They call it "House Gymanstics. That is, someone named Harrison and someone else named Ford call it that.
They explain:
"House Gymnastics originated from the endeavors of Harrison and Ford in a joint and convoluted attempt to put up a bedroom blind. It could be argued that boredom was the real catalyst for House Gymnastics to take on a more tangible form. "
The lesson is: never underestimate the power of boredom, or the need to have fun.
Harrison and Ford have created a tour de remarkable force. Or is it tour de farce? Hard to tell. The 27 exercises depicted indubitably require strength and balance, and unquestionably increase stamina and muscle mass and all the things you would want from a workout. And perhaps more. And they make their case vividly, with video clips and step-by-step demonstrations. Hard to know how to take all this. Seriously? Why not? Playfully, definitely.
This beautiful object is a ball, probably from the Greenland Eskimos. That's really all we know about it. It's one of the images from the "Toys" collection of the Canadian Museum of Civilization.
It caught my eye, and heart, because I've never seen a ball that was as much a work of art as it was a thing of play. I wish I knew more about the games that were played with it. I wish I knew more about how people played with the rest of the toys in this remarkable collection. But I'm more of a collector of folklore than I am of folk things, and this museum is a collection of objects, not stories. And yet, it is a powerfully evocative collection, well-designed, beautifully-illustrated, with an excellent interface, and just enough information to connect us, one civilization to another.
OK, you can call it "Quits," but you won't want to. Quit, that is. In fact, you'll want to play it again, and again, and at least again. That is if you like strategy games for two or four players. Especially if you like MajorFUN Award-worthy strategy games.
You know those sliding block puzzles? If not (and especially if so) check out The Sliding Block Puzzle Page. Now take another look at the Quits board in the picture. See how it's made of blocks, and how the wooden-marble-pieces rest on those blocks? On your turn, you can either move a piece or move a row of blocks (you temporarily remove one of the blocks). The goal is to get your marbles to the opposite side of the board. And, of course, every time a row is moved, everything on that row moves with it.
Quits is one of several remarkably playworthy and innovative strategy games from Gigamic, represented in the US and Canada by Family Games. You'll be seeing more of them, and so will we.
How would you like to see your face made out of a toilet paper tube?
Luca Varaschini has made an art out of doing just that. Though it may strike you as somewhat silly, which, I believe, is the very intention, it is also a rather remarkable display of vision and virtuosity.
There are 26 toilet paper tube portraits in the collection. Clearly, the artist was, so to speak, on a roll.
To get from portrait to portrait, you click on the barely discernible image of a jet plane, next to the title of the portrait. I have no idea what the jet plane symbolizes. It is apparently a design element introduced by Spazio, the virtual gallery that hosts this collection. On the other hand, considering the very idea of toilet paper tube sculptures, the irrelevance of it all is somehow fitting.
Toilet Paper Tube art is the very stuff of fun. You can't quite take it seriously, and yet you somehow have to. The skill; the creativity; the ingenuity; the playfulness; the whole virtual exhibit: Definitely silly. Oddly inspiring.
Fabric Oragami. Who knew? Apparently, some very generous soul named Glenda knows. And even more apparently, knows a lot.
Glenda explains: "It's quicker than quilting, more forgiving than paper, and durable. If you make a mistake, just iron and refold. All you need is fabric stiffener, a plastic card for a spreader, a screen and an iron. The fabric stiffener can be purchased at most craft or fabric outlets. The use of scrap fabrics, makes this a quilter's dream! Some origami only require 6 square inches of fabric."
As far as I can tell, Glenda is the inventor and chief proponent of this unique art. Her site includes page after page of her amazingly crafty playfulness. Each image is accompanied by a diagram that will show you how to fold your own: boxes, ornaments, purses, notecards, book covers, dividers, wallets, purses. It just goes on and on - once again revealing what the mind can accomplish when the heart laughs.
Abalone is one of those few, elegant, easy-to-learn, two-person strategy games. What makes it among the very few is a method of movement unique enough, and fun enough, to make playing the game a new, and utterly absorbing experience. Since utter absorption is the point of playing, Abalone is the kind of game the MajorFUN Award was created for.
The movement principle? Knock your opponent clean off the board. How? By pushing a bigger row of marbles into her.
As you can kind of see from the picture, the board is made up of a hexagonal honeycomb of holes. Marbles rest on the holes. If you push a marble into any one of the six possible directions, and there's another marble or two or several in front of it, all the marbles move at the same time. Just pushing a row of marbles is kind of a fun thing to do, like the fun things you do when you're just playing with marbles. It's an even funner thing when you push a row of your marbles into your opponent's. And it's defnitely funnest when one of your opponent's marbles drops off the board as a result.
Abalone has been around since 1988. It's been around long enough to create an international following. And that following has followed long enough to develop an active online community along with a collection of highly playworthy rule variations.
For the non-Macintosh many, there's an online version. But nothing beats the delight of watching your opponent's jaw, and her last marble, drop into the pit of sweetly meaningless defeat.
If you've never attended an online event, and are interested in any aspect of play, this could be the perfect opportunity. I've had the chance to experience an online Group Jazz event before, and it's quite revelatory to discover how the simple act of reading and leaving messages can evolve into an experience of genuine dialogue and community. There are many discussions going on, simultaneously. Most feature an invited "speaker" or several, who, for a day or few, personally reads and responds to messages left by participants. This quickly evolves into page after page of interesting reading. Because so many conversations take place simultaneously, each participant can find those conversations that are of particular interest. In this way, participants become part of select virtual communities of like-minded thinkers.
The Summit's themes:
"What are the latest best practices, leading edge approaches, benchmarks, and theories-in-use for engaging participants in group-based learning experiences face-to-face? Creating ways for groups to PLAY together!
"What are people already doing to complement, leverage, and even replace these best face-to-face practices using technology and media supported environments?
"What experiments, action-research, pilot projects, learning conversations, and new technology and media development need to happen to push the envelope and make significant progress in this domain?"
At our more-or-less weekly Game Tastings, we have come to have increasing respect for strategy games that are easy to learn, that challenge the intelligence, and are built on some unique principle. Primarily because there are so darn few of them.
One of a series of four, finely crafted wooden Masterpiece Games from Out of the Box Publications, Fire and Ice is a bit like playing seven games of tic-tac-toe, simultaneously. But only enough of a bit to make the game easy to understand. And then, the fun starts.
When you move one of your pegs, you have to put one of your opponent's pegs into the hole that you just vacated. The effect of this rule is to create a kind of mental tickle as you try to contemplate each move from the twin perspectives of your position and your opponent's.
There's a lovely, mathematical symmetry to the design of the board: "The board contains seven raised triangular islands. Each island has seven holes and the playing pegs fit into these holes. On each island, six lines and a circle connect the holes to make seven groups of three holes each. The islands themselves are also connected together in the same pattern."
Fire and Ice is a welcome addition to our collection of Major FUN Award winning strategy games - unique, easy to learn, a game that takes 20-30 minutes to play, and yet is deep enough for some deliciously deep thinking.
The connections between invention and play are so numerous and self-evident that you almost don't need anybody to tell you any more about it. Yet, if you click over to this site, you'll probably be as informed as you will be entertained by the stories, discussions and games provided by the Smithsonian Institutions' Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation.
Start, for example, with Kevlar inventor's Stephanie Kwolek's opening words: “All sorts of things can happen when you’re open to new ideas and playing around with things," or those from the story about the philosophy governing the design company IDEO: “I think playing is critical for coming up with new ideas. It’s something we try to encourage here at the office. The play state is inherently creative.”
If you just want to play around, try "Tinker Ball" - it's kind of a Rube Goldberg machine-puzzle, who, as we discussed earlier, was a master of the invention-play connection.
Invention at Play is now a traveling exhibit. It is currently (until August 31) showing at the Arizona Science Center at Phoenix.
There's something about the art of building sand castles that conveys, with graphic clarity, the true nature of "fun." Sand castles aren't made to last. And neither is fun. Sand castles have no purpose. And neither does fun. Building sand castles is an art, and can take a life time to perfect, and doesn't really matter to any one other than the artist. Just like fun.
And just like anything we do for fun, it can be taken seriously. There are sand castle contests - with prizes. Sand castle kits. Sand castle lessons and sand castle books.
Here's a short animation showing a sand castle being built. I especially like how it loops around back to the original shapeless sand pile, demonstrating graphically what and sand castles are really all about.
It's a puzzle. It's a strategy game. You can buy it online. You can play it online. It's called "Tantrix," and it gets the MajorFUN Award.
The hexagonal tiles are made of Bakelite. Touching and smushing them around is almost as delicious as playing with them. The Tantrix Game Pack consists of 56 tiles. Each tile is unique. There are four different color lines - some are curved, some straight, some are even more curved. There are numbers on the other side of each tile. These are used to determine which tiles are to be employed in creating which puzzle. The Discovery Puzzles involve using tiles numbered 1-30. The Rainbow Puzzles require sorting the numbers into like colors. Then there's Tantrix Solitaire. And, of course, the strategy game for 2-4 players.
There's a bit of learning to do in order to play the strategy game, and the puzzles are the perfect training vehicle. Playing online is very satisfying - the interface is intuitive, the online chat adding a feeling of immediacy and community.
Invented in 1987, in New Zealand, by a New Zealish chap named Mike McManaway, Tantrix is a unique puzzle/game, deserving a position of prominence in anyone's game collection.
They call it "House Gymanstics. That is, someone named Harrison and someone else named Ford call it that.
Fabric Oragami
Abalone
