Fractal Recursions is one of those visually delicious sites where eye candy becomes the main course. It's also one more stunning example of the art-math-play connection.
There are 30 different galleries of fractal images. My favorites, however, can be found in the small, but sweet collection of animated images. When you think you've seen everything there is to see, fractal-wise, click you way to "Sprott's Fractal Gallery" - another remarkably rich collection of fractal play, art and science, accompanied, even, by fractal music.
But what makes fractal technology so very much fun is that it is lets us play with even more faces of reality. It is the basis for much of the art of creating computer generated landscapes and, for further example, the key to the mathematically intriguing "Traveling Salesman Problem" where one can explore "the evolving field of the generation of instances of combinatorial optimization problems with known optimal solution."
Yes, and yes again, there's a lot to learn about fractals and the significant implications thereof. But don't let that distract you from the most profound of all fractal-related discoveries: fractals are fun.
You know the game of "four-in-a-box"? You know, the kids' game? Like this? Still almost a good enough challenge for one of your abstractly strategic ilk, eh?
Four-in-a-box is like four-in-a-row, which, of course, is almost exactly like three-in-a-row, which is what we know as Tic Tac Toe. So, it's got a firm foundation in the paper-and-pencil lore of our childhood. If it were five-in-a-row it'd be known as the ancient Japanese game of Go-Moku, and it would perhaps no longer be consideered a kids' game.
But it's not in a row. It's in a box.
Just to keep your reasoning skills in proper perspective, check out Quod, the only other four-in-a-box-game I've so far encountered. A kids' game it definitely isn't. At least, not this kid. Played on an "11-by-11 square grid board with the four corners missing," To add to the strategic depth (should your strategy need deepening) each player has "6 blocking pieces - quasars (white)" in addition to the "20 attacking pieces - quads (color)." Apparently, "Quasars are neutral pieces used to occupy places."
Even with the neutrality of some of the pieces (an interesting concept - one that we could try even with tic tac toe) Quod is often more of a perceptual challenge than strategic. It's really amazing how difficult it can be to perceive potential squareness. Especially when the squares can be in any orientation - not just horizontal or vertical. It's even more amazing to discover how far we have come from tic tac toe, in how few steps.
Trash Sculpture - how about this as the culminating activity Community Pride Week: have everybody make sculptures out of the trash we collected Some idea, eh. Some kind of crazy California thing. Even though it's in Washington State. I mean, it takes a certain amount of guts to suggest something like this. Something this, well, playful. Apparently, somebody at the Mt. Adams Chamber of Congress was responsible for this. Somehow, some Champion of Fun was able to transform the work of cleaning up into a celebration of creativity and humor.
Then there's Recyclabots - the works of mixed-media artists Opie and Linda O'Brien. Clearly, these are also the work of Heroes of the Playful. They are also heroic in a way, in a fun way - making something out of junk, something funny-looking, something fun - and calling it "art." It takes a certain heroism, from fun champions whose vision is clear enough and sense of play strong enough that they can use what many of us have been tempted to call "trash" to create objects whose main aesthetic is fun, and yet can carry a message like: re-use, recycle, rejoice.
"Playing with food is the main reason that dining in restaurants has become so popular." says author P. J. O'Rourke in his blatantly titled article: "Playing with Food." He explains: "The secret to successful sport with foodstuffs is correct attitude. Playing with food has to be fast, loud, and enthusiastic. You must make your high spirits contagious before anyone has time for second thoughts. Second thoughts always consist of calling the police."
Though I am not an advocate of disruptive play, I admire O'Rourke's contribution to the food play repertoire, and would like to take this opportunity to point you to my personally small collection (three) of more playful, and perhaps even more socially acceptable food games, and this dialogue about what can only be called "M&M Games.
Finally, taking a more scientific perspective on food play, we come across this virtual treasure of food fun from Carnegie Mellon University. The title on the page. "Rapid Design through Virtual and Physical Prototyping," may make you wonder about it's place in the food/fun chain. And yet, on closer introspection, how can one possibly deny the prototypically delicious relevance of, for example, the chemical reactions engendered by the making of Irving Prager's Chocolate Dump Cake?
Stare! is what you'd call a "memory game." Having an historically bad memory (I think), I've always eschewed memory games. I don't play them very often, either. Stare! offers a collection of richly detailed drawings on cards. On the back of each card are equally richly detailed questions about the drawing - which, of course, you can no longer see. Questions like: how many flowers, what colors were the shoes, what was the name on the book cover. We played it. And, from time to time, we actually answered correctly. So we played it some more. And, wonder of wonders, we got better.
Then there is that kids' game called "Concentration," where all you have to do is find two matching cards in an array of cards, you know, turning them over one at a time. It isn't at all like Stare, except that it's also a memory game, and also a game I don't play very much. I forget why. It is also a game you can get better at. It is also a game that you can play with almost any kinds of images - as long as they are in pairs. And, in this wonderful Concentration Collection from Ze Frank, it is also a collection of wonderfully animated images that are so delightful to discover that it almost makes the game worth playing - even if you do have to remember things.
O, before I forget, if you're really in to playing with memory, here's this page of "experiments and games to test your memory." Even though it looks like it's for kids, I'm sure there was a reason I thought you'd find it clickworthy, linkwise.
This video of "Matrix Ping Pong" is just plain fun. It's also a testimony to the power of the game, the imagination, the medium, and the very soul of theater. It's not really a game of ping pong. It's a fantasy - a game of ping pong as if it were played in the fantastic world of the Matrix movies where people can hang in mid air and slow time while they pursue what has become the new cinematic martial art of "Wire Fu." And it's done in the seven-century-old theater art of Japanese Noh!
This little video is a classic example of the Art of Fun - an art that can span time, medium and culture.
On the other hand, if you need a little actual interaction, try this sweet little Shockwavey Noh-body version of ping pong. Noh-body because it's just two paddles playing against each other. And you're one of them.
Be careful, as the Art of Fun requires, the game is a lot more life-like than you'd expect.
Catch 22 will remind you of Parcheesi, which, as everyone knows, is a derivative of the ancient Indian game Pachisi, which has only a little to do with why this game is so darn much fun. The Pachisi-likeness of it all has something to do with the fun - it makes the game feel familiar and that much easier to learn. But let me tell you right now, what we got here is as much like Pachisi as chess.
Yes, there's a bunch of plastic pawns, but you get only one. And there's a die - only one. And there's a board with a track on it - only the track is much more complex. And then there's this bunch of plastic blocks - 5 for each player. And a big bunch of little plastic poker chips. And that, equipment-wise, is basically it.
But the game itself is far more than a race. It's a vendetta.
See, you roll a die and hope that eventually you land on a space with some chips on it. So you can get those chips. Which is cool. And then, once you get enough of them, you try to find the closest open path to one of the finish squares. So you can win. Except if anyone lands on you, that person gets your chips. Which means as soon as you have enough chips, suddenly you're everybody's meat, if you know what I mean. Oh, yes, people can also put their little plastic cubes in your way. And just when you're getting close to the goal, and around all those blocks, there's the possibility that someone will switch places with you and send you somewhere you really don't want to be. And then someone else might pounce on you. And then you can join everyone else trying to steal that guy's gold.
There's a lot more strategy than chance. Way more strategy than you need to keep the game interesting. And just enough chance to keep the game fun. The sudden shifts in fortune make winning unpredictable, and can keep the game going for an hour or more, even though you spent maybe ten minutes figuring out how to play it.
Catch 22 is an ingenious race and chase game, most MajorFUN Award-worthy.
It happened almost as soon as we opened the box. Everybody brightened up, almost as if we knew that Malarky would prove to be just the kind of game we were looking for - easy to learn, fun, competitive, but just competitive enough to keep your attention. An intellectual game, but not so intellectual that you'd actually have to know anything. In other words, just the kind of game you'd want to bring to a party - or make a party out of.
My first exposure to anything Malarky-like was the parlor game called "Fictionary" - your basic bluffing game where the object is to be the one everyone thinks knows the "real" answer, even though you really made it up. Malarky isn't about word definitions, but rather about everyday life "factoids" like why laundry detergent boxes come in such odd weights.
But the real genius of the game is in the execution. You get this big deck of obscure but everyday factoid cards, as you'd expect. One player selects and reads the question, and everyone else has to think up an answer - again, as you'd expect. The problem that these games usually have is how to get from this point to the voting without enduring painful minutes of writing and deciphering. Normally, everyone writes something down. And then they pass their slips to the questioner, who also has to write the answer down. And then she has to read all the answers, one at a time, without fumbling or giving anything away. The designers of Malarky have come up with what they call "Concealing Folders." This simple device (a cardboard frame with a front and back cover) makes possible truly stunning acts of subterfuge and dissemblance. The reader puts the card in one of the folders, closes the folders, mixes them up, and then distributes the closed folders. Everyone takes turns, opening the folder and appearing to read the "real" answer. Of course, only one player actually has the question card.
This simple device, the cleverness of the questions, and the introduction of voting chips combine to create a game that takes an old parlor game to a new level - making Patch Product's Malarky a game that could only be called "MajorFUN Award-worthy."
This from the San Francisco Chronicle - "Anarchy rules! Flash mobs -- big, spontaneous crowds that celebrate organized chaos -- are fast growing around the world. Their mission: to have fun. Their message: There isn't one."
200 people form an instant game of Duck-Duck-Goose in San Francisco Dolores Park. Why? Because they wanted to.
All organized via weblog, email and word of mouth.
Their instructions:
-- At precisely 2:07 p.m., form giant standing circles, holding hands, on the main lawn. -- Sit on the ground. -- At precisely 2:09 p.m., something will happen. You will instantly know how to play along. Play until 2:17 p.m.
I've known about Flash Mobbing for a while, but this is the first report of people actually playing a game. Duck-Duck-Goose was a very important game for me personally - bringing me my first and biggest lesson about the "theater of games." So you can understand why this story caught my attention.
All of which is to point out that this Flash Mob fad is a legitimate new play form, worthy of the silliest of us. In case you haven't followed the evolution of this new Internet-spawned game-like event, click on over to a site called "Cheese Bikini?" (yup, that's what it's called, all right) and this more eponymously named site: "Flash Mob Info."
No matter how clever the graphics or playful the imagery, a good, interactive puzzle is an intellectual challenge, requiring observation, experimentation and deductive reasoning. I just thought I'd say that in case you needed to justify the fun you'll be having solving the puzzles on the "Joker-Games website.
There are only a few puzzle games on this site, but they're good ones - unique, surprising, and not as easy as you might be led to believe (like any good puzzle). The two 3-D puzzles are my favorites - I guess because they're so, well, dimensional.
In the Maze of Rah (the game in the illustration), you use your cursor arrows to move a mummy ("Rah") from tile to tile. When the mummy steps off a tile, that tile flips over most deliciously. There's a path on the opposite side, which, of course (or is it "of curse"), goes the wrong direction. There are 100 different levels (though you'll need to pay $2.95 fo
Fractal Recursions is one of those visually delicious sites where eye candy becomes the main course. It's also one more stunning example of the art-math-play connection.
Trash Sculpture
Stare!
This from the 