Match of the Penguins

Match of the Penguins (no, not MARCH, MATCH, get it, MATCH) is a lot more fun than it sounds like. And, for kids who've seen or heard of the movie "March of the Penguins," the game already sounds like fun.

You get: one deck of penguin cards (64) and three penguin pawns (two black, one white). In the penguin deck are, as you would correctly assume, penguins. On careful deck-scrutiny, you will notice that there are penguins that are exactly alike and penguins that have the same color umbrella or sunglasses or shirt or umbrella (yes, these are the Umbrella-Toting, Lei-Wearing penguins of central Penguinia). And some have the same color umbrella AND sunglasses AND even a lei, too. And don't forget the fish pails, either. Because, though all penguins carry fish pails, only a very very few have two fish in their pail.

And as the cards are laid out, one at a time, if you happen to be the first person to see a penguin with a double-fished pail, you knock on the table and win all the laid-out cards. And if you're the first player to notice that there are two penguins that are exactly the same, you don't knock, you grab the white pawn, and get all the laid-out, face-up cards. And if noone else has noticed anything yet and you are the first to observe that there are two penguins with several matching items, you, of course, grab a black penguin pawn. And since there are two, the next person to notice the black penguin pawn grab as another black penguin pawn to also grab.

And, of course, if you're the first to notice two penguins with the same attribute, and the first to name that attribute out loud (saying something similar to, for example, "Umbrella!"), you'd get all the face-up laid-out cards, unless someone notices that there are a couple penguins with several matching attributes and makes a black penguin pawn grab, which would win, of course, unless someone else happens to notice in those same cards two identical penguins and has grabbed the white pawn, which would then clearly win, unless the round is brought to its conclusion by the knock of the double-fished pail.

So, you see, it's not just a matching game. It's a complex matching game, where you have to look not only for matching attributes, but also weigh their value according to different criteria.

When games are advertised as being fun for kids ages 6 and up, "up" usually means 7. Our kids' games tasters were 8-12, and this was the first game they wanted to play, and remained one of their very favorite, most Major Fun ones.

Games Seniors Play

When learning at home, everyone is a teacher, and student. When you combine learning with play, everyone needs to be invited into the game. This week's newsletter started with a link to this article in Newsday - Racing to Play. It's about the kinds of games seniors play. You know what kinds the reporter talks about? The Mah Jong, Scrabble, Bingo kinds. The reporter actually interviewed me. She had already done a lot of research and was convinced that she had a fundamental grasp of what seniors (that's me, too, you know) play.

Me, I was horrified. Here's the only quote she got out of me:

"Fun is "noble" in the eyes of California-based game-maker and guru Bernie DeKoven, 64. "I think a lot of older people are reclaiming their need to play," he said, "and they're looking for opportunity and finding places that foster a certain amount of playfulness."

You can almost hear the horror.

I received a couple of wonderful responses from subscribers, and I wanted to share them with you.

The first came from George Platts, long time friend and renown artist of fun, who coined the term "Everlasting Games:

"I've been playing and inventing wacky games for groups of seniors to play for over ten years.

"'Seated Hockey' almost got out of hand it was SO physical. The other hospital staff could not believe it (how fun it was). The seniors really enjoyed it. We played hard. We played fair. Nobody was hurt. That's easy, if you have the know how.

"'Bean Bag Bin' was specially designed because a number of the seniors were blind or partially sighted. Two lines seated opposite each other. A thrower. A catcher. Thrower tosses a heavyish bean bag. Catcher uses a metal trash can. If the thrower is blind, the catcher can move the trash can. If the catcher is blind, the thrower can aim well enough. The bean bag dropping into the metal trash can makes a very satisfying noise (and doesn't bounce out). Each thrower has three turns then the bean bags and trash can ('bin' in English) move to the next pair alternating thrower-catcher between teams. When it gets to the end of the line everybody stands up and changes to the next seat in line (each team in an opposite direction - the end people have a longer walk; good exercise) and the second round begins with people facing different opponents . . . and so it goes. Brilliant."

And from Jac Rongen, these wonderfully affirming photos.

A game for all reasons

Think of perhaps shuffleboard with dice. Think, for example, of a shuffleboard that is on five levels, with, where there were once pucks to slide, dice to, well, slide perhaps or flick or shove. A shuffleboard looking pretty much exactly like this.

Think further of the role, or roll, of luck - how the dice, even though you try to slide them everso carefully, tend to change faces when they descend a level. There's an intimation of the possibility that one could control all of this, making the die land 6-up even by the time it reaches the X4 level after having knocked all the opponents' dice to off-table oblivion. On the other hand, there's an unavoidable element of luck which makes a 7-year-old often as successful as a 57-year-old. Think of this, and you'll understand, almost immediately, why Tumblin' Dice has received a Major Fun Family Game award.

If you know shuffleboard, you'll know how to play Tumblin' Dice. When I introduced the game at the Tasting, I asked my fellow Tasters to play the game without looking at the rules. With almost no discussion, they played almost exactly the way the designer had intended them to. Because the game was so easy to figure out, it is exceptionally welcome in a variety of settings, especially recreation centers, classrooms and my house.

Speaking of classrooms, the game requires enough arithmetical calculations to make it actually useful in almost any elementary school setting. When a die lands in special scoring sections of the board, the face value of the die is multiplied by a given factor. So, in figuring out a total score players exercise both additional and multiplication, and, one might argue, even algebraic skills.

But don't let its educational implications fool you. Tumblin-Dice is an invitation to minutes or hours of play, for kids, for adults, for the whole darn community. Did I mention adults? The kind of adults who might be interested in playing, um, professionally?

It's made as well as it plays - a big, polished, two-piece all wood, table-worthy game that you might never put away. Ever.

Joyful Parenting

Laurie Orloff of Joyful Parenting writes: "If you are fun to be around, if you aren’t critical, controlling and negative, if you truly enjoy your children and life, your children are going to be easy to deal with. They are going to want to hang out with you. They are going to seek you out when they want advice and comfort. They are going to respect and follow your suggestions and your requests most of the time. They will want to become like you."

Read this. It could make things a lot more fun.