Monkey Pod Games Blog

This morning, during my quest to find the perfect puzzle of the day, I came across A Google A Day. Have you tried it yet?

Each day at 12:01 AM EST, Google A Day posts a new puzzle and you find the answer simply by googling your way around it. To add further incentive, it times you while you are searching and you can type in and have your answer verified. 1:07… not too shabby, but you can bet I want to improve my time for tomorrow!

And I’m not the only one who’s excited. Blogger Ken Denmead “Geek Dad” first drew my attention to Google a Day when his blog went viral via wired.com.

Give it a try for yourself:
http://agoogleaday.com/#date=2012-03-12

Growing up, one of my favorite family traditions revolved around St. Patrick’s Day and leprechauns.

For those of you who don’t know, leprechauns are part of the Irish Fairy Family. These tiny creatures are famous for the smart and devious tricks they play on humans to keep them away from their pot of gold and prevent having to give them three magical wishes.

Each year, the “leprechauns” would come to play practical jokes on my siblings and me. Some of these pranks included hiding our shoes, turning all the kitchen chairs upside down, or my personal favorite, putting green shaving cream in my brother’s hair while he was asleep…twice…

As an adult, I’ve realized there are more fun (and mature) pranks to be played.

My last blog post featured the magic box. While opening the box itself is a puzzle in and of itself, the three puzzles are no easier!

So in keeping with our love of all things witty and mischievous, this March 16th Monkey Pod Games will be raffling off magic boxes complete with a sack of golden chocolate coins. To enter, be sure to check out our facebook page beginning March 12^th —we’ll be posting a puzzle of the day and details on how you can enter to win!

The Groundhog saw his shadow and there are at least 3 more weeks of winter (well…with this crazy NY weather… who knows what to expect… )

Valentine’s Day is over… so is that box of chocolate….

And President’s Day is over too… no more days off until the ever looked forward to SPRING BREAK

But don’t be dismayed! Here at Monkey Pod Games we’ve found a few puzzles that will keep you entertained for hours:

~The Spatial Challenge

Looking for a real challenge? Look no further. Whether you’re a child or an adult, this puzzle will definitely get you thinking. With smoothly crafted Monkey Pod wood pieces and a handmade box, this puzzle promises to delight .

Turtles, airplanes, pyramids and towers are just some of the structures you can create. Each time I have tried to solve a different structure, it takes me a few tries to get the pieces in the correct place.

But there’s good news- whenever I still can’t nab the puzzle, there are 3D color-coded solutions on the back of the card for extra help. Personally, I find my spatial reasoning skills strengthened each time and I’m getting better (aka-I’m solving the puzzles independently NOT using the solutions or our resident Monkey Pod Game Expert).

~14” Tumbling Tower

Sometimes watching the tower tumble is more fun than watching it climb! I’m in love with this game because it builds such an adrenaline rush and can be played alone or in a group regardless of age or subject-matter interest. While we all know the tower is going to tumble at some point, (thanks to gravity, a lack of a solid base, and human coordination or lack thereof), we somehow all dread to think that WE might be the one to topple it.

At the NY International Gift Show, I loved to dare attendees and vendors alike to pull a piece any piece of this very simple puzzle. It was a challenge to see how long we could keep a game going. Many people took me up on the challenge and succeeded… some wouldn’t dare… some toppled the tower…. And as for me, I toppled it quite a few times myself.

~The Magic Box Gift Set

One comment: Try to open the box….we dare you.

That’s right. You heard me. The popular game we all remember from our childhood is called by a name that is altogether mythical and misleading. It did not, as its name suggests originate in China (or anywhere in Asia, for that matter) nor is it a variation on checkers. We here at Monkey Pod games want to shed light on the true history of this fun and exciting game of strategy. The game was actually invented in Germany in 1892. It was originally called “Stern-Halma” and was an adaptation of the older American game Halma invented by a Boston surgeon named Dr. George Howard Monks sometime between 1883 and 1884. The word “stern” in German means star, referring to the star-shape of the board, in contrast to the square board of the Halma.

So where did the name Chinese Checkers come from you ask? A popular game manufacturer first published the exact same Star-Halma game in the United States in 1928. Two brothers at the company made up the name “Chinese Checkers” shortly thereafter as a marketing strategy intended to appeal to America’s growing interest in all things oriental (this was around the same time as the discovery of King Tut’s tomb in 1922 and the introduction of “mah jongg” in 1923). In the 1930s, a Chinese Checkers craze swept across the nation with several other manufacturers starting to make the game. It did not even reach China until more than a decade later, most likely brought there by the Japanese.

Now you are ready to impress everyone with your vast knowledge of the true history of Chinese Checkers. Simply gather your friends and family around our beautiful wooden version of this game and casually ask everyone if they know why it is called Chinese Checkers. We bet they’ll be so intrigued by your myth-busting facts, no one will even notice as you quickly jump over their pieces and make your way to home base. Dr. Monks would be so proud!

Source: History of Halma and Chinese Checkers

The air is getting crisper, the kiddies are back at school, and cold lemonade makes way for warm apple cider as the season’s drink of choice. Ahhh, my favorite time of year: football season. Whether it’s getting together with old college friends to cheer on your alma mater or declaring loyalty for your new favorite team (I’m talking to you, band-wagon Saints fans), Saturday mornings, Sunday afternoons, and okay, many Monday nights if you’re hardcore like me, from  now until the end of January are now officially off-limits: Reserved For Football. Who can resist the joy of the game, and all that comes with it? Grown men standing shirtless in freezing temperatures with their shirts off and their faces painted in team colors. The holy trinity of wings-beer-burgers that is standard fare at any tailgating party, sports bar, or home-viewing celebration. And of course the delicious sound of bones crunching as 300-pound men pile on top of each other in hopes of getting a touch on that precious pigskin ball.

While it’s hard for me to understand, not everyone shares my love of the game. Some find it far too violent, others don’t have the patience to watch the four-hour drama unfold with all its starts and stops and instant replays. Time after time, I hear a similar complaint. “Every weekend, the same thing. My husband/wife/girlfriend/boyfriend/friends drag me to watch a game I neither enjoy nor care about. And then he/she/they completely ignore me the entire time.“ I’d like to propose a solution to your football woes. Why not bring our amazing 3D Football puzzle along the next time you find yourself on a couch squished between two grown men wearing Palamalu jerseys and waving terrible towels in the air. (I’m talking to you, overly-enthusiastic Steelers fans). With its sporty football shape, you’ll fit right in among the actual fans and we promise the time will fly by as you try to reassemble the 6 wooden pieces together. I’m pretty sure within minutes even the most diehard in the group will have peeled their eyes away from the screen long enough to try their hand at solving the puzzle. The 3D Football is also the perfect soothing object to put in the hands of the aforementioned husband/wife/girlfriend/boyfriend/friend when it’s 4th and goal from the 5, you’re down by 6, and it looks as if a heart attack is imminent. Also a wonderful distraction to give to children with an uncanny ability to “NEEEEEEED” something just as your team is about to score. All in all, the perfect football accessory for the fan and non-fan alike.  Click here to view this puzzle and all of our amazing Monkey Pod Games.

It sure can be hard to decide which puzzle is the best to get. Each one is unique whether it is it’s history or design. And in addition, sometimes picking the right puzzle can be tough. We often like to match a puzzle with the personality of the person we are giving that gift too. The wrong puzzle, while still a nice gift, could miss the whole point.

That is why we are offering a Monkey Pod Games GIFT SET!  Instead of having to pick one puzzle why not get a gift set of THREE or even SIX puzzles. This can be a great idea for either yourself or as a gift.

We believe gift sets are the best way to go about things. If one puzzle is too hard, they can put it down, take a break with another before going back to the original. Ten minutes a day on each puzzle and you have one groovy hour of puzzle playing!

Our gift sets come in a beautiful box as well, so when they are not in use they can look wonderful on a bookshelf or desk. We could list the puzzles that come in the gift set here but we would like to add a little suspense and let you see them for yourselves from our site. You can check them all here. Hope you like them as much as we do!

The World Cup is halfway done and that means the games are less frequent. If you are anything like us at Monkey Pod Games, then you are obsessed with this competition and love soccer/football. Once you get into the African World Cup spirit, it is hard to get out of it, even when the 90 minutes is up. Therefore in the spirit of Africa and the World Cup, Monkey Pod Games has a game for you that is great to keep your waka waka going!

The game for you is Mancala! This game goes back thousands of years to early Africa where the first farmers played this game in Ethiopia. It soon spread to other parts of the continent and eventually the world. And what better way to honor a world game by playing another world game: Monkey Pod Games Mancala!

It can be played before a game, after or even at halftime! The beautiful Monkey Pod wood, the beads, and the African spirit will all keep you in your World Cup mood even if a game is not playing. This Monkey Pod Games Mancala is a great wooden board game. If you want to, instead of being competitors by name, both sides can choose a country and take the great competition from soccer/football to Mancala.

If you want to see more about his amazing African game, click here

Waka Waka,

Monkey Pod Games

Does anyone think the game of plucking off petals one by one on a flower to see if the man of your dreams loves you is unreliable? I know, if I  was a flower, and some girl plucked off all my petals, I sure wouldn’t let her get the man of her dreams. I mean, why should the flower suffer because the girl doesn’t know if the guy loves her or not.

Save the whales    flowers!

How can we go about that? I mean, imagine how many flowers we could save by not needing them to be used to find out who loves who? Well, we can rely on the Monkey Pod Games Love Test!

The Love Test is an awesome disentanglement puzzle which is way more accurate and valuable than murdering flowers! If you can release the trapped ball on a string, then the answer is: YES HE LOVES YOU! If you can’t, well try again! Love is about never giving up!

The Monkey Pod Games Love Test  makes a great gift whether for valentines day, for a love struck friend, or just a surprise gift to your loved one!

“For today’s ‘Book Corner’, we would love to recommend “Predictably Irrational” By Dan Ariely.

Dan Ariely, is a behavioral economics professor at MIT. While economics seem boring to some, this book is anything but that. Dan Ariely, writes a humorous fun book about what drives us to make the decisions we do.  This book is nothing less than pure genius and relates to our everyday living.

Here is a snippet review from Publisher’s Weekly:

” Drawing on psychology and economics, behavioral economics can show us why cautious people make poor decisions about sex when aroused, why patients get greater relief from a more expensive drug over its cheaper counterpart and why honest people may steal office supplies or communal food, but not money. According to Ariely, our understanding of economics, now based on the assumption of a rational subject, should, in fact, be based on our systematic, unsurprising irrationality.”

My personal favorite chapter is the first one. Here Dan Ariely explains to us the power of relativity. He shows us, how simple marketing and displaying signs in shops can change our whole perspective on how we choose to buy. One great aspect of his book is that he backs it all up with experiments he did with his classes at MIT.

This book is not a hard economics book. If it was it wouldn’t have been a New York Times Best Seller.  You don’t need any economics to enjoy it. All you need is life experience and a good humor when you start to realize your own predictably irrational behavior!

You can find the book here or visit Dan Arieli’s personal site here .

We hope you enjoy this book as much as we did!

Warmly,

Monkey Pod Games

www.monkeypodgames.com

Hi Everyone,

So summer is around the corner. This means the kids will be home and running all over the place. Pool, camp, water, ice cream, freedom, and vacation! All the great times are about to come. I mean who doesn’t love summer?

However, our brains can get a little too chilled out during summer. Sit by the beach to long and you may become a beach bum! So why not have a great little game to keep your mind sharp for the long summer ahead.

In spirit of that hot sun that may give us a nice tan and good times, why not play the GIANT STAR PUZZLE! This is the ultimate brain teaser.

Built after the famous Star Puzzle, this GIANT STAR PUZZLE is very tough but very fun. You will have to use all corners of your brain to solve this one. But once finished, the reward is big! If you can solve it before the end of summer, than you are one smart cookie! If you haven’t already clicked the links to the puzzle check it here!

www.monkeypodgames.com