You've waited 8 months to see a new blog post from my blog. And today, the wait has (maybe) payed off. The post you're about to read is long, but read on to find out about the game I invented (detailed in the section "Where in the World?") and see the humorous map I found (section "The Economist's US Map.")
Where in the World?
I invented this game two years or so ago to allow Suraga (my sister, who, at that time, was 3; she's now, as she says, "four and a half.") to play a game that she wanted to but couldn't. You see, we bought a game from some store when I was about Suraga's age. Entitled "Where in the World," it promised to be a fun-filled geography game. However, when we actually played it, it turned out to be about rote memorization of facts. You needed to memorize at least 4 facts about EVERY SINGLE COUNTRY IN THE WORLD (all 196 of them!). Even I couldn't play it -- we lowered the number of facts to 1 when we played. Then Suraga caught sight of the game and asked if she could play it with me.
The First Incarnation
I told her that the game was too complicated. She, however, kept wanting to play. I saw the opportunity to make up a game which would be easy enough for her to play and would use all the cards, pawns, boards, and spinners provided so Suraga would never find out that the game I made was not the real game. And Suraga just might have the opportunity to practice her reading skills along the way.
I went to work. Pretty soon, I came up with an idea: Suraga could pick a continent at random, and we could go on a safari of that continent! And that is the main idea behind my game, Where in the World.
This game quickly became a sort of play, with our living room playing Greenland, Tonga, the Congo, and a host of other places. And any good play needs bad guys, so I introduced some to my game.
Me and Suraga weren't new to plays. We weren't new to plays with bad guys, either. In 2011, me and my teammate Vishnu did a history fair project on the Cuban Missile Crisis (see the second item in this blog post). Every minute we weren't arguing, we were out in Vishnu's backyard playing. As far as I can remember, Vishnu was President Kennedy, I was Khrushchev, and Suraga (who always tagged along for our meetings) was Robert Kennedy. All three of us were invading Cuba, facing off against the main antagonist, Fidel Castro (dictator of Cuba), and his cronies. Suraga never forgot about our game, and, when I had to pick a bad guy for \/\/here in the World, "Castro" was the obvious first choice.
And so Castro (in our house, an oversized teddy bear) became the main villain of Where in the World. The co-villain was Guevara (based on real-life revolutionary Che Guevara), a plush teddy bear bearing a Union Jack on his shirt and hat (our dad bought it during a layover in London). Now the game was about going on a safari through a continent and getting to some destination before Castro and Guevara.
A week later, we played Where in the World for the first time. I explained the rules to Suraga. She picked the continent of Oceania (aka Australia), which consists of Australia, New Zealand, and a bunch of Pacific islands, for her safari. We started out strong, with Suraga finding a strip of paper reading "Dingo," then running for her life from this ferocious Australian wild dog. However, the once-interesting safari turned into a boring and redundant play. I couldn't find anything for Suraga to do in, say, Nauru or Vanuatu. I soon resorted to pillow-fights with Castro at almost every isle we visited. When Suraga sprinted into American Samoa (aka our kitchen), this ill-fated first attempt at playing Where in the World ended for good.
However, Suraga loved the "signs" (strips of paper) I had her find and read along the way. You see, for every country we "visited," I placed these signs around the house. Each sign would say something like "DIG!" or "SHOP" or "SHIPS" and would follow phonics rules Suraga had learned so far. She liked reading the signs and doing the actions they corresponded to, and begged to play again.
I don't exactly remember what happened next. I think I appeased her with another safari, this time through South America. Castro and Guevara somehow got a head start. Then they won a crucial step of the race. They rowed into Tierra del Fuego (our destination) first, causing great disappointment.
The Demise of Where in the World
For some reason, Suraga stopped wanting to play Where in the World (I'll leave it to you to figure out the reason). Also accelerating the demise of Where in the World was the Indian cultural festival of Navaratri. For this festival, we had to make an art display on 5 steps. Board games were the perfect choice to make the steps. Every board game we had -- including Where in the World -- was used in making the steps. My game was forgotten both during the two-week festival and long after, replaced as The Most Fun Board Game Ever by a few new games.
Given to me by my aunt for my birthday, Ruckus still holds the position of Most Fun Board Game Ever. It is a luck-of-the-draw, short, competitive, and FUN card game. Anything can happen, and everyone has fun. We played it first in June of 2010, and it gathered steam from then on. We played it again and again. In 2011, a dispute over the rules sidelined Ruckus for a bit. However, Sorry, not Where in the World, took the position.
Sorry was another game given to me by my aunt. Although it's slow and often ends with Suraga crying because she lost or me protesting our dad's bias towards Suraga in the game, it is entertaining and fun. However, me, Suraga, and our dad have never played a game of Sorry without crying or shouting. Never. This gave Ruckus a huge advantage -- and it dominated.
The Revival
This year marked the revival of Where in the World. Two weeks before the time of this posting, Suraga begged to go to the park. I resolved to do anything to stop this, and Suraga soon agreed to a game. "Which game? Ruckus, Sorry, or Uno?" I asked. "I want to play a game we never played," replied Suraga, "Its name is Where in the World."
And thus Where in the World was revived. I mapped out a fun course throughout Africa and added one more element to the game -- money. Everyone (me, Suraga, Guevara, and Castro) got a predetermined amount of money. The amounts of money ranged from $1500 to $200, and we would use the spinner provided to determine who would get which amount. We would need this money to start playing (the "starting fee" was $200) and buy stuff like camels and boats. With the rules of the game set out, we began playing.
We first determined who would get which amount of money. I got $1500, Castro got $800, Guevara got $500, and Suraga got $200. With the $200 starting fee subtracted, Suraga was bankrupt when she arrived in her chosen place of landing, Libya. All she had to do was traverse the entire continent of Africa and wind up in Madagascar.
Libya's chief export is crude oil, so I decided to do something related to crude oil while we were there. Suraga had a reason to do it -- to get money (she had no money when she arrived in Libya). I came up with an activity: I would put a rubber band on a spot where crude oil was to be found, and she would have to use a set of signals to get a robot (i.e. a stuffed animal) to the spot within a certain duration of time. Castro and Guevara aced the task on their first try, bought camels with the money the got, and marched across the Sahara to Chad. Two Where in the World-days later, Suraga tried the activity for the third time. The robot went really close to the rubber band but JUST missed it. With 2 seconds left on the timer, Suraga managed to turn the robot around. It touched the rubber band with less than one second to go. In dramatic fashion, Suraga had completed the Libya stage of this safari -- and won $100.
To cross the Sahara, you need camels. When Suraga went to a mall to buy camels, she went to the Cake Shop instead of the Camel Shop and traded most of her money for a cake. Now without enough money to buy a camel, she had to wait for another day. Meanwhile, Castro was already one country away from Madagascar (our destination).
A day later, Suraga finally got enough money to buy a camel. On her camel, she rode to Chad and went to work on the amazingly easy task there. She had to put a pencil in a slot and keep turning it around for 30 seconds. If the pencil came out 6 times during the 3-minute duration of the task, she would fail the task and have to do it another day. In her first three 30-second periods, the pencil came out. She managed to do it on her fourth 30-second period, acing the task on her first try.
She now made her way to the Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaire), where Castro and Guevara had been trying (and failing) the task for the previous 2 days. Having to do with multiplicative series and unit analysis, this task was "the hardest one of all." I explained to Suraga that copper mining drives Zaire's economy, but the copper mined out of the ground is "dirty." You need chemicals to "clean" (purify) this copper, I told her. She was chosen to clean 4 grams of copper. She found a table detailing how much chemical to use to clean a certain amount of copper, but 4 grams was missing from the chart. She had to infer the value for 4 grams, then fill up a mug to that value exactly -- within 3 minutes. With less than 1 minute left, Suraga figured out the value. Then she went to a sink to fill up the mug. "10...9...8...7...6," I read out. With 4 seconds left, she rushed me the mug. She had aced the task again.
She dumped the money she'd gotten on a canoe to take her across Lake Tanganyika to Tanzania. In Tanzania, she had to work as a park ranger in the famous Serengeti National Park and foil poachers' plots. She did, and got $150. She proceeded to buy a boat to get her to Madagascar, but instead of going to the Boat Shop, she went to the Bat Shop and spent $100 there. Boats started at $150, and she needed to earn $100 more. There was some more bad news: Guevara and Castro had arrived. Suraga quickly set up a coffee shop to earn the remaining money, but she only got $29 on one day, $71 short of her goal. However, a superhuman performance the next day saved her, and she had enough money to buy a boat
During the final stretch of the race, Castro and Suraga raced to get to Madagascar first. Castro had enough money to buy a speedboat, and dominated Suraga in the first half of the race. However, he fell off the speedboat and into the ocean, handing Suraga a Where in the World victory. From then on, not a day has gone by without Suraga asking me if we can play Where in the World again.
The Economist's US Map
Below is a humorous map printed in a 2011 issue of The Economist. You might not get the humor at first, but look closely and you will. Enjoy!
Where in the World?
I invented this game two years or so ago to allow Suraga (my sister, who, at that time, was 3; she's now, as she says, "four and a half.") to play a game that she wanted to but couldn't. You see, we bought a game from some store when I was about Suraga's age. Entitled "Where in the World," it promised to be a fun-filled geography game. However, when we actually played it, it turned out to be about rote memorization of facts. You needed to memorize at least 4 facts about EVERY SINGLE COUNTRY IN THE WORLD (all 196 of them!). Even I couldn't play it -- we lowered the number of facts to 1 when we played. Then Suraga caught sight of the game and asked if she could play it with me.
The First Incarnation
I told her that the game was too complicated. She, however, kept wanting to play. I saw the opportunity to make up a game which would be easy enough for her to play and would use all the cards, pawns, boards, and spinners provided so Suraga would never find out that the game I made was not the real game. And Suraga just might have the opportunity to practice her reading skills along the way.
I went to work. Pretty soon, I came up with an idea: Suraga could pick a continent at random, and we could go on a safari of that continent! And that is the main idea behind my game, Where in the World.
This game quickly became a sort of play, with our living room playing Greenland, Tonga, the Congo, and a host of other places. And any good play needs bad guys, so I introduced some to my game.
Me and Suraga weren't new to plays. We weren't new to plays with bad guys, either. In 2011, me and my teammate Vishnu did a history fair project on the Cuban Missile Crisis (see the second item in this blog post). Every minute we weren't arguing, we were out in Vishnu's backyard playing. As far as I can remember, Vishnu was President Kennedy, I was Khrushchev, and Suraga (who always tagged along for our meetings) was Robert Kennedy. All three of us were invading Cuba, facing off against the main antagonist, Fidel Castro (dictator of Cuba), and his cronies. Suraga never forgot about our game, and, when I had to pick a bad guy for \/\/here in the World, "Castro" was the obvious first choice.
And so Castro (in our house, an oversized teddy bear) became the main villain of Where in the World. The co-villain was Guevara (based on real-life revolutionary Che Guevara), a plush teddy bear bearing a Union Jack on his shirt and hat (our dad bought it during a layover in London). Now the game was about going on a safari through a continent and getting to some destination before Castro and Guevara.
A week later, we played Where in the World for the first time. I explained the rules to Suraga. She picked the continent of Oceania (aka Australia), which consists of Australia, New Zealand, and a bunch of Pacific islands, for her safari. We started out strong, with Suraga finding a strip of paper reading "Dingo," then running for her life from this ferocious Australian wild dog. However, the once-interesting safari turned into a boring and redundant play. I couldn't find anything for Suraga to do in, say, Nauru or Vanuatu. I soon resorted to pillow-fights with Castro at almost every isle we visited. When Suraga sprinted into American Samoa (aka our kitchen), this ill-fated first attempt at playing Where in the World ended for good.
However, Suraga loved the "signs" (strips of paper) I had her find and read along the way. You see, for every country we "visited," I placed these signs around the house. Each sign would say something like "DIG!" or "SHOP" or "SHIPS" and would follow phonics rules Suraga had learned so far. She liked reading the signs and doing the actions they corresponded to, and begged to play again.
I don't exactly remember what happened next. I think I appeased her with another safari, this time through South America. Castro and Guevara somehow got a head start. Then they won a crucial step of the race. They rowed into Tierra del Fuego (our destination) first, causing great disappointment.
The Demise of Where in the World
For some reason, Suraga stopped wanting to play Where in the World (I'll leave it to you to figure out the reason). Also accelerating the demise of Where in the World was the Indian cultural festival of Navaratri. For this festival, we had to make an art display on 5 steps. Board games were the perfect choice to make the steps. Every board game we had -- including Where in the World -- was used in making the steps. My game was forgotten both during the two-week festival and long after, replaced as The Most Fun Board Game Ever by a few new games.
Given to me by my aunt for my birthday, Ruckus still holds the position of Most Fun Board Game Ever. It is a luck-of-the-draw, short, competitive, and FUN card game. Anything can happen, and everyone has fun. We played it first in June of 2010, and it gathered steam from then on. We played it again and again. In 2011, a dispute over the rules sidelined Ruckus for a bit. However, Sorry, not Where in the World, took the position.
Sorry was another game given to me by my aunt. Although it's slow and often ends with Suraga crying because she lost or me protesting our dad's bias towards Suraga in the game, it is entertaining and fun. However, me, Suraga, and our dad have never played a game of Sorry without crying or shouting. Never. This gave Ruckus a huge advantage -- and it dominated.
The Revival
This year marked the revival of Where in the World. Two weeks before the time of this posting, Suraga begged to go to the park. I resolved to do anything to stop this, and Suraga soon agreed to a game. "Which game? Ruckus, Sorry, or Uno?" I asked. "I want to play a game we never played," replied Suraga, "Its name is Where in the World."
And thus Where in the World was revived. I mapped out a fun course throughout Africa and added one more element to the game -- money. Everyone (me, Suraga, Guevara, and Castro) got a predetermined amount of money. The amounts of money ranged from $1500 to $200, and we would use the spinner provided to determine who would get which amount. We would need this money to start playing (the "starting fee" was $200) and buy stuff like camels and boats. With the rules of the game set out, we began playing.
We first determined who would get which amount of money. I got $1500, Castro got $800, Guevara got $500, and Suraga got $200. With the $200 starting fee subtracted, Suraga was bankrupt when she arrived in her chosen place of landing, Libya. All she had to do was traverse the entire continent of Africa and wind up in Madagascar.
Libya's chief export is crude oil, so I decided to do something related to crude oil while we were there. Suraga had a reason to do it -- to get money (she had no money when she arrived in Libya). I came up with an activity: I would put a rubber band on a spot where crude oil was to be found, and she would have to use a set of signals to get a robot (i.e. a stuffed animal) to the spot within a certain duration of time. Castro and Guevara aced the task on their first try, bought camels with the money the got, and marched across the Sahara to Chad. Two Where in the World-days later, Suraga tried the activity for the third time. The robot went really close to the rubber band but JUST missed it. With 2 seconds left on the timer, Suraga managed to turn the robot around. It touched the rubber band with less than one second to go. In dramatic fashion, Suraga had completed the Libya stage of this safari -- and won $100.
To cross the Sahara, you need camels. When Suraga went to a mall to buy camels, she went to the Cake Shop instead of the Camel Shop and traded most of her money for a cake. Now without enough money to buy a camel, she had to wait for another day. Meanwhile, Castro was already one country away from Madagascar (our destination).
A day later, Suraga finally got enough money to buy a camel. On her camel, she rode to Chad and went to work on the amazingly easy task there. She had to put a pencil in a slot and keep turning it around for 30 seconds. If the pencil came out 6 times during the 3-minute duration of the task, she would fail the task and have to do it another day. In her first three 30-second periods, the pencil came out. She managed to do it on her fourth 30-second period, acing the task on her first try.
She now made her way to the Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaire), where Castro and Guevara had been trying (and failing) the task for the previous 2 days. Having to do with multiplicative series and unit analysis, this task was "the hardest one of all." I explained to Suraga that copper mining drives Zaire's economy, but the copper mined out of the ground is "dirty." You need chemicals to "clean" (purify) this copper, I told her. She was chosen to clean 4 grams of copper. She found a table detailing how much chemical to use to clean a certain amount of copper, but 4 grams was missing from the chart. She had to infer the value for 4 grams, then fill up a mug to that value exactly -- within 3 minutes. With less than 1 minute left, Suraga figured out the value. Then she went to a sink to fill up the mug. "10...9...8...7...6," I read out. With 4 seconds left, she rushed me the mug. She had aced the task again.
She dumped the money she'd gotten on a canoe to take her across Lake Tanganyika to Tanzania. In Tanzania, she had to work as a park ranger in the famous Serengeti National Park and foil poachers' plots. She did, and got $150. She proceeded to buy a boat to get her to Madagascar, but instead of going to the Boat Shop, she went to the Bat Shop and spent $100 there. Boats started at $150, and she needed to earn $100 more. There was some more bad news: Guevara and Castro had arrived. Suraga quickly set up a coffee shop to earn the remaining money, but she only got $29 on one day, $71 short of her goal. However, a superhuman performance the next day saved her, and she had enough money to buy a boat
During the final stretch of the race, Castro and Suraga raced to get to Madagascar first. Castro had enough money to buy a speedboat, and dominated Suraga in the first half of the race. However, he fell off the speedboat and into the ocean, handing Suraga a Where in the World victory. From then on, not a day has gone by without Suraga asking me if we can play Where in the World again.
The Economist's US Map
Below is a humorous map printed in a 2011 issue of The Economist. You might not get the humor at first, but look closely and you will. Enjoy!
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| Click to enlarge |
