When the movie ended, I mulled over how to react. It took a lot of mulling. I could not instantly say "This was great!" I certainly couldn't say "This was bad!" Is it good? Is it great? Is… Read More

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2: This movie, while not as good as the first two films, is a fine action flick with some unique elements that sets it apart from other modern action movi… Read More

This guide includes games for young and old, for every sex, generation, temperament, and culture.Whatever you do, and whatever you celebrate, there is no better way to spend a Christmas, Han… Read More

Supergirl (TV pilot): SNL did a skit that lampooned what a Black Widow Marvel superhero movie would be like, It simultaneously lamented the lack of female-centered Marvel movies and anticipa… Read More

Amerigo - A big box game of island exploration. There are seven phases in five turns. Each phase you toss wooden cubes into a tower and the number and color of cubes that make it back out th… Read More

The Martian: Following on last year's thrilling Interstellar, about a bunch of guys making a long trip into outer space who need to use science to solve major problems in order to get back h… Read More

City Rome is a city, and not an especially beautiful one. Why this should surprise me is, in itself, surprising. What Rome has is occasional nice building architecture from the last several… Read More

Today was a trip to the airport. We had to leave our pretty little cottage.We stopped at the outlet stores in Freeport; L.L. Bean's outlet is next to an Old Navy outlet and several others. I… Read More

At night you need a sweater (that's a "jumper" to you folks who don't speak English in its original American). It rained sometime in the blackness of Monday night. Early Tuesday dawning ther… Read More

Tal, Saarya, and I were not overly impressed with Alitalia.I have never flown and spent less time in the airport terminals. We were delayed by traffic on the way to the airport and had only… Read More

We woke up in our beautiful small house in a garden near a small pond on one of the islands on Maine's south coast. For some reason we all slept late. We didn't do much today, which was my p… Read More

Travels Friday we left our lovely cabin in the woods and drove the long way to spend shabbat with friends of friends in Sharon, MA. We found a little river (Miller's River) in some little to… Read More

Thurs morning we made pancakes with fresh Vermont blueberries, pure Vermont maple syrup, and Green Mountain caramel-vanilla coffee. We then drove to spend the day with my children's relative… Read More

Wed morning we made pancakes with fresh Vermont blueberries, pure Vermont maple syrup, and Green Mountain Eye-Opening blend coffee. We were then joined by my children's relatives: ex-brother… Read More

The Game ProfessorIn the morning I navigated the Boston MTA, made famous by The Kingston Trio in their 1950s song about poor old Charlie stuck on train due to a proposed fare increase to cha… Read More

I am happy to be back in Jerusalem, hosting the Jerusalem Strategy Gaming Club, attending Jerusalem's uniquely Jewish and Israeli divrei torah and poetry slams, in my new apt, valued by my m… Read More

Ex Machina: Unfortunately, this is a very good movie. Unfortunately, because I'm not entirely happy with the answers to some of the questions raised in the movie, but I admit that they are a… Read More

Tim Labonte writes to tell me about his documentary on Clue: The VCR Game, the first VCR game from 1985 (30 years ago). Tim and co interview most of the people involved in the creation of th… Read More

It's not the bible. I'm not going to go to hell for changing the rules.As a game designer, I know how arbitrary a game's final design is. It's a collection of components and mechanisms; th… Read More

Avengers: Age of Ultron: Marvel be Marvel, eh?The plot: a big fight of some kind with little explanation results in the retrieval of Loki's staff. Said staff is used by Iron Guy and Bulk to… Read More

In February, 2015, I ran a low-tech, pilot gamification process to encourage my company's employees to install an analytics application on their and their family members’ handsets. Thi… Read More

You can play a surprisingly good variant of a nim game on this bead abacus stacker that I found at a friend's house on Friday night. I call this game Nimbicus.Here are the rules I devised on… Read More