Showing posts with label game. Show all posts
Showing posts with label game. Show all posts

December 1 – Bingo Birthday Month!

Posted on December 1, 2019


You probably know about the game of chance called Bingo, in which players have cards with various numbers on them, a caller randomly picks numbers, and players cover or mark the picked numbers. When a player comes up with a winning combination of covered numbers, they call out "Bingo!" and that round of the game is over.

There are a lot of variations of and names for this game, and the history of the game goes way back to around 1530, in Italy. It was called Il Gioco del Lotto d'Italia ("The Game of Lottery of Italy"), and it was so popular that it spread to France, where it was called Le Lotto. By the 1700s (historians believe), the game had spread to Great Britain and other parts of Europe. 

The game mutated a bit in Germany; it was modified to teach kids multiplication and spelling and even history, and it was called Tombola (which doesn't sound German to me!). 

Bingo being called bingo probably got its start in the United States. An American man named Hugh J. Ward invented the numbers-on-a-card game as a carnival pastime. 

(Or...maybe someone else in either Britain of the U.S. invented the modern version and called it Bingo, and Ward's version is the one that caught on and became all the rage?)

The U.S. game of Bingo has 5 x 5 cards that look like this:




It has 75 balls (or tiles, or whatever) that the caller randomly picks and announces. 

This kind of ball-mixer-upper is very popular for
large-scale community Bingo games.

In some versions of Bingo, players cover the picked numbers with tiles or chips:



But the most common modern Bingo version involves daubers that mark the picked number with translucent ink (translucent ink is see-through, so everyone can see that it really WAS the picked number - this wouldn't work with India ink!!):

In the U.K., Bingo involves longer 9 x 3 cards and 90 balls:



Other names for Bingo, or games that are a lot like Bingo, include Lotto and Beano (in the latter, picked numbers are marked with dry beans). In Quebec, the game is called Kinzo, and in India it's called Tambola - which is really similar to the German name!?!

Speaking of the German version of Bingo, have you been wondering how someone can make Bingo educational? Well, wonder no more: this article has loads of different examples of educational Lotto type games.

Bingo can be used for knowledge that can be paired up, or that
can be tested with matching tasks. In the state capitals game
above, the caller picks a card from a shuffled deck and reads
the state name on that card. The kids have to look to see if they
have the capital city of that state. For example, if the caller says,
"Delaware," the player with this particular card would mark Dover,
which appears in the third row.
 
But that player is out of luck if the next three picked states are
Hawaii, Alaska, and New Jersey, because those states' capitals
(Honolulu, Juneau, and Trenton) do not appear on this card.

Happy Bingo, everyone!!

(By the way, we are not sure specifically when the first Bingo-like game was played, nor do we know the specific date when the first game called Bingo was played. So someone must have just arbitrarily chosen a month to celebrate the game's birth month - we have no idea when that would be!)





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June 6 – Anniversary of the Release of Tetris

Posted on June 6, 2014

On this date in 1984, a wonderful new game burst onto the world scene:


It's part puzzle, part race-against-time. It's a great game for computers, video game systems, arcades, and even handheld devices and phones. It's even available for graphing calculators, portable media players, and as an inside joke on oscilloscopes!

Tetris is also the first entertainment software to be exported from the USSR to the US.

The guy who designed and programmed Tetris, Alexey Pajitnov, chose the name to be a combination of the Greek prefix tetra-, which means four, and Pajitnov's favorite sport, tennis.

Why “four”?

The game involves playing pieces (blocks) of various shapes falling from the top of the screen. The player's task is to move and rotate the pieces in order to create solid lines of ten blocks, without gaps. Each line that is created disappears, making room for new blocks—and racking up the score.

And the thing is, each and every falling piece is created from four square units.


Here are some of the stats for this super-duper game:

  • Electronic Gaming Monthly's 100th issue listed Tetris as the Greatest Game of All Time.
  • As of January, 2010, Tetris has sold more than 170 million copies, making it the highest paid / downloaded game of all time.
  • Guiness World Records states that Tetris is the most ported in the history of video games. (That means it has been released on more different sorts of machines, with more varieties of operating systems, of any game.) So far, Tetris has appeared on more than 65 different platforms.
  • Tetris has won numerous awards and has been called the most addictive game ever designed by multiple magazine editors, reviewers, and others.
  • The recent Paralympic Games at Sochi, Russia, featured a giant game of Tetris on the stadium floor during the closing ceremony.


You can play Tetris for free here. 


Also on this date:





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February 19 – International Tug of War Day

Posted on February 19, 2014


First, and very important, if you ever play tug of war, do not loop the rope around your hands or fingers!! You may think it will give you a better grip, but you could literally lose a finger or two! Also, if the rope breaks, the broken ends can sever fingers—so make sure that it is a special tug of war rope. The ordinary nylon ropes sold in hardware stores are not safe to use!

On that cheery note (sigh), welcome to International Tug of War Day! 

 A tug of war consists of two teams pitted against each other, each trying to pull the center line of the rope to their side's marker—or perhaps trying to pull the other team into a pool of water or a pit of mud!—in a competition of “my team's stronger than your team.”

If you can believe it, there are 53 nations that have formal national organizations for playing Tug of War. There are tug of war clubs and both indoor and outdoor competitions. There are even World Championships—and from 1900 to 1920, tug-of-war was an Olympic Sport!

Where did this game of tugs start? Nobody knows, but the game is so ancient and widespread, it seems likely that it was invented several separate times. We know that the sport was played in Ancient Egypt, Greece, and China, in India at least as far back as the 1100s, and by at least some Native American tribes. The sport was used to train warriors, to entertain kings, and even to settle disputes. According to ancient Chinese legend, the Sun and Moon played tug of war over light and darkness.

Modern tuggers may play with just five to twelve people on each side, but there are some really large games, too. For example, a 1997 tug of war in Taiwan included 1,600 participants. 

 (Folks, this is just too many people! I don't care what rope you use, huge mobs hauling on opposite ends of a rope is a recipe for disaster. In the Taiwan case, two men lost their arms when the rope broke, but after hours of surgery, both arms were successfully reattached.)


Also on this date:







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March 7, 2010

Evolution of Games Day

(Baseball and Monopoly Edition)

Over the years, games and sports have changed and multiplied. It's really hard to say when most games or sports began – because when, for example, did baseball become baseball? All the earlier or similar games—cricket and rounders, town ball and softball, the New York Game—had some but not all of the features of today's baseball.

For example, the reason we call the person who throws the ball to the batter a pitcher is because pitching underhand, like pitching a horseshoe, was mandatory – and throwing (overhand) was illegal! Yes, that's right, according to the Knickerbocker rules written by Alexander Cartwright in 1845 (arguably the first version of true baseball), “The ball must be pitched, not thrown, for the bat.”

Those rules also specified that a game consisted of 21 counts, or aces, but that there had to be an equal number of hands.

What?

Counts? Aces? Hands?

Are we suddenly talking about a card game here?

Well, the terms for the game grew out of card game vocabulary. A hand meant a team's turn at bat. Back in the early days of baseball, there were no such thing as innings, and the team at bat would change with every “out.” A trip around all four bases was called an ace, and the winning team was the first team to bring 21 players home. A game could have gone like this:
Team A is up. First batter is out.
Team B is up. In just 30 minutes, 21 batters make hits and score.
Game over.
But, then again, a game could go on and on and on. What if each team kept getting the other team out? What if the teams got stuck at 5 to 8, and it seemed like neither team was EVER going to get to 21?

On this date in 1857, the group that later became the National Association of Base Ball Players met and decided on some new rules. One of these rules was that a game would consist of 9 innings (each inning consisting of both teams having their turn at bat until such time that 3 “outs” are made) unless special circumstances such as a tie score or bad weather should lengthen or shorten a game.

Now for our other game...
Monopoly!

On this date in 1933, Charles Darrow is said to have created and trademarked the game of Monopoly. This real-estate game modeled on the resort Atlantic City (New Jersey) featured most of the familiar aspects of the game mass marketed by Parker Brothers from 1935 on.

It immediately became the best selling game in America and quickly became the best-selling game in the world, now sold in over 100 countries and 37 languages (German version shown). The official Hasbro website claims that more than 5 BILLION little green houses have been “built” since 1935.

However, the story that Charles Darrow, while out of work in Germantown, Pennsylvania, during the Great Depression, thought up this game and fiddled around with board layouts and rules while playing with his family and friends—that story is just plain wrong.

The real history of the creation and evolution of the game is complicated. In 1903 a woman named Elizabeth Magie created a game called “The Landlords Game” (show here, right.) She had familiar four corners: Mother Earth Collect $100, Gaol (an old word for jail), Public Park, and Go To Gaol. There were four railroads, one per side of the board, and the rest of the spaces were properties to be purchased or fines to be paid. Magie was granted a patent for her game in 1904, and her game sold fairly well in the northeast. When her patent expired, Magie made some changes and two versions of rules and received a new patent in 1924. One version remained “The Landlords Game,” and the second set of rules (played on the same board) was named “Prosperity”; the rules of the latter game were very similar to Monopoly's rules.

The game grew in popularity and began to be called “Auction Monopoly” or just “Monopoly.” During this time game boards were made by hand, and many people customized theirs with the local names of properties. Different versions of rules were also created and even copyrighted. One man, Dan Layman, sold his version of Auction Monopoly to Electronic Laboratories (in Indiana). He renamed this game “Finance” because his lawyers said that “Monopoly” was in the public domain and could not be protected. This version was the first to be mass-produced.

Another man, Louis Thun, wanted to get a patent on his version of Monopoly, but his lawyers did a patent search and found Elizabeth Magie's 1904 patent. The lawyers advised Thun not to try for a patent, saying, “Patents are for inventors and you didn't invent it.”

According to Monopoly-History.com, a group of people living in Atlantic City made some customizations of their game, which they called “Monopoly,” including naming all the streets after their town. It was there that Darrow first met the game when he was invited to Charles Todd's house for Monopoly night. Darrow asked for a copy of the rules, which Todd's secretary typed up for him; Darrow reportedly never spoke to Todd again.

Charles Darrow did make a few minor changes to the rules, and he made some additions to the board, including the familiar color-coding stripes and the cartoons. There might have been something about him that enabled Darrow to take a well-received game and make it into a monster hit...but Charles Darrow definitely did not invent the game!

Charles Darrow became rich from the game of Monopoly, and the company Parker Brothers of course profited as well. Lest you think that Elizabeth Magie didn't receive any compensation from her invention (aside from the moderate sales she herself made), Parker Brothers did pay her $500 for the rights to The Landlords Game and manufactured it under its original title, with the original rules; the company manufactured a few hundred sets and then stopped. Parker Brothers bought all the games Louis Thun had produced, for $50 per game, and the company also bought rights to the game Finance for $10,000. Another game that had evolved from The Landlords Game was called “Inflation.” When Parker Brothers sued the makers of Inflation for patent infringement, there was a countersuit; Parker Brothers settled with that company for another $10,000.

Kind of makes you want to go play with lots and lots of play money, doesn't it?

Did you know...?
  • Neiman Marcus sold a Monopoly game entirely made out of chocolate. Everything from board, game pieces, to money could be eaten. (But it cost $600, so...)
  • In the 1970's, a Braille edition of Monopoly was produced for the first time.
Celebrate!

Play baseball. Play Monopoly.
Does anybody have a baseball-Monopoly game?

Monopoly-style games...
Never go out of style!
Here are a few of the themed games that are essentially Monopoly:
Solar Quest – rocket around the solar system collecting planets and moons and collecting rent
Disney Pixar Monopoly
Sponge Bob Square Pants Monopoly
Pirates of the Caribbean Monopoly
Horse Lover's edition
Transformers Monopoly
A Christmas Story Monopoly
M & Ms Monopoly
Dog Lover's edition
James Bond 007 Monopoly
Elvis Monopoly
Nintendo Monopoly
Clone Wars Monopoly
Superman Monopoly
Monopoly Electronic Banking edition
Monopoly Here and Now edition
Star Trek, Seinfeld, Beatles, and Wizard of Oz editions
Many, many, MANY other editions

and New York Yankees Monopoly!
--there we go! It's the baseball Monopoly we were looking for!!!

Make a version of Monopoly especially for your town or around a theme you enjoy.

Have a Monopoly-theme party.

Have some baseball fun at the FunSchool website. There are puzzles, a quiz, coloring pages, and several games. (NOTE: The top two games on the game list didn't work for me, but the bottom two did.)

The Exploratorium website has some interesting baseball science for older kids.
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