I just finished watching “The Booth at the End” on Hulu tonight. I will be spoiling plenty in this post, but I suspect many of you won’t ever watch it, even though I enjoyed it. Nevertheless, you’ve been warned. I mention this show because in the last episode the old man in the booth who makes “deals” with people says something that’s awful reminiscent of how some people conceive of games, but he’s not talking about games at all: “A trap they set for themselves to get them through the day.”Read More »
Month: July 2013
Reinventing the Multivariate Hypergeometric Wheel
On Monday morning, instead of packing—something that I’ve been saying a lot lately—I was doing research for strategies at Magic: the Gathering sealed deck tournaments, since I’m going to one on Saturday, and I generally suck at Magic, at least when it comes to the whole winning part. I ended up fascinated by the certainty with which experts break down how many lands you should have in a 40 card sealed deck, and got to thinking about the probabilities here.Read More »
Making Connections
Monday afternoon my fellow Math for America colleagues in New Haven had a going away party for myself and another one of us that is moving back to New York City. (She ended up not being able to make it, unfortunately.) We ate hot dogs, drank beer, sat on the beachfront porch at Michelle’s house in Milford, and, of course, played a game: Ticket to Ride. Mike also taught me a new game he learned at the Museum of Math, but I’ll come back to that.Read More »
Superfriends are Thwarting my Escape Plans!
My good friends Cari and Mason invited me over this afternoon to play board games with them. The opportunities to see them are quickly becoming ever more scarce, so I set aside all the things I need to do in preparation for my move this afternoon to head over. Our friend Tom also came to play with us. It turns out that Cari and Mason’s dastardly plans to thwart my feeble packing attempts were more advanced than I anticipated: not only did they give me yet another game, Sentinels of the Multiverse, as a going away present, they even cooked me dinner after I borrowed their car to pick up boxes from Home Depot!Read More »
It Just Became a Bit Easier to Judge a Game by Its Box
Despite my attempts not to acquire any new games until after I move (happening very soon), I was given Labyrinth as a going away present at the same party at which my Tsuro board was split in twain. Labyrinth is published by Ravensburger, who added a nice feature to the back of the box that I hope catches on.Read More »
No Free Parking Money 