/dev/joe's New Writeups

German games (thing)

2002-01-08T16:18:36Z

Lately there has been a Renaissance of a sort in board games occurring in Germany. These games often get translated to English as well, or sometimes only the rules need to be translated and English rules are included with the game by its U.S. distributors or are available on the web.

Examples of these German games include:

German games tend to have certain features in common. Not every feature is in every game, but if you play enough of these you'll notice the commonalities:

A scoring track on the edge of the board, which sometimes dwarfs the actual playing area, and often loops around because game scores exceed the length of the track.
Three (or sometimes four) scoring phases during the game. At each scoring phase, you score points based on your current state in the game. As a result, it pays to not only be ahead at the end, but also during the

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crokinole (thing)

2002-01-08T15:54:18Z

A physical game in the category of Shuffleboard. Crokinole is played on a round wooden board divided into three concentric circles with a set of rubber-coated posts around the outside of the inner circle and a small hole in the center just large enough to accommodate one of the playing pieces (wooden disks slightly larger than checkers). There is a small flat area outside the third circle and a gutter around the outside.

The outer circle is divided into four quadrants which mark the shooting regions for each player. The game can be played by two players sitting in opposite positions or four players (two teams of two) with partners sitting in opposite positions or by four players playing individually. In each case there are 24 disks in different colors for each player or team, divided evenly among the players.

Each player, on his turn, places one of his unused disks on the outer circle within his quadrant, and flicks it (as opposed to pushing it) with his finger. If there…

Wise and Otherwise (thing)

2002-01-08T15:26:12Z

Wise and Otherwise is a game played with the mechanics of Fictionary/Balderdash but using proverbs translated from various languages.

One player draws a card with several starts-of-translated-proverbs on it and chooses one (such as "If the chicken is fresh ...") and reads it aloud to the other players. Each other player writes the phrase on a slip of paper and finishes it in their own creative way, and passes this slip to the player who drew the card. This player also fills out a slip of paper, completing the proverb with the real ending found on the back of the card.

Once all the slips are in, they are all read aloud, and the other players vote for which ending they think is the real ending for the proverb. The slightly bizarre scoring system gives 2 points for each player who guesses the correct ending, 2 points to each player for each other player who voted for their false ending, and 3 points to the player who drew the card and read the proverbs if nobody guesses the correct…

cluing game (thing)

2002-01-08T15:03:48Z

A category of word games which involve players trying to communicate a word to other players via clues. Such games include:

The types of clues can vary considerably. In Password, clues are limited to one word at a time. In Pyramid, clues are more free-form; you're only limited to a few basic rules (can't say the word or a part of a compound word or phrase to be clued). The Pyramid bonus round is yet another type of cluing game; this time you're cluing a category using only members of the category. Taboo uses the more free-form clues but with a set of additional words you aren't allowed to use. In Cluesome, the clues are even restricted by the usual rule of not saying part of the word -- but keep in mind that the goal is to allow not too many (but at least one) of the other players to guess the word.

The clues don't have to be words; in charades, the clues are gestures, and in pictionary, drawings.

catchphrase (thing)

2002-01-08T14:43:23Z

Catchphrase is an electronic word game, a combination of cluing games with hot potato. An even number of people (works well up to about 10 or 12) are divided into two teams which sit in alternating positions around a circle. One player starts the Catchphrase device and tries to clue the word on the device to his teammates. When they guess it, he passes the device to the next player who presses a button to get the next word.

Clues are pretty free-form, but you can't say the word or part of a phrase that you're cluing, you can't say a rhyming word as a sounds-like clue, or any other similar way to try to get around these rules.

All the while, a partially random timer is running in the device, counting down with a series of beeps which get closer and closer together as time is running out. When time runs out, the opposing team of whoever is holding the device scores a point. That team also gets to make a single guess as the word that was being clued, and if they get it…

answer: two ladders (thing)

2001-12-29T08:25:00Z

Answer to old chestnut: two ladders:

Let a represent the height of the top of ladder A, and b represent the height of the top of ladder B, and let x represent the desired width of the alley. Then, the problem looks something like this (except the ladders are usually of different lengths so it is skewed a bit):

 |\         /|
 | \A     B/ |
 |  \     /  |
 |   \   /   |
 |    \ /    |
a|     *     |b
 |    /|\    |
 |   / | \   |
 |  /  |h \  |
 | /   |   \ |
 |/____|____\|

  <----x---->

Regardless of the distances involved, the triangle formed by ladder A, altitude a, and the ground is similar to the triangle formed by part of ladder A, altitude h, and the ground. Likewise, there are two similar triangles involving ladder B. All four of these triangles are also right triangles.

From the first pair of similar triangles, we can calculate the distance on the ground from altitude h to altitude b is xh/b.

From the…