A week of Christmas: bug-up!
December 25, 2011
I thought the highlight of the day would be the awesome cherry pie I made—it was good—but the most fun turned out to be playing a game called “bug up” that my parents and I frequently played when I was a youngster. (The sausage and mushroom strata turned out the best that it ever has, too. I made it with whole grain bread this time instead of sourdough.)
“Bug Up” might also be called “7 Up.” We aren’t sure. If I weren’t typing this in the dark on my laptop in bed, I’d take the time to look it up. Cribbage is the only card game I really ever got into, so you probably know more than I.
Each person has an equal number of chips to begin with and you deal all the cards out. If the number of players doesn’t divide equally into 52 then somebody get stuck with an extra card. The person to the left of the dealer starts by playing a 7 if they have one. If they don’t, they have to “bug up” (throw a chip in) to the pot. From each 7 you build upward from the 8 and downward from the 6, by suit. If you can’t play a card, you relinquish a chip to the pot. After a player plays their last card, the remaining players throw one chip for each card left in their hands into the pot, which the winner gets.
We always used Deelie Bobbers as our chips. These, I think I will take the time to look up and link to. I can remember playing with the Deelie Bobbers a little bit in general, but all you could do was stick them together and make shapes. I suppose some people got complicated with them, but Lincoln Logs and Legos would have held more allure for me.
Anyway, in theory, you keep playing rounds until people run completely out of chips. In practice, that can make for a lo-o-o-o-ong session. We played for three hours with one cherry pie break. Cats, it seems, like to play, too. And they like cherry pie.
My strategy thus far has been working. I’ve spent most of my waking time in the kitchen which I find pleasurable anyway, and it’s proving to be an excellent way to keep busy. And we all benefit because we’re eating mighty well this weekend. But after two straight days in the kitchen, I was ready for the mindless relief of tonight’s card playing.
Poor bowling excuse: video game tennis elbow
November 22, 2011
I did not bowl well tonight. I mean, it could have been worse and has been many a time, but when you play a sport you have certain achievement goals and tonight I did not meet mine. I blame Scramble CE.
Scramble is the word search game I play on my iPhone when I go to bed. It helps me relax right to the point of falling asleep. I used to read in bed but I never got very far because it would usually put me to sleep immediately. For a number of years I’d work crossword puzzles because I could stay awake a little longer. Then I got my iPhone and went back to reading, because I could take off my glasses, lay down, turn off the light, and if I fell asleep I wouldn’t lose my place and the iPhone would also go to sleep and everyone was happy. Then I discovered Angry Birds and Scramble.
Angry Birds isn’t a good bedtime game because I get too worked up. Not at the pigs, but at my lack of dexterity with the slingshot and timing the extra things the birds can do. But Scramble is a nice, leisurely, two-and-a-half-minute word search. I play in Advanced mode which means I have to find words of four or more letters.
I love this game. I can usually stay awake for four, five, ten rounds. I’d get a lot more sleep if I switched back to reading.
A consequence of my Scramble stamina is a tennis elbowy kind of thing that happens in my right elbow or, as I call it, my bowling elbow, because I use my right index finger to drag around the screen. At first I thought it happened because I laid on my left side so that my right arm could be free-swinging to facilitate faster wording. I conditioned myself to be comfortable playing as I lay on my right side, with my arm mostly resting on my pillow. My left arm doesn’t have nearly the staying power being up in the air, but that’s its problem. As for playing with my left hand instead, I am slow and clumsy and it’s just not a viable option.
As a series of nights goes by, I find that I gradually roll more onto my back to liberate my right arm, because I’m still faster that way (well, faster, assuming my brain is willing). Over the weekend I realized that my elbow, and even my hand, had the very mild tendonitis indicative of too much Scramble. And tonight, my bowling scores reflected the weakened state of my right arm or, as I call it, my bowling arm.
I must put myself on a Scramble moratorium for a few days or a week. This will be difficult but, if I am to save my bowling average, it is completely necessary.
I suppose I might play a little Angry Birds in the meantime. For that one I do use my left hand because that’s the side from which you launch the birds. If I used my right hand I wouldn’t be able to see what I was aiming for. I’ve always kind of thought that a nice feature of Angry Birds would be to have a choice of launching end.
As you can see, Scramble includes words from some Martian dictionary, so if I find a third of the possible words in a round, I feel good. I also like to get at least 50 points which can be challenging if the total points possible for the round is 150 or less.
In case you’re wondering, my high Scramble score is 209, my longest word is DEPOSITOR, and as of last night I had made a total of 30,090 words, none of which begin with X.
Birds don???t make me angry
March 30, 2011
I’ve never been a big game player. Oh sure, back in the day I was pretty good at Centipede and then Joust. Tempest held my interest graphically and I was just dumb-lucky enough at spinning the dial thingy around to keep going for a while. I think you can immediately tell from the preceding discription that, though I sometimes find a game that I find interesting and easily understandable enough to play a second time, you could hardly call me a gamer. I’m not.
Once I got my computer I, um, didn’t really start playing games. In the early days (we’ll call it 1996-ish) on my Mac, I enjoyed Peter Gabriel’s Secret World, which I borrowed from work, but my home computer was never quite beefy enough to make that a satisfying experience.
In about 2004, I finally found a game I could get behind—Super Text Twist. I play the desktop version, not online. I don’t care if I match my prowess against a bunch of people I don’t know. Initially I played the untimed version, but it didn’t take long before I took on the greater challenge (such as it is) of always playing timed. Of course, it helps that I figured out a sort of cheat that helps me figure things out if I’m having trouble.
Then I got my iPhone and boy, did things ever stay the same. I have a bunch of games on it, but my favorite is another timed word game—imagine that—Scramble CE. I don’t like, a little bit, that it’s by Zynga, but it’s free and I can play by myself. I do like that I have to think rather than shoot. There again, I play the slightly more challenging “Advanced” option, in which I have to find—oo-oo-ooh—four- rather than three-letter words.
And shooting brings us to, what else, Angry Birds.
I feel about Angry Birds sort of like I feel about the iPad. It would be fun, but I don’t really need it. Nevertheless, I forked out the US$1.06 for it because, let’s face it, that’s a lot more affordable than $400 or $600 or whatever the iPad is.
I know people who are obsessed with Angry Birds (well, really, and iPads, too). I’m sure you know someone. I am not one of them. Right now it is only a way to relax in bed for a few minutes before switching to Scramble and falling asleep, or maybe to reading a little, too (still on iPhone), and falling asleep. Though I do admit that, because I have failed screen 9 of Poached Eggs at least thirty times (see screen shot at top), the victory smirk(s) of the pig(s) is(are) beginning to get to me and I can see how it could become compelling to those with weaker resolves. I suppose there are cheats posted online, but fortunately I don’t care that much yet.
Anyway, Scramble and Angry Birds get to be out loose on page 2 of my iPhone. The rest of the games are combined into folders, one for the ones that I play occasionally and the other for the ones I don’t. I am going to give Crazy Penguin Catapult and Tangram Pro honorable mentions. Those are the other two that I like to play. The gameplay in Crazy Penguin Catapult is similar to Angry Birds—you fling penguins through ice blocks at polar bears.
I don’t know. I think the penguins in their battlefield helmets with their salutes are a lot cuter than the angry birds, and I know I like polar bears better than pigs, although pigs are very intelligent and I find that appealing. Plus, I paid a dollar for it so I feel like I should play it in order to get my money’s worth.
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