They finished Izzi!

Okay, I know I'm a total nerd, but we've been playing with this puzzle off and on for a while now (cleaning it up each time because it gets knocked out of whack), and we always get within one piece of finishing it.

I was messing around with it this weekend while Jim's folks were visiting because his dad really likes puzzles. We got within one piece, played around with the possibilities for a while, and then I got bored and started playing Bananagram solitaire.

Sam wandered in and got interested, and he and grampa finished it! Here's Sam feeling mighty proud of himself.



Editing: OMG, I just found the mistake! Shhhhhh, don't tell Sam. Can you find it?

New Favorite Games

Izzi. We found this one recently, and it's totally addictive. And way hard. This is one of those puzzles that you want to come back to over and over again, and the different iterations make it challenging each time you sit down. This is one to leave out for folks to tinker with as they walk by.





Bananagrams. Thanks Kelly for this one! We've been playing constantly. Loads of fun, this is a kind of scrabble meets crossword game that can be played with one to several players. It's loads of fun and can be modified for many skill levels.






Maya Madness. This is a card game similar to Uno, but based on adding and subtracting numbers and dealing with both positive and negative numbers. It's fast-paced and really reinforces both the way numbers work together and the importance of zero while also being a lot of fun to play.




The cool thing with all of these is that they're small and easy to take along wherever you go.