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.



Sort By Name
Sort By Ranking
Sort By Category
  • 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)
  • Nymble

    (search on Board Game Geek)

    (small images)
    large pic of Nymble

    • Replay Value (1-10): 6
    • Fun Factor (1-10): 5
    • Worth Buying (1-10): 4
    When I was a kid, there were these little word puzzles in the puzzle magazines that I never did: here's a bunch of letters, try to come up with as many words as you can that use only letters from that bunch. The designers of this game obviously thought that that basic concept wasn't enough to drive a whole game (it isn't), so they added some more constraints: in round 1, you not only have to think of words, but you also have to think of their synonyms; in round 2, you have to think of their antonyms; and in the last round, you have to think of their homonyms (by which the designers actually mean homophones, but whatever). The game comes with a cute 30-sided die that, unfortunately, has a few typos; so the designers have provided some color stickers to re-label this die that you're only going to roll 35 times or so in an entier game anyway.

    This game does seem to have potential, but too many of the aspects seemed to be tacked on haphazardly without much thought to an overall holistic game experience. It is true that thinking of words that have antonyms are harder than words that have synonyms, and thinking of homophones is even harder still,... so why aren't the later rounds worth more points? The game rewards two extra points if the both sides of the word pair you think of are embedded in the bunch of letters, but it's usually much easier to find three unrelated words in those letters than it is to find two related ones, let alone synonyms or antonyms or whatever. And not giving people points for things that other players got is a good idea (taken from Boggle), but even for the "-nym" pairs? Overall, the ideas in this word game have lots of merit, but there's definitely a lot of room for improvement.


    Return to Introduction

    Other MMG Reviews


    By Wei-Hwa Huang