Category: Games

Annual Kickball Challenge Tonight: Psychiatry Residents vs Faculty

I almost forgot to announce the annual KickBall Challenge, which is tonight! This used to be called Matball, but is now called Kickball.

It starts with pizza at 6 pm and then the barfing starts at 7 pm. Just kidding! Usually this event is marked by extreme heat and humidity, but I gather it may be almost balmy by comparison tonight-around 78 degrees.

What’s the difference between matball and kickball? I think it’s the use of large mats for bases and that is usually played indoors. The size of the bases during the first match was like the one in the photo below. It rained briefly, but then it cleared off so the humidity only felt like it was raining.

I never actually played in a game of matball/kickball. In fact, I took it easy because the temperature was usually in the mid-90s at least.

The faculty team losers in the first matball/kickball match were accused of suspending the resident team trophy in Jello. I refuse to answer any questions about the issue on the grounds it may incriminate me.

Other special rules apply as usual, at least I assume:

For every point the residents score, faculty automatically score 5.

Faculty may tackle the base runner at any time.

If it rains, faculty win by 10 points.

The games are fun to watch. Residents jumping over faculty; Faculty collapsing from pizza overload or heat stroke.

Just win, baby.

Learning to Use ClipChamp While Recording Cribbage Game on Cribbage Pro

I’m learning how to use the video editor ClipChamp, the free version on the new laptop. So, I muddled through a screen recording of playing what’s called the Daily Cribbage Scrimmage on Cribbage Pro, a feature-rich computer Cribbage game on which you can different skill levels of computer players from easy to impossible as well as online with other live players.

I’m used to using an old version of PowerDirector for my video editing. I would have to expend a fair amount of energy and a little more money to install it on the laptop. I can deal with the webcam on the laptop, but using ClipChamp takes some getting used to.

Is Cribbage Mostly Luck?

I found this cribbage YouTube site that does a really nice job of teaching you how to play Cribbage. Here’s a video about whether Cribbage is mainly a game of luck or skill. It turns out it’s a mix of both.

I play computer Cribbage games with high level computer opponents who-let’s face it, don’t make mistakes. You have to get used to losing pretty often, but there is a certain amount of skill which can help you win-sometimes.

The Mumbo Jumbo on Some Big Antique Cribbage Boards

Today, I’m going on a tangent about big, mostly antique cribbage boards which were specially made for making the scoring more complex. The main perpetrator (I mean manufacturer), was Drueke (variously pronounced as Drooky, Drew, Drooka).

The Drueke name turns up on most of the big two, three and four track vintage cribbage boards you find for sale on eBay. There are a few other makers, but Drueke is the one you commonly see. I don’t know anything about Drueke except it was a well-known maker of board games including chess and cribbage sets. The company was based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

If you know how to play the basic version of cribbage, you probably think it’s complicated enough as is. But Drueke made boards that allowed you to score many aspects of the game right on the playing surface.

There are other 4 track cribbage boards that aren’t designed to allow players to go crazy with scoring everything you do in a cribbage game. But typically, you’ll see a lot of what Drueke called the “Once-A-Round Scoremaster” boards. I got curious about the rules and found a couple of web pages on which I found out more about them. The rules are a little hard to find and a little vague when you do find them.

I couldn’t find out anything about them even on the American Cribbage Congress (ACC) website—and it’s the main authority about cribbage rules.

Reddit has a page titled Cribbage-Four Track Board (Example Rules). Click the “read more” below the image. It also shows a nice photo of a typical board. It’s tough to follow.

Then I found a Board Game Geek (BGG) page on which a guy named Jeff Bridghman outlined a clearer explanation of how to play on such a board. It’s actually better than the rules included with the Drueke game. By the way, if you have trouble with the web page, just reload it by typing “4 track boards and all the extra mumbo jumbo?” and hit the search button again.

What puzzled me were his comments about the High Hand score. He said his board had something I’ve not seen on pictures of the boards on eBay. The High Hand score goes from 1-10 on every one of those I saw. On the other hand, his board shows actual scores (14 through 29). I think it must have been a custom build. The thread has longevity; it started in 2011 and the latest comment I saw was in 2023.

If you buy the Drueke board, you’ll need the rules. But even if you have the Drueke rules, you’ll probably need something more specific. Maybe Drueke figured people would be more creative than they are. It’s a lot like life. I think sometimes you have to make up some rules.

Cribbage for Three Players

Hey, I found a great website for learning how to play cribbage with more than two players. In fact, you can learn how to play all kinds of games. If you already know how to play two-hander cribbage, you can learn the other common variations. Here’s the YouTube on the 3 player version.

Thoughts on Down Time Activities for Land Survey Technicians

I was just thinking about the old-time land survey crews. When I was getting on the job training as a survey technician, the typical land survey crews were at least 2-3 persons. One rodman, one instrument man, and a crew chief who organized the job, which could be property or construction jobs.

Nowadays, you get by sometimes with one man doing the jobs using a theodolite that measures angles and distances. You don’t always need a physical measuring tape; you can use something they call “total stations.”

It’s cheaper for engineering companies to use one man survey outfits. On the other hand, one disadvantage is the lack of mentoring for learners who want to become land surveyors or civil engineers.

Mentoring from surveyors on the survey back in the day not only taught me such skills as how to throw and wrap a surveyor’s steel tape—it also taught me how to work well with others as a team. Of course, this was transferrable to working on the psychiatry consultation-liaison service in a big hospital as well.

It’s well known that playing cards in the truck while waiting for the rain to stop was an essential skill. I don’t know how they manage downtime nowadays. We didn’t play cards on the consultation service during downtime, partly because we didn’t have much downtime.

Anyway, as I mentioned in a recent post, we played Hearts in the truck on rain days. I always sat in the middle. At the time, I was a terrible card player in general. It was a cutthroat game and I had trouble remembering which cards had been played.

When you consider that the strong suit of engineers and surveyors is math ability, you’d think that survey crews would have figured out a way to play Cribbage during downtime. You can have a Cribbage game with 3 or 4 people although I’ve never played it that way. If there are 3 players, it can still be cutthroat.

The one problem I can see is that, the guy sitting in the middle would have to set the board on his lap. You’d almost need a special, custom-made board which would have a space for placing the cards to keep track of what’s been played. I think that might have made things easier for me.

The other drawback to one man survey crews is that pretty much the only card game you can play is solitaire.

This is National Scrabble Day

I almost forgot that April 13 is National Scrabble Day. I don’t think I’ve ever blogged about it before, so I’ll inflict some thoughts on you now about it and add some others about International Cribbage Day, which is on February 10 annually—and which I evidently tend to forget every year.

The big news about Scrabble is that it’s changing in a major way, at least in Europe. I guess some people think the game is too difficult and they want to make it less “intimidating.” That’s what Mattel in Europe says, anyway. Others accuse the company of “dumbing it down.” I guess a certain generation of players want the game to be less competitive and more cooperative.

The thing about Scrabble Together is that it’s available only in Europe—for now. I just found out that Mattel is based in California and owns the rights to the game around most of the world. However, Hasbro licenses the game in the U.S. and has no plan to offer Scrabble Together in America.

We play Scrabble rarely—I’m not a very good player so I tend to avoid it. Sena has a couple of computer versions on CD, The Hasbro version of which is getting to be about eBay age. I think I bought it in 1999 (or was it 1998?) at Best Buy, back in the day when you could buy stuff in the actual stores. Even though the shelves looked pretty bare the last time I was there, web articles indicate it’s not going out of business, just evolving into online retailing.

Sena plays Maven (an interactive character that morphs, makes noises, and makes fun of or cheers your plays) on the Hasbro CD Scrabble version. She plays the Advanced Level and says she loses most of the time. Maven is very competitive. Funny thing, this doesn’t discourage Sena from playing. I tried to play Maven yesterday and got slaughtered. Maven thought it was pretty funny.

This change to Scrabble Together reminds me of a big story about a guy named Nigel Richards who won the French World Scrabble Championship Tournament in 2015—and he doesn’t speak a word of French. He memorized the French Dictionary. He concentrates on maximizing his scores without focusing on the actual words. It’s really more about the numbers than the vocabulary. Nigel Richards is definitely competitive and probably would not be interested in Scrabble Together.

Scrabble Together could attract more young people to an old game, which is more than you might say about cribbage. Just to be clear, cribbage is a competitive game and always has been. Every once in a while, you’ll see interesting descriptions about this two-hander card game which uses a board and can teach you a thing or two about math, strategy, logic, and building friendships.

People often observe that typical cribbage players tend to be older. It’s common to see there are fewer players under the age of 50. Many fans of cribbage try to attract younger players to the game by extolling its virtues and assuring younger novices they’ll be treated kindly. You can see that on the American Cribbage Congress (ACC) website page entitled “Cribbage Club Code of Congeniality.” Cribbage, while a competitive game, can be supportive as well. It’s not impossible.

Try not to let an experienced cribbage enthusiast persuade you to play for money.

Claw Back Those Juggling Balls in The Steal!

Sena and I have been practicing the front steal trick in juggling. It’s another two-person juggling pattern that took us a couple of days to get right—sort of.

We tried it at first by counting the throws (and catches), which helped us sustain the pattern. On the other hand, it was a lot more fun not scripting it that way. You do get a lot of great practice doing the 3-ball cascade.

Neither one of us knew when the smash and grab was coming. We just stole balls whenever we felt like it. When Sena stole the cascade, I clawed it back and vice versa.

Stealing in two-person juggling is not a crime—it’s a hoot.