The result is a remarkably powerful, practical, and inspiring collection of articles, grounded in experience, rather than ground down by experiment.
Everything I read in this collection is further evidence of an organization whose hearts and minds are devoted to play. I found the following definition of "What is Playful" in a collection of articles describing their Playful Learning project.
Children possess programs to fully use the capabilities of the mind and body. CRN's starting point is the concept that playfulness starts these programs in operation. When children are absorbed in play, filled with excitement and a joie de vivre, the programs of the mind and body work at full capacity. We also define the "playful spirit" as a certain feeling or emotion, the thoughts, curiosity and inquiring mind that arise when an individual is absorbed in something. The definition of "playful spirit" also includes sympathy for others, positive attitudes, and a concern for people and things. In other words, a playful spirit encourages children's spontaneous learning.
From the perspective of one who cares about children, and the quality of life, CRN offers us all a much-needed source of sanity and reassurance.
The first thing you need to know about Blast It! is that it's not Boggle. It looks like Boggle. It's got letter cubes (though not as many). And you do shake them up. And you do try to use them to spell as many words as possible before time's up. And you do write those as-many-words-as-possible on a sheet of paper in strained silence. But, it's not. Boggle, that is.
Blast It! is very much its own game. And it's very much fun for anybody who can spell and write.
There are five letter cubes and a deck of 55 question cards. Question cards like: "What do you wish to get as a present?" and "Which vegetable would you not plant in your garden?"
You should already be getting a sense of what makes this game unique. You're not looking for any old word. You're looking for words that kinda more or less answer the question. Words that use at least one of the letters that appear on the letter cubes. And, the more letters used consecutively, the higher your score. Suppose, for example, you're answering the "present" question. And the letters you get are A G V O and C. So, you write down, maybe: APPLES, GEMS, GLOVES, CAT. And, since CAT has both C and A, consecutively, it's worth 5 points, so you write down every CAT word you can think of that is remotely connected to the question, like: CATHEDRAL (a fine present that would be) CATALOGUE (could be fun) but perhaps not CAVERN, though, arguably, maybe. Which is another fun thing about this game - the arguability of it all.
Finally, the timer, which is electronic (you need two "AA" batteries), and kinda random, and loudly ticking, and integrated into the base of the dome, in which are sealed the letter dice, so nothing gets lost. All of which adds to the elegance and playability of this unique, and not really Boggle-like, word game, for up to 8 players, or more, depending on your patience.
Blast It! is the second Piatnik game to receive the MajorFUN Award, and is available from Biffleys
Cuboro is what people in the trade call a "Grandparents' Toy." What they usually mean by this is that it costs more money than most parents are willing to spend for a mere toy. 
It's a thing you make out of a folded paper strip that's divided into triangles. You fold and fold until you get something that looks like a hexagon. You glue one of the edges and get this ever-unfolding thing. Then you go so far as to draw pictures and stuff on this ever-unfolding thing, and when you ever-unfold it, the pictures change and change and, well, change. It's kinda like a folded 
