Tag Archives: Geeking Out

Games That Do Monopoly Things!

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Last week, I tried to define what makes a board game the worst board game.

Obviously, I tried to keep it light. I genuinely strive for the tone of PuzzCulture to be positive. I love puzzles. I love games. I love RPGs. And writing about them, for the most part, is a blast, and I hope it’s fun to read about them as well.

And last week, I avoided discussing Monopoly because, well, it’s difficult to maintain a positive tone about Monopoly. I don’t particularly enjoy playing Monopoly.

monopoly

Monopoly has its issues. It takes a long time to play, and if you fall behind, it’s incredibly difficult to catch up. Plus, if you get eliminated, it’s not much fun to watch other people keep going.

But Monopoly is a best-selling game. It’s one of the most well-known games. Clearly there are things about Monopoly that many people quite enjoy.

So that’s the notion behind today’s post. Let’s take a look at different aspects of Monopoly that people enjoy, and then look at other games that do those things as well or better!

That’s keeping it positive, isn’t it?

Here we go!

Maybe you enjoy buying property and building it up with enhancements and generating money with it.

That’s great. You should check out Lords of Vegas.

It’s a casino-building game set in the early days of Las Vegas. It’s got play money, dice, all sorts of strategy, plus a gambling mechanic where you can make up for monetary shortfalls. It’s a brilliant game and so so much fun.

It recently got a six-player refresh and some new mechanics, but at heart, it’s a lot of the guts of Monopoly in a more streamlined, more immersive package.

Other recommendations for property games: The Estates, Suburbia, For Sale.

Maybe it’s collecting valuable cards, negotiating and trading with other players that you enjoy most about Monopoly.

Terrific! You should try Sheriff of Nottingham.

In Sheriff of Nottingham, players collect cards that represent different goods for you to take to market — apples, chickens, bread, and cheese — as well as cards of contraband items (like spices, mead, and weapons).

Each turn, one player is the Sheriff, trying to stop the other players from sneaking contraband into the market. So you can bluff, or bribe, or try to sneak goods past the Sheriff, or just play it straight with regular goods.

The game allows for trading, cutting deals, being sneaky, and bonuses for being the person with the most of certain goods (apples, for instance) at the market. It’s a blast, and allows for lots of fun interaction throughout the game, since nobody is ever eliminated.

It’s the bargaining and negotiating aspect of Monopoly turned up to 11, but with some craftiness built into the dealings. It’s a can’t-miss choice.

Other recommendations for negotiating games: Bohnanza, Chinatown, Illuminati.

Do you like completing colored sets of items? Outmaneuvering other players? Claiming valuable property that other players want? Pretty much everything involved in Monopoly is also part of Ticket to Ride.

In Ticket to Ride, players collect cards and play cards on a map in order to complete different train routes to earn points. Not only can you score by completing those routes under your banner, but you gain bonus points if you can connect distant locations through your railways.

It covers a lot of the strategy and forward planning that made Monopoly famous, but in a sleeker, quicker package. (And like Monopoly, it has different varieties set in different locations!)

Other recommendations for Monopoly But More: Food Chain Magnate, Cosmic Encounter, Power Grid.

Oh, and if you want a totally off-the-walls Monopoly-inspired game, there’s always The Doom That Came to Atlantic City.

In this game, you crush houses to claim properties, play Chants (instead of Chance) cards, and basically try to be the best doomsday cultist at the table. It’s a race between various Lovecraftian cults, all hoping to summon their particular monstrous world-ending god before the other players can.

It’s delightfully tongue-in-cheek, a riotous time, and a hilarious inversion of a lot of classic Monopoly tropes. I highly recommend it.

Are you a Monopoly fan, fellow player? Please tell us what you love about Monopoly in the comment section below! And if you’re not a fan, tell us what you prefer to play instead!

The Worst Board Game?

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I was talking about board games with a friend of mine over the weekend, and he asked me what I thought the worst board game was.

That’s a difficult question to answer, because a lot of factors go into it. Some games are fundamentally flawed, while others might not connect with you personally, but other folks love them.

Some games simply don’t explain their rules well, leaving players scrambling and baffled on their first playthrough. Some games have a simple gimmick that is fun once, but has very little replay value. Are those bad games?

A game can be mechanically bad, but if you still have fun at the table with your friends while playing it, is it a bad game?

It’s a lot to unpack.

Many of the old classics end up on lists of worst games: Risk, Battleship, Twister, Candy Land, Trivial Pursuit, Chutes & Ladders, Guess Who?, and of course, Monopoly.

I don’t know that it’s necessarily fair to put simpler children’s games on a list of worst games, simply because they’re not as fun to play when you’re older. (Or if you don’t have polio, in the case of Candy Land.)

I also don’t think that games belong on the list simply because they can take a long time, like Risk or Monopoly.

To be fair, some of these games aren’t games at all. Candy Land and Chutes & Ladders involve NO player agency and NO meaningful choices. (Though, in the past, we’ve suggested ways to make Candy Land better.)

And some of the major flaws of these games can be fixed with house rules.

The main issue with Trivial Pursuit, for instance, is that you have to be on very specific squares to earn your wedges, so a lot of the trivia-answering and die-rolling feels pointless or tedious.

But you can fix that with a house rule like “answering three questions of the same color earns you a wedge” or “answer two questions in a row and you immediately proceed to a wedge spot.” Simple fix!

As for Monopoly… well, it has earned its reputation. And yet, it remains one of the bestselling games. Clearly some people are out there enjoying it. (And I wish to know their secrets.)

But newer games aren’t immune to ending up on lists of the worst games.

Munchkin often appears there, but I think that’s due less to gameplay and more to how difficult it can be to get into the gameplay, given how child-friendly the art style is.

The Oregon Trail Card Game appears on some lists, which I found surprising. Sure, the game is hard, almost unfairly so, but that’s kinda the point. My work team and I had a blast chronicling our attempts at beating it every week at lunch, as well as the numerous deaths I personally endured during play. It was a Sisyphean joy!

A lot of pop culture tie-in games are generally awful because they’re cash grabs, not genuine attempts to make a fun game. (The Twin Peaks Murder Mystery Game is truly wretched, for instance. But, then again, The Golden Girls version of Clue is delightful. It’s a mixed bag.)

Personally, I would put Cards Against Humanity on the list, because it encourages lame edgelord humor and reaching for low-hanging fruit, comedically. Cleverness and wit often loses to shock value.

But then again, it can be the seedling for a better game. I’ve played Charades Against Humanity (where you have to act out a White Card from the game) many a time and had an absolute blast. Again, house rules save the day.

So, at the end of the day, what is the worst board game?

Whichever one you enjoy the least.

Or Monopoly. Who can say?

I can, however, with one hundred percent certainty, tell you the worst card game. And no, astonishingly, it’s not War. (Though War suffers from the same flaw as Candy Land.)

The worst card game of all time is Guess the Card.

Here’s how to play, if you’re a masochist:

  • Shuffle a deck of cards.
  • Put the deck of cards in front of you.
  • Try to guess the card on top.
  • Flip over the card and see if you’re right.

That’s it. It’s maddening and insane and barely a game, and I have a friend who makes us play it before every game night she hosts because it makes her laugh hysterically.

So, while it’s the worst card game in the world for most of us, it’s her favorite.

To each their own, I guess.

What’s your least favorite card game or board game? Or, better yet, what’s your favorite? Let’s end on a positive note, shall we? Let me know in the comments section below! I’d love to hear from you.

A Puzzle to Solve for International Sudoku Day!

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We’re dressed To the Nines and this is the Number Place to be!

I waxed both lyrical and nostalgic about Sudoku in yesterday’s post, so let’s get down to business with today’s bonus puzzle!

I’ve got two different versions of a Cluedoku puzzle for you.

Like Sudoku, Cluedoku involves placing the digits 1 through 9 into each row, column, and 3×3 square in the grid. But unlike Sudoku, there are no set letters.

Instead, you have 81 clues, one for every cell in the grid. Once you’ve solved a clue and placed a number in the grid, standard Sudoku rules apply: that number will only appear once in a row, column, or 3×3 square.

You can try the easier version here, where you get a clue for each of the 81 digits in the grid.

OR

You can try the harder version here, where only certain digits are clued and your Sudoku skill will be more crucial to solving the puzzle.

I hope you enjoy this variation on the traditional Sudoku format. And if you have a favorite Sudoku variant that ISN’T Cluedoku, feel free to share it in the comment section below! I’d love to hear from you.

Happy solving, everyone!

International Sudoku Day is tomorrow!

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Tomorrow, 9/9, is International Sudoku Day. And while I have a special Sudoku puzzle planned for tomorrow, I wanted to take some time today to talk about this puzzle.

Because, honestly, Sudoku is kind of amazing.

It’s a logic puzzle — a deduction puzzle — that looks like a math puzzle. (And, in fact, its genuinely mathier cousins Kenken and Cross Sums/Kakuro don’t have a tenth of the audience that Sudoku does.)

It’s one of the very few puzzles I can think of that requires no introduction, no words, no guidance. If you just look at that grid, you inherently know what you need to do.

That’s a very rare thing. I mean, sure, if you look at a logic puzzle — the premise, the grid, the hints to help eliminate things — you can pick it up quickly. A crossword is fairly universal, but still requires the outside knowledge of vocabulary, facts, and wordplay each solver brings.

Sudoku is clean, simple, and irrefutable. It crosses linguistic and cultural barriers with ease.

And yet, it took decades to become an overnight sensation.

Similar puzzles can be traced back to France in the 1890s, but Sudoku as we know it was featured in Dell Pencil Puzzles and Word Games in 1979 under the name Number Place (though it has also been called To The Nines), thanks to constructor Howard Garns.

Links to a solvable online version of each of those two puzzles are here and here.
Try out these half-century-old puzzles!

Wayne Gould kickstarted a UK Sudoku craze after creating a generation program for the puzzles and selling it to The Times in London.

Maki Kaji began championing Sudoku in the 1980s in Japan with his puzzle magazine Nikoli, and he’s why most people know the puzzle as Sudoku now. (Originally the puzzle was called Suuji wa dokushin ni kagiru, or “numbers should be single.” Maki later took the suggestion to shorten it to Sudoku.)

maki kaji 1

We can literally track the puzzle’s expansion across the years, and its rebirth as Sudoku in the 2000s, because many puzzle solvers have lived through Sudoku’s entire modern lifespan.

And it’s baffling, isn’t it? That Sudoku feels so timeless and universal, but is relatively young, as puzzles go.

We’ve been playing with words for far longer than we’ve been playing with numbers. Anagrams and riddles go back centuries upon centuries. They’ve been playing Go in China for more than 2,500 years, and the Royal Game of Ur dates back to the third millennium BC.

Sudoku is just a pup compared to them, but it’s among the most widely solved and recognizable puzzles.

I’ve spent a lot of timing thinking about (and writing about) Sudoku over the years. A decade ago, I tried to calculate how many of the 5-and-a-half billion possible unique Sudoku puzzles had been published up to that point.

I’ve chronicled as many variants of Sudoku as I could, both in English and abroad. One year I tried solving the puzzles from the UK Sudoku Championship and was thoroughly humbled.

And yet, I’m still fascinated by every new twist. I try every variant I see clever constructors come up with. I inevitably watch every video where someone solves the hot new “impossible” Sudoku.

In less than half the time crosswords have been around, Sudoku has swept across the world and become a household name.

True, there haven’t been any Sudoku musical revues or pop songs — at least, not that I’m aware of! — but it remains one of the most ubiquitous pen-and-paper puzzles in the world today.

“Numbers should be single.” Maybe. But I like the message of Number Place better: every number in its place. An unsolved Sudoku grid shan’t remain empty for long.

Happy solving, friends!

The Week in Puzzles!

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For today’s post, I’ve gathered a few tidbits from around the world of puzzles to keep you informed. We’ve got puzzles to solve, a discount code, a new crossword tournament in 2027, and more!

This past weekend, I shared a puzzle in honor of several celebrities who passed away last week. But I wasn’t the only constructor who made a puzzle to celebrate the life of a beloved icon.

George Barany constructed a super-sized puzzle (23×22) in honor of music icon and humanitarian Dolly Parton.

You can click here to solve the puzzle, entitled “Bidding Bye Bye Backwoods Barbie.”

It’s a multi-page printout because the puzzle is loaded with trivia and references to her life, career, and accomplishments. It was clearly a labor of love, one that George kindly allowed me to share with all of you.

A new crossword tournament has been announced for 2027, as crosswords are coming to Canada!

The Canadian Crossword Open will be held on June 5th in Toronto! And they’ve already got constructors announced for the event.

Emma Lawson, Will Nediger, Ada Nicolle, Jess Shulman, and Nam Jin Yoon are all constructing for the tournament.

Not only that, but they’re hosting an open submission contest for Canadian constructors to contribute a puzzle to the inaugural tournament. Click here for more details!

Did you know that September is Sudoku Month? (At least, according to one calendar I saw.)

Well, apparently it is, and our friends at Penny/Dell Puzzles are running a promotion all month!

They’re offering a 15% off discount code on all Sudoku magazines, subscriptions, and value packs.

Just use the code “ilovesudoku” on their website to receive your discount and indulge in some Sudoku solving!

It’s always important when a constructor identifies a gap in the market or a group that is being underrepresented in puzzles.

Construct Robin Stears (a previous contributor to The Inkubator, Women of Letters, and several These Puzzles Fund Abortions collections) recently lamented the lack of an outlet featuring women-focused crosswords.

So she decided to create one herself.

Go to her Patreon to sample her Midi puzzles highlighting the accomplishments of women. You can download PDFs or solve digitally with puz versions of these 9×9 crosswords.

It’s a worthwhile endeavor to be sure, so please check it out.

Were there any stories or puzzly promotions this week that I missed? Let me know in the comments section below! I’d love to hear from you.

Puzzling Protagonists With Pratchett

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Mosaic of the 12 labors of Heracles…

“The way to deal with an impossible task was to chop it down into a number of merely very difficult tasks, and break each one of them into a group of horribly hard tasks, and each of them into tricky jobs, and each of them…”

A riddle, a puzzle, an impossible task… literary heroes are often forced to unravel, solve, or outmaneuver devious traps, tricks, and plots as part of their heroic journey.

I particularly love when the hero comes up with a unique or creative solution to the problem, often turning it on their opponent. And Sir Terry Pratchett, author of the DiscWorld series (among many other wonderful books) was a master craftsman of scenarios like this.

So today, I thought I would look at some of these puzzling scenarios and impossible tasks, and see how the protagonists penned by Terry Pratchett bested them with brains more than brawn.

One of the classic examples of the Impossible Task is the Gordian Knot. This knot secured an ox cart to a post. The knot was described as several knots all so tightly entangled that it was impossible to find the ends or see how they were fastened. It was said that whoever untied it would rule Asia.

Alexander the Great defeated the knot in one of two inventive ways, depending on the source. He either removed the linchpin from the pole, exposing the two ends of the cord and allowing him to untie it, or more famously, he sliced the knot in two with a single stroke of his sword.

Pratchett had his own take on this concept in The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, his version of the Pied Piper story where a sentient cat used friendly mice and a fake piper to con villagers out of their money.

In one village where something sinister is afoot, Maurice the cat was confronted by Spider, a rat king (and monstrous psychic being) formed from rats whose tails are intertwined.

Much like Alexander, Maurice unraveled the knot by biting through all the entangled rat tails, forcing them to separate and defeating the amalgamated being.

One of the most deviously clever denizens of the DiscWorld is Esmerelda Weatherwax, aka Granny Weatherwax. She is a witch who serves the people of Lancre, using magic, common sense, and her particular knack for dealing with people, which she calls Headology.

Granny crosses paths with dark forces, ambitious magic users, and other threats to the land of Lancre, and has found herself in puzzling scenarios more than once.

In one example, Granny is trapped somewhere between death and life. Her only companion is the physical embodiment of Death (who gets his own font in DiscWorld books). She is given the choice between venturing into the light and venturing into the dark, with no indication which leads back to the land of the living.

Quite poignantly, Granny turns to face the light, then steps backward into the dark.

Fans have two prevailing interpretations of this moment. Some see it simply as a reflection of the idea of “going into the light” meaning moving on from this realm. But others (myself included) see it as Granny once again choosing to defend others, facing the light, but stepping back into the darkness where she is needed most.

During another adventure, Granny is trapped within a mirror realm, again joined by Death.

But this time, she has to figure out which of a billion reflected versions of her is the true one.

(As you can see, someone was inspired by this scene to get a “This one.” tattoo that would only read out properly in a mirror.)

Granny bets on herself, trusting in her own honesty, strength of character, and insight. And she is served well by that choice.

Another DiscWorld novel sees Granny (and her fellow witches, Nanny Ogg and Magrat Garlick) venturing abroad to save her sister Lily from a witch with a specialty in voodoo.

Granny wagers against the powerful Erzulie Gogol, betting on her mastery of Headology vs. Gogol’s voodoo powers. If Granny wins, Lily goes free and the people of Genua are left to their own devices, free of Gogol’s magical influences.

Gogol agrees to leave the city alone, but not to give up Granny’s evil sister.

‘I don’t want to hurt you, Mistress Weatherwax,’ said Mrs. Gogol.

‘That’s good,’ said Granny. ‘I don’t want you to hurt me either.

Defiantly, Granny ignores Gogol menacing her with a voodoo doll and begins walking toward the stairs that lead to her sister.

Gogol continues threatening to stab the doll of Granny, and Weatherwax persists, even going so far as to point out she would be more ruthless than Gogol.

‘I should box a bit clever if I was you, Esme,’ muttered Nanny Ogg. ‘She’s good at this sort of thing.’

‘I think she could be very ruthless,’ said Magrat.

‘I’ve got nothing but the greatest respect for Mrs. Gogol,’ said Granny. ‘A fine woman. But talks a bit too much. If I was her, I’d have had a couple of big nails right through that thing by now.’

Gogol jabs a long sliver of wood into the doll’s foot, then its arm. Everyone sees Granny wince and react to the painful attacks. But Granny continues to climb the stairs, despite Gogol stabbing another sliver into the doll’s leg, causing Granny to clutch at the banister.

Granny turns toward Gogol, who threatens to stab the doll’s heart this time.

But Granny instead thrusts her own arm into a nearby torch, causing the doll to burst into flames.

In DiscWorld, belief makes things happen. Gogol believes in her magic, and so does everyone else. Granny turns that belief against her. The magic works both ways, you see, and Granny is made of sterner stuff.

It went on blazing even after the witch had screamed and dropped it on to the floor. It went on burning until Nanny Ogg ambled over with a jug of fruit juice from the buffet, whistling between her teeth, and put it out.

Granny withdrew her hand. It was unscathed.

‘That’s headology,’ she said. ‘It’s the only thing that matters. Everything else is just messin’ about. Hope I didn’t hurt you, Mrs. Gogol.’

She went on up the stairs.

Mrs. Gogol kept on staring at the damp ashes. Nanny Ogg patted her companionably on the shoulder.

‘How did she do that?’ said Mrs. Gogol.

‘She didn’t. She let you do it,’ said Nanny. ‘You got to watch yourself around Esme Weatherwax. I’d like to see one of them Zen buggers come up against her one day.’

‘And she’s the good one?’ said Baron Saturday.

‘Yeah,’ said Nanny. ‘Funny how things work out, really.’

My all-time favorite example in the DiscWorld books comes from The Last Hero, an illustrated adventure where a group of aged heroes, The Silver Horde, seek to climb the mountain of the gods and “return fire to them” (by blowing them up with explosives).

As they are confronted by the various Gods, Cohen the Barbarian is challenged by Fate to do the impossible: to roll a seven on a six-sided die.

Similar to the solution of the Gordian Knot, Cohen throws the die in the air and cuts it in two with his sword, causing the two pieces to fall to the ground, revealing a six and a one.

Now that is thumbing your nose at Fate with style.

It’s all well and good to be lucky, or brave, or tough, but clever? Clever is where it’s at. Clever beats monsters, fire, and Death itself. Clever challenges the reader to imagine how THEY’D get out of the impossible scenario, allowing them to best the bad guy or to be equally surprised by the protagonist’s ingenuity.

And very few authors gave readers the opportunity to be clever with the style and aplomb of Terry Pratchett.

“…she was already learning that if you ignore the rules, people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don’t apply to you.”

Do you have a favorite moment of puzzly cleverness from literature, fellow puzzlers? Do you have a favorite impossible task that was outwitted, or a devious design unraveled by smarts instead of steel? Let me know in the comments section below! I’d love to hear from you.