Bat Mitzvah, Come and Gone

Well, all four of my children are now Bar or Bat Mitzvah'ed. Makes me old, although I still feel pretty young. I'm only 36.

Friday morning I took out a few moments to play Crossword Squares with Tal. A cute little pen and paper game, quick. Players alternate picking letters to fill their personal 5 x 5 grid with words. At the end of the game, players score 1, 2, and 4 points for 3, 4, and 5 letter words. Across and down only, overlaps ok, but not wholly contained words. (This is called Maven on BGG)

Shabbat afternoon, after the hard part was over, games were played in my house:

- I played Scrabble with Rachel, who quit after I got a bingo (Gastric) and a triple word, while she only had 4 R's in her hand.

- I introduced San Juan to a neighbor's child and my brother's child, both of whom have played Puerto Rico. I thought that the game was a foregone conclusion for one of them when he started off with Carpenter, Quarry, and Prefecture, but they reported a tie game, with the other player winning by hand count. Later, Saarya said they probably miscounted the points.

- I then introduced the above children and my brother to Taj Mahal. Fortunes waxed and waned, but eventually I pulled ahead. The last round was close, but I kept my lead by a few points. I played mostly commodities, and my main opponents had a mixture of both. My brother had an initial early lead, but overextended himself, and then complained as the game wound down and he was no longer in contention. Afterwards, he reflected that the game will take some learning to figure out. First game is a learning game, as I always say.

- Little children played cards, and Taki (Uno), and other such fluff.

We lent El Grande to the neighbors as their kid left, although none of them ever played it. I hope they managed to figure it out.

This week is both Yom Hazikaron - memorial day in Israel - and Yom Haazmaut - Independence day - so I don't think there will be an official game club evening. Maybe during the day sometime.

Yehuda