Game Reviews: Mind Games, year 2006

These are Wei-Hwa Huang's personal reviews of games that might or might not have been submitted to the Mensa Mind Games event in 2006. (You'll have to go to that site to get the official list of submitted games, when they decide to post it.)

DISCLAIMER: The opinions, ratings, and reviews stated in this document and related webpages are the sole personal opinions of Wei-Hwa Huang and Wei-Hwa Huang alone. Wei-Hwa Huang does not speak for the more than 200 participants on the Mensa Mind Games selection panel. This is not an official site of Mensa Mind Games or Mensa Select, although the statements on which games are winners of Mensa Select are factually correct. Mensa Mind Games and Mensa Select are registered trademarks of American Mensa.

If you have any questions or concerns about my reviews and comments, please feel free to mail me.



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  • You Must Be an Idiot! (9;9;9)
  • *Keesdrow (9;7;9)
  • Pickomino (8;7;9)
  • Quelf (9;7;8)
  • *Hive (9;7;8)
  • Pünct (8;6;10)
  • *Wits & Wagers (7;8;8)
  • Zeus on the Loose (8;8;7)
  • *Pentago (8;8;7)
  • ()
  • Questionary (8;8;5)
  • Portrayal (5;7;9)
  • Pepper (9;7;5)
  • Regatta (2;9;9)
  • Linq (6;8;6)
  • Poison (7;8;5)
  • It-Dah-Gan (7;8;5)
  • Don't Quote Me - TIME for Kids Edition (9;6;5)
  • Tricky Town (5;8;6)
  • Evolution (6;7;6)
  • Codebreaker (6;7;6)
  • Sketchword (7;7;5)
  • LonPos 101 Pyramid and Rectangle Game (4;6;9)
  • The Invention Game (6;6;7)
  • Pacru 302 (7;6;6)
  • *Deflexion (7;4;8)
  • Da Vinci Code Board Game (2;9;7)
  • Top Speed (6;7;5)
  • Heximania (6;4;8)
  • Cephalopod (8;8;1)
  • Diffusion (9;7;1)
  • Space Faces (4;7;6)
  • mental_floss: The Trivia Game (6;6;5)
  • Snatch (7;6;4)
  • JabberJot (7;6;4)
  • Eve's Quest (8;6;3)
  • Gordian's Knot (2;5;10)
  • Castle Keep (3;8;5)
  • Dragon Chess (6;6;4)
  • Bonkers (6;6;4)
  • Pick Two Deluxe (7;6;3)
  • Byte (9;6;1)
  • 800: The Game of Verbal Perfection (7;5;4)
  • Thing-A-Ma-Bots (4;6;5)
  • Net Y (8;6;1)
  • Nymble (6;5;4)
  • Nerdy Wordy (6;4;5)
  • Cosmic Cows (5;5;4)
  • Baffle Gab (6;5;3)
  • Debate This! (7;3;3)
  • Jot (6;4;3)
  • Summit (3;2;7)
  • Match of the Penguins (3;5;3)
  • Mind's I (4;4;3)
  • Ringgz (5;3;2)
  • Da Vinci's Challenge Card Game (4;3;2)
  • Fikloo: The Game of Crazy Commands (5;2;1)
  • Kiss My Rules! (2;3;2)
  • Pairs or Better (4;1;2)
  • Wordigy: A World of Words for Family Fun (3;1;1)
  • Wreck the Nation: the Game of Political Misbehavior (1;2;1)
  • Urban Legends the Game (1;2;1)
  • Codebreaker

    (search on Board Game Geek)

    (small images)
    large pic of Codebreaker

    • Replay Value (1-10): 6
    • Fun Factor (1-10): 7
    • Worth Buying (1-10): 6
    A fascinating twist on the old game of Memory (or Concentration). Paired tiles are shuffled and placed face down. On your turn, you flip one tile over for all players to see, and flip one tile over for just you to see. If they match, collect them and continue; otherwise, the player on your right gets to write anything they want on the back of the public tile, you get to write anything you want on the back of the private tile, the tiles are turned back over, and the next player gets the turn. To complicate things a bit, the tiles are separated into "hot" and "cold" tiles. The rule is that if the last pair scored was "hot", then the next pair has to be "cold", and vice versa. Finally, there are some bonus tiles that do extra things like get other players to explain their scrawlings.

    I liked this variant quite a bit. It was tempting to come up with really obscure codes and symbols, although one would run the risk of forgetting one's own symbol. One thing we tried that the designers didn't mention was to write misleading symbols (such as duplicating an already known one), just to play some psychological games on the other player. While the variant by no means eliminates the memory aspect, it adds another layer on it that makes the game fresh and new.

    But... couldn't you do the same thing with some dry-erase markers and a deck of cards? Maybe. Part of what makes the mnemonic codes workable is the character designs on the cards.


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    By Wei-Hwa Huang