Planet Perplex

Planet Perplex offers a most amusingly amazing collection of optical illusory art. Some of which is not for kids. Which makes it all the more perplexing.

Check out, for example, their collection of folding puzzles, and, for further example, ambiguous people.

Sweet Nostalgia

Remember Necco Wafers - those chalky, crumbly sugar discs you probably almost died for? Well, thanks to FunDay Times Contest-Winner Josef Brandler, you have now been reconnected to the source.

Josef tells us of two such time-spanning candy connections: Hometown Favorites and Candy You Ate as a Kid. He writes: " I was talking about candy with my daughter during this halloween season and I told her we had great candies when I was a child growing up in the 60"s and 70's.I told her about turkish taffy, sugar daddies, candy buttons, wax lips, little bottles filled with colored syrups, necco wafers, licorice pipes, bubble gum cigars and cigarettes, sensen, tootsie pops, chuckles, and all of the candies I loved as a kid. After the discussion, I went on the Internet to find out if they still produced these candies and if I could purchase them.I found these two sites that specialize in favorite snacks and candies from the past, They not only have the items to purchase individually,but they also sell "decade gift packs "with a whole assortment of candy favorites from the 60's, 70's, 80's, and 90's. It was great to see the old time favorites and to share them with my daughter."

And now he shares them with us.

Thank you Josef. Candy, and in fact most forms of eating, are major sources of fun, and I, who have been blitehly focusing on things like games and sports and weird art forms, stand deliciously corrected.

Games in Black and White

Mike Petty creates "Black and White Games. They may be printed in black and white, but they most definitely look like fun. The game in the picture is a word game named "What's It To Ya?. The rules: "Five items are placed on the table - things like 'Hope,' 'Garbage Collectors,' and 'Underwear.' Now everyone has to rank them in order of importance. Players get points when they match the rankings of other players." Fun-sounding? Along with this $4.50 game you'll find a template for making your own cards on his website.

"Each Black & White Game I produce reflects my philosophy about games: Ideally they should be inexpensive, simple and fun. I love playing games, but for me, the fun comes from the competition, mental stimulation and the people that I'm playing with. I don't find I enjoy games more because they're printed in full color or because they come in fancy boxes. So, the games I sell as "Black & White Games" will never have expensive components. As it is right now, these games are printed on cardstock and each copy is made pretty much on demand... This method of publishing the games is inexpensive, but it also allows me to make additions, changes and expansions for games quickly."

It is difficult, and sadly all too-often downright depressing to be a lone game entrepreneur. Mike apparently has the energy and vision needed to transcend the limitations of the marketplace. More power to you Mike, and from you to all Playingkind.

Learning about Learning from Video Games

Academic correspondent, and close virtual friend Bryan Alexander directed my attention to four papers that were presented during the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Reed College Technology Advisory Council. Apparently, there are those wandering the halls of academe who not only like to play games, but understand and appreciate the depth of the art.

James Paul Gee of the University of Wisconsin-Madison is one such. He writes about "LEARNING ABOUT LEARNING FROM A VIDEO GAME: RISE OF NATIONS." His observations and conclusions touch the very joystick of my heart. I quote: "computer and video games have a great deal to teach us about how to facilitate learning, even in domains outside games. Good computer and video games are complex, challenging, and long; they can take 50 or more hours to finish. If a game cannot be learned well, then it will fail to sell well, and the company that makes is in danger of going broke. Shortening and dumbing games down is not an option, since most avid players don't want short or easy games. Thus, if only to sell well, good games have to incorporate good learning principles in virtue of which they get themselves well learned. Game designers build on each other's successes and, in a sort of Darwinian process, good games come to reflect yet better and better learning principles."

It's heady stuff. It has to be in order to be recognized by the community it needs to reach. But it's well worth the read, as are the other three papers in this collection - a taste of the promise of play and hope for the future of learning.

Animate yourself

This just in from Games Taster, and now Gameskeeper, Marc. It's an e-card.

It's a talking, animated e-card. It's a talking, animated e-card with whatever head you want to make talk.

Marc cautions: "The actual 'Bernie' will only be there for two weeks."

Go ahead. Make your day. And someone else's, too.

Eyeball Benders - the Art of Giving Hints

Eyeball Benders are a visual puzzle consisting of close-up photographs of semi-common household objects. They are exceptionally easy to create, yet oddly difficult to create well. Given a close enough close-up, the photo-reality really does remarkably little to help you identify the object in question. It is all too easy to make an Eyeball Bender that is all but impossible to solve. The Eyeball Bender shown here is one of the easier ones that I found on a site called "The 5-minute BOF Eyeball Bender Page."

I first came to know about Eyeball Benders when I was a contributing editor for Games Magazine, o so many years ago. The only trace I could find of this on the web is the 1994 edition of Games Magazine Presents Eyeball Benders. The apparent scarcity of Games Magazine's Eyeball Benders may in fact explain why there is a comparitive plethora of the same to be found on the web. I even found a quiz called "Animal, Vegetable, Mineral" that's based on the eyeball-bender concept.

One of my favorites, and most instructively exasperating, is theImage.com CloseUp Gallery. Favorites, because the interface allows two levels of clues (extreme close-up, and somewhat less extreme). Most instructively exasperating because even with the clues, many of the objects are close to impossible to identify.

The art of giving hints is a fine one. It takes us many years to understand all the nuances. I devoted many pages of my Well-Played Game to exploring that very nuance. The art of creating a "good" puzzle is very much dependent on the understanding of creating good hints. As you attempt to solve these eyeball benders, you will learn a great deal about the art of puzzle making. In some cases, perhaps a bit more than you want.

Speaking of hints, did you guess the Eyeball Bender in this article? Did you think for a moment that it was a picture of a bunch of vitamins? Or did you know right away it was a collection of game pieces? Did you know what game? Did you think maybe Monopoly? Or did you know right away that it was one of those games whose name has four letters? A synonym for "taking a chance."

75 Years of Bubble Gum

Fun Correspondent Jim Sims writes:

Happy birthday, bubble gum! 75 years ago, a mom-and-pop store on Schenectady Street in Philadelphia, PA sold out Walter Diemer's first five-pound batch of Dubble Bubble, the world's first commercial bubble gum, in a few hours. Three quarters of a century have seen people perfect their bubble blowing skills; the Guinness World Record for largest bubble blown is 23" and over a million children aged 12 and under took part in Dubble Bubble's fourth annual National Bubble Blowing Contest this summer.

Chewing bubble gum isn't the sort of deep fun we spend hours or weeks we prepare for; it is one of the most common examples of ordinary fun I quote in Major Fun's article "Lowering the Fun Threshold". "You can raise the amount of joy in your life considerably by considering the ordinary fun, the 'Minor Fun,' and making it central to your day-to-day routine. If you can spice up a dull job with some ordinary fun by blowing a bubble or two in the background, so much the happier."

Yet bubble gum is not quite so dumb. One of the joys of play is that it can teach us to cope with the setbacks in life with a smile. If you care to try for deeper fun by raising the stakes, spend time trying to blow the biggest bubble you can, the biggest bubble you dare. You may not find it convenient to enjoy the sort of messy play which might result in a custard pie in the face, but blowing bubbles is enjoyably ever-so-slightly out of control. You never know just when the bubble will burst, or exactly what sort of mess you'll have to clear up when it does!

Want more to chew on?

See this article in the Indianapolis Star

And here's one that answers the eternal question why bubble gum is pink

And this gumly art video exploring concepts relating to Kussmaul Breathing ("air hunger") through bubble blowing

And of course this video of the Guinness World Record for the largest bubble blown

Whilst here we have documentation of Dubble Bubble's 4th Annual National Bubble Blowing Contest, and an article descrubbling a preliminary round for the aforementioned contest.

For the all-but-professional blower, here are some tips from those who have demonstrated professional prowess.

Pictures? See this and this.

And for historical reference, this past Blog o'Fun article within which (scroll down) a Bubble Gum game is poppingly described.

The T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S. Project

The T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S. Project (Tests With Inorganic Noxious Kakes In Extreme Situations) is perhaps one of the best illustrated examples of the connection between the scientific mind and the art of pure silliness.

Apparently, this site was the result of "a series of experiments conducted during finals week, 1995, at Rice University." Which also demonstrates rather conclusively how productive a little applied silliness can be during periods of great academic stress. This observation, along with a bunch of burnt, soaked, pureed, shocked, crushed and microwaved Twinkies, is probably the most important of their findings.

Speaking of which, here's a summary of what they discovered:

• Twinkies don't burn well unless doused in alcohol. Then they make good fires.


• Twinkies in water expand to near twice their size and look really gross.


• When they are pureed Twinkies can be compressed much. Really mostly air.


• Do Twinkies conduct? Run lots of current through them. Very resistive.


• Dropped off of sixth floor Twinkies are not injured much. Just a small fissure.


• Microwaved Twinkies emit a great deal of smoke and smell very bad.

Anagramania indeed

Anagramania is probably the only board game designed for people who like to play with anagrams. What kind of people are these? you ask. Probably the very same people who like to play with words.

What is an anagram? you also ask. With the kind assistance of the Anagramaniacs, I exemplify:

"You'll find this arm joint a few inches below the shoulder."

See, the letters in the word in bold can be rearranged to spell another word, which is an answer, so to speak, to the clue. The word in question: elbow.

The above is classified by the aforementioned as a "junior anagram." Let us try an advanced:

"I expect to find trickery in each cry that is made."

Not advanced enough? Here's an anagram for experts: " He tried once to understand the clue, but it was too abstruse. (9) " The (9) lets you know how many letters are in the word or words to be rearranged. The lack of boldness to indicate which word or words you are looking to rearrange is what makes this anagram so expertworthy. Give up? You'll find the anagram, and others, along with their answers, here.

The Anagramania game comes with 24 different sets of anagram puzzles. Each set contains 20 anagrams. There are enough sets for up to six players. Perhaps one of the more ingenious aspects of the mechanics of the game is the use of ballot-like envelopes to house each sheet of anagrams. During each round of play, players pull the clue sheet from the envelope so they reveal only the next anagram, while the remaining anagrams stay hidden.

Perhaps even more ingenious is the game itself. The timer doesn't start until one player announces that he or she can solve the anagram. The rest of the players then have one minute to find the solution. This works brilliantly to keep everyone in play.

For those of you seeking immediate anagramatic, though significantly less gamelike, satisfaction, check out the I Rearrangement Service (a.k.a. Internet Anagram Server).

About Laughter

Here, from the Nonverbal Dictionary of Gestures, Signs, & Body Language Cues, are a few pithy insights about laughter:

". . . it is scarcely possible to point out any difference between the tear-stained face of a person after a paroxysm of excessive laughter and after a bitter crying-fit" (Darwin 1872:207). 2. Laughing strengthens bonds of comradeship (Van Hooff 1967:59). 3. Laughter is more social than humorous (Van Hooff 1967:59). 4. Our laugh resembles the great ape's relaxed open-mouth face (esp., its "rhythmic, low-pitched staccato vocalizations and . . . boisterous body movements" (Van Hooff 1967:60). 5. "For example, they [deaf-and-blind-born children] smile and laugh as we do when they are happy and emit the correct sounds when they do so" (Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1971:12). 6. People in good spirits may laugh 100-to-400 times a day (Fry 1983). 7. Human laughter "seldom exceeds 7 seconds" (Ruch 1993). 8. Laughter may be vocal or voiceless, may include all vowel and many consonant possibilities; it frequently begins with an initial "h" sound, most usually as "he-he," grading into "ha-ha" (Ruch 1993). "

And a few more: "Chemically, according to some researchers, laughter provides relief from stress by releasing pain-killing, euphoria-producing endorphins, enkephalins, dopamine, noradrenaline, and adrenaline. Socially, laughter binds us as friendly allies united against outsiders, and against forces beyond our control. Psychologically, the comic laugh (in response, e.g., to funny jokes, puns, and satire) is a recent development perhaps linked to the evolution of speech."

Apparently, the physiological and emotional benefits of laughter are so profound that it's good for us to laugh, even when we don't think anything's particularly funny. Hence, the World Laughter Tour.

High Tech Hide and Seek

They call it "Geocaching, and it's probably one of the most successful, technology-enabled sports of this millenium, making use of both global positioning devices and the Internet. It's also a good glimpse at how new and unknowable the results of the Human-Technology-Fun (H-T-F) connection can be.

"The basic idea," explain the authors of the geocaching website, "is to have individuals and organizations set up caches all over the world and share the locations of these caches on the internet. GPS users can then use the location coordinates to find the caches. Once found, a cache may provide the visitor with a wide variety of rewards. All the visitor is asked to do is if they get something