Here is a simple, free-to-enter game to celebrate the recent turn of the decade ( Read more... )

OK, I started writing this literally months ago, and got stuck quite early on through the piece. This won't be the version I wanted to write, but if I don't get any version of it it out, I won't get it out at all.

Stranger was a show that billed itself as a life-sized board game, played at the Stockton International Riverside Festival this weekend ( Read more... )

1) As previously hinted at, the DASH puzzle hunt is coming to London this year. This will be the fifth annual-ish occurrence of DASH, whose full title - Different Areas, Same Hunt - neatly explains the premise. One big problem with real-world puzzle hunts is that they only take place in one location; DASH runs the same hunt in lots of different ( Read more... )

Some interesting developments:

* The second London Chess Classic is in progress at the moment, featuring past world champion Vladimir Kramnik, current world champion Vishy Anand and potential future world champions Magnus Carlsen (of Small Talk fame) and Hikaru Nakamura in a round-robin also featuring the UK's four best players, Michael Adams, ( Read more... )

OK, I have a load of links about game-related topics that I am saving up for a post I may or may not make some day, but this family tree showing different styles and features of games over the years and alleging links about which media and phenomena have influenced each other is a work of art, as well as a work of scholarship. If you're a games ( Read more... )

The bulk of this year's World Series of Poker, hereafter the WSoP, recently concluded in Las Vegas. I think history will judge this to have been one of the better ones; grade it a B+ at the very least. The corporate overlords at casino behemoth Harrah's, who own the WSoP brand, will doubtless be pleased that so far it has passed without major ( Read more... )

Haven't posted for a while, and this wasn't the post I was planning to make next. Things are only just about OK here; everything's great between Meg and myself, our health concerns are little nagging background things rather than keep-us-in-bed-all-day things, but there are all the usual stresses in the background. We just haven't been up to much ( Read more... )

Some of you might recall I mentioned Perplex City about a year or so ago; I know that at least rhysara, wordplay, xnera and xorsyst have been playing ever since, possibly alongside other people with usernames towards the end of the alphabet. Time to look again at what's going on there. Caution: INCLUDES SPOILERS, though nothing that at least xnera doesn't know.

( Perplex City Season One SPOILERS within, but hopefully accessible to a puzzle-friendly general audience. )

A little over a year ago, I invited you to predict what might happen to me over the remainder of 2006.

( Here are the results of the LiveJournal jury. )

If you can recognise which of the many people who have doubtless said "It's The Big One!" over the years I like to quote, award yourself considerable smugness.

The EuroMillions lottery draw rolled over for an eleventh consecutive week last week, so a special stipulation comes into play. It cannot roll over for a twelfth consecutive week, so all ( Read more... )