Strategic Sudoku

Sudoku Challenge is prolific game designer Reiner Knizia's answer to the widely distributed (and I mean widely), and often excessively-challenging Sudoku puzzle. And it turns out to be a surprisingly fun answer, even for people who don't know or especially like Sudoku.

After the board (a traditional 9x9 Sudoku matrix) is seeded (in something similar to the traditional Sudoku manner), players take turns drawing and placing number tiles on the Sudoku grid. Following the Sudoku puzzle rule, you can't put a tile in the same row or column or region (traditional Sudoku matrices are divided, tic-tac-toe-like, into 9 regions) where the same tile has already been played.

Your score (and hence the challenge) is determined by how many tiles are in the same row, column and region. As you can so clearly imagine, the potential to score higher on each turn, or to run out of legal moves, increases as the available spaces become fewer and fewer.

We found the game less demanding, and more fun than a Sudoku puzzle. Maybe because it's a lot easier to play with movable tiles than with pen or pencil. Maybe because it's more fun to play together than alone.

Speaking of together, if you have school age kids, turn the board over. It's Zoodoku, a children's version of the game using a set of animal tiles. More visually demanding, but a smaller matrix, with fewer intersections, and gentler rules.

Zig Zag

Zig Zag is a strategy game for two players, though we played it with two teams. The goal of the game is to be the first to line up 4 pegs in a row. The pegs, however, can only be moved along certain "tracks." Tracks that each player has laid down, one turn at a time, patiently, o so patiently.

And that's exactly what they were, our kids' games tasting group, playing Zig Zag: patient. Thoughtful. Focused. And often taken completely by surprise.

Zig Zag is a well-made and well-conceived strategy game that can be played in as little as 5 minutes or as much as a half hour. The sturdy plastic bridge pieces - a longer one to reach diagonally adjacent holes, and a shorter one for the orthagonally similarly adjacent and also holes - fit smoothly into slots alongside each raised peg hole. Storage trays help keep the pieces sorted.

Any invitation for people to think together, kids, adults, is something you almost can't afford to turn down. Especially if it's fun. And challenging. And just complex enough to take people by surprise. And short enough so no one takes it seriously, this winning or losing thing, so everyone can focus, instead, on the fascination, the delight of the game.