On Date Night last weekend, Chris and I went out for pizza and then to a bookstore. Yes, the romance lives on, after all these years. It was actually the first time I'd been to a bookstore since receiving my Kindle for Christmas. In fact the one drawback to having a Kindle is that there isn't much of a need to visit a bookstore. I did browse through the fiction aisle, I and recorded titles of interest into my new "smartphone" (it was free with our contract extension and as for being smart, well, obviously it's smarter than me because I've had it for over a week and I still don't understand what it's doing half the time. It keeps beeping at odd intervals -- why?). But my greatest bookstore find, and something that couldn't easily be Kindle-ized, was this:
Games Magazine! I was thrilled to see it there amongst the word search puzzle books. My parents subscribed to Games, way back in the day. How I loved the EyeBender puzzles, and the Cryptograms, and trying to find the Fake Ad. I wasn't very good at the crosswords (especially the Cryptic ones, which honestly I still don't understand), but I adored the logic puzzles. You know -- Abe, Barry, Carol, Dan and Ethel went on a cruise. They stopped in Albania, Botswana, Canada, Denmark and Egypt and bought apples, bananas, coffee, dates, and eggs. Can you figure out who bought what where based on the clues below? Man, how I loved solving those things -- filling up the grid with "Y" or "N", the rush when I figured out that because Abe didn't buy bananas in Denmark, then Carol must have bought coffee in Albania. One summer Jana and I spent hours, and countless pages of graph paper, working on Games' Biggest Logic Puzzle ever, which had thirty or something variables. I don't even remember if we ever figured it out, but we certainly had fun trying.
Anyway, the Games of today is a bit diminished -- whether in reality, or just in comparison to my memories I do not know. It seems a bit thin and lacking in whimsy, and there was only one logic puzzle. Still, I have been hammering away at the crosswords -- and Mallory picked up the magazine yesterday and complained that there were none left for her to do. So I may subscribe, after all. I think it's a good thing to grow up with Games in the house.
Games Magazine! I was thrilled to see it there amongst the word search puzzle books. My parents subscribed to Games, way back in the day. How I loved the EyeBender puzzles, and the Cryptograms, and trying to find the Fake Ad. I wasn't very good at the crosswords (especially the Cryptic ones, which honestly I still don't understand), but I adored the logic puzzles. You know -- Abe, Barry, Carol, Dan and Ethel went on a cruise. They stopped in Albania, Botswana, Canada, Denmark and Egypt and bought apples, bananas, coffee, dates, and eggs. Can you figure out who bought what where based on the clues below? Man, how I loved solving those things -- filling up the grid with "Y" or "N", the rush when I figured out that because Abe didn't buy bananas in Denmark, then Carol must have bought coffee in Albania. One summer Jana and I spent hours, and countless pages of graph paper, working on Games' Biggest Logic Puzzle ever, which had thirty or something variables. I don't even remember if we ever figured it out, but we certainly had fun trying.
Anyway, the Games of today is a bit diminished -- whether in reality, or just in comparison to my memories I do not know. It seems a bit thin and lacking in whimsy, and there was only one logic puzzle. Still, I have been hammering away at the crosswords -- and Mallory picked up the magazine yesterday and complained that there were none left for her to do. So I may subscribe, after all. I think it's a good thing to grow up with Games in the house.
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