games for kids -- who is making these up?!

Back from Oakland -- it was a good, though short, trip. Spent the night at Margaret's place (upgraded to a 1BR since the last time I was there) and her most adorable cat Tiger.

I've been looking for group games for Kids Stuff / Club 48 on Friday night at CPUMC. Incredulously, Alex asked who makes these games when I read him this description of a game called SWEET PICKUPS, A race to eat sugar and then stick a pencil in your nose (but in a safe way of course):

To play this game you need a large group of kids. First you line each child up and then you set a timer for eighty seconds. In front of each child place a paper plate with a teaspoon of sugar, a pencil and a clothespin. Say go to start the race. Each child will have to lick up their pile of sugar. Next they stick the pencil up their nose (but not too far - you'll need to demonstrate to keep it safe) And last they take the clothespin and put it on their sock or pants. Whoever finishes first gets a prize. All the kids get to keep their pencils. Have fun!!

It's probably better to stick with classics, like Simon Says.

fill in the blanks, or why Yahoo! crosswords is so awesome

We finished this Yahoo! crossword with three mistakes (boxes wrong), although really I am willing to just count it as one. The correct answer for 12-down was AVER, not AVOW. And I spelled 4-down incorrectly, so that doesn't count.

Yahoo! Crosswords (a tiny subset of Yahoo! Games) is a good example of the Internet making my life better one small step at a time. The crosswords here are essentially like the pen and paper sort, except it is better in at least three ways (which I feel make it more instantly gratifying, like most post-net versions of things do):

1. You can instantly check to see whether or not you have answered a clue correctly, without having to peek at the entire solution (possibly spoiling other parts of your puzzle).
   
2. As you move your position marker around different boxes in the puzzle, the relevant clues are automatically highlighted for you on the side. No more wasted time searching clue numbers.
   
3. Entering things digitally via your keyboard instead of a pencil (or pen, for the bold) means that all of the letters are uniformly centered in the boxes, and mistakes are a breeze -- just delete!

My motivation to do a Yahoo! crossword this evening was related to our board game playing activities last night. We had guests over for some friendly Cranium. Overall, we totally rock. But on these word game category (the yellow box!), the majority of which ask you to do RIDICULOUSLY EASY tasks like spell "catastrophe" backwards or spell "quiche" forwards, they also had fill-in-the-blank clues, of which WE DID NOT GET A SINGLE ONE RIGHT. Hence the practice. +1 to Cranium Skills.