A fantastic site for playing Scrabble, multiplayer or against the computer ~ http://www.scrabulous.com

This site has some great players who have been playing for a long time. It doesn’t take long to improve at the game and it is fun in the process, so do not become intimidated if your score is not very strong in the beginning. Soon your scores get better and you feel great.

Plus if you ‘observe’ a game where the players have high rankings, you’ll see some great play. Words like SUQ and QI will feature often.

Play Pente at http://www.pente.net/

Great value for $20 per year and lots of real live clubs to play at. I have found a club in Boston which I am really delighted about.

This site  at ~  http://www.mysterynet.com/solveit/ is a taster  but Ken Weber’s books are really good.

Just when I thought I’d finished my games blog-page and could return to playing Scrabulous, I discovered Crazy 4 Jigsaws.  I simply had to add it here.  I think this blog page is probably going to be  a work-in- progress. Come back soon!

http://www.crazy4jigsaws.com/

Also, I haven’t forgotten Crossword Puzzles.

 http://www.gamesmagazine-online.com/gameslinks/crossword_puzzle.html  ~ there is a ‘reveal’ function if you are stumped with a clue.

http://webpbn.com/        Web paint by numbers.

http://www.griddlers.net      More Nonograms.

http://www.indigopuzzles.com/ipuz/?   Hashi ( or Bridges)  

Hashi is a fantastic balance of logical and spatial challenge that becomes alarmingly addictive! On this page you will find some links to online game sites that I think are particularly good. Don’t stop here but be sure to scroll down to my other entries as there are some fabulous games mentioned there too.

With the darker evenings pulling in, it’s cosy to get into one’s pyjamas, get a nice cup of tea and play Scrabble or any other game of one’s choosing. Many computer robots make excellent opponents for a fast paced game but on several of the sites one can join friends for a game or two.

On this page you will find links to Blokus, Chess, Scrabble, Go, Tantrix, Ingenious and Pentago plus a Logic and Trivia site.  Of course there are many other sites but these were ones that I thought were really good and I wanted to pass them along.  Have fun!

    Thanks to Conceptis Addict in Finland for a very helpful comment so that my links don’t fail. http://conceptisaddict.blogspot.com/  

Hashi (short for Hashiwokakero, meaning “build bridges”) is a new logic puzzle from Japan.  In Hashi, the goal is to join islands together with up to two vertical or horizontal bridges, so that every island is connected.  The larger in number value the island, the more bridges connect to it (an island of size 6 must be connected to 6 bridges), and no bridge can cross another.  Successful logic puzzles have certain things in common: a unique game with one solution, easy to pick up,  fun and challenging, able to be put down and picked back up again. 

Blokus is an abstract strategy game for two to four players,  that has won several awards, including the Mensa Select award.

The goal is to get rid of all of the 21 pieces you initially start off with. The pieces are all of the free polyminoes using one to five squares. On each player’s turn, they can put one of their remaining pieces on the 20 square by 20 square board. Each piece must connect to another piece of the same colour by at least one touching corner, but no two pieces of the same colour can share an edge .

The novice typically tries to seal off an area for themselves to reduce the area the opponents can access. But since pieces only are connected via their corners, another player can easily pass through. It is therefore difficult to cut off other people from accessing ‘your’ area. Instead, the successful tactic is to try to expand into as many areas on the board as possible. In other words, game strategy is dominated by offence rather than defence. Blocking is possible to an extent by cutting off an opponents access to the corners of their pieces using yours in strategic ways.

The smaller tiles are very useful during the later stages of the game: the smaller a piece is, the better it is at occupying the holes in the tiles of other colours, and thus opening up new areas of the board for expansion. It often happens that no player can finish off all their tiles. The score is calculated by deducting a point for each square left on a player’s remaining pieces (leaving you with a negative score). Should you ever manage to play all your pieces, you get a bonus score of +15. Achieving this, and having played your single-square piece last gets you another five points for a final score of +20.cumulatively.

Blokus can be played against a computer or another player at http://www.blokus.com

The image above was me playing against a computer and managing quite well.

A free site for playing Ingenious online doesn’t seem to exist although there are several places where a 60 minute free trial can be downloaded.  

One such site is http://www.bigfishgames.com/download-games/1726/ingenious/index.html

It is such a compelling game that I wanted to add it to this blog page.

Visit http://www.pentago-online.com/games.php  to play Pentago online.  Click on the button that says  AI to play against a computer.

Pentago is a two-player abstract strategy game  played on a 6×6 board divided into four 3×3 sub-boards (or quadrants). Each game generally lasts no longer than 10-20 minutes, and the game has a very satisfying strategic element. Taking turns, the two players place a marble of their colour (either black or white) onto an unoccupied space on the board, and then rotate one of the sub-boards by 90 degrees either clockwise or counter-clockwise. A player wins by getting five of their marbles in a vertical, horizontal or diagonal row (either before or after the sub-board rotation in their move). If all 36 spaces on the board are occupied without a row of five being formed then the game is a draw.