Like I said a while back, this sort of thing amuses me.

What can I say? I’m a humanities geek, not a math geek, but little things like this amuse me.

I think my little office refrigerator was turned a wee bit too cold . . .  (Sorry for the low image quality—I was having trouble holding the shot perfectly still.)

I don’t remember how I ended up with a year’s free subscription to Wired, but I’ve really been enjoying it; I knew it was a good magazine, but either it’s gotten better over the last couple years or else I’d never fully appreciated it before.  The serious articles are consistently very good—for instance, there are a couple pieces from the March issue that I’ve been meaning to post on, serious pieces on the roots of the financial crisis and what steps ought to be taken to deal with it, and I was fascinated by the one in the May issue on Teller and the research he’s involved in on the neuropsychology of stage magic (if that sounds geeky, trust me, it isn’t)—but my favorite articles have been some of the lighter ones.

I was particularly pleased to see the piece in the April issue on the German board game The Settlers of Catan.  If you haven’t heard of it before, you’re not alone—in America, it has a ways to go before it’s as widely-known as, say, Monopoly or Scrabble; the only people I know who’ve heard of it found out about it the same way I did, from my brother-in-law—but when they call it a “perfect boardgame” that “redefines the genre,” they aren’t blowing smoke.  It’s a fascinating and enjoyable game on every level.  As the article explains,

Instead of direct conflict, German-style games tend to let players win without having to undercut or destroy their friends. This keeps the game fun, even for those who eventually fall behind. Designed with busy parents in mind, German games also tend to be fast, requiring anywhere from 15 minutes to a little more than an hour to complete. They are balanced, preventing one person from running away with the game while the others painfully play out their eventual defeat. And the best ones stay fresh and interesting game after game.

Teuber nailed all these traits using a series of highly orchestrated game mechanics. Instead of a traditional fold-out board, for example, Settlers has the 19 hexagonal tiles, each representing one of five natural resources—wooded forests, sheep-filled meadows, mountains ripe for quarrying. At the beginning of every game, they’re arranged at random into an island. Next, numbered tokens marked from 2 to 12 are placed on each tile to indicate which dice rolls will yield a given resource. Because the tiles get reshuffled after every game, you get a new board every time you play.

The idea is that players establish settlements in various locations on the board, and those settlements collect resource cards whenever the token number for the tile they are sitting on gets rolled. By redeeming these resource cards in specific combinations (it takes a hand of wood, brick, wheat, and wool to build a new settlement, for instance), you expand your domain. Every settlement is worth a point, cities are two points, and the first player to earn 10 points wins. You can’t get ahead by rustling your opponents’ sheep or torching their cute wooden houses.

One of the driving factors in Settlers—and one of the secrets to its success—is that nobody has reliable access to all five resources. This means players must swap cards to get what they need, creating a lively and dynamic market, which works like any other: If ore isn’t rolled for several turns, it becomes more valuable. “Even in this tiny, tiny microcosm of life, scarcity leads to higher prices, and plenty leads to lower prices,” says George Mason University economist Russ Roberts, who uses Settlers to teach his four children how free markets work.

Wheeling and dealing turns out to be an elegant solution to one of the big problems plaguing Monopoly—sitting idle while other players take their turns. Since every roll of the dice in Settlers has the potential to reap a new harvest of resource cards, unleash a flurry of negotiations, and change the balance of the board, every turn engages all the players. “The secret of Catan is that you have to bargain and sometimes whine,” Teuber says.

Teuber also made the game as flexible as possible, with numerous means of earning points. Building the longest road is worth two points, for instance, and collecting development cards (purchased with resource cards, these can offer a Year of Plenty resource bonanza or straight-up points) also brings you closer to victory. Having options like this is critical. The games that stand the test of time have just a few rules and practically unlimited possibilities, making them easy to learn and difficult to master. (Chess, for example, has 10¹²⁰ potential moves, far more than the number of atoms in the universe.)

Finally, the game is designed to restore balance when someone pulls ahead. If one player gets a clear lead, that person is suddenly the prime candidate for frequent attacks by the Robber, a neat hack that Teuber installed. Roll a seven—the most likely outcome of a two-dice roll, as any craps player knows—and those with more than seven resource cards in their hand lose half their stash, while the person who rolled gets to place a small figure called the Robber on a resource tile, shutting down production of resources for every settlement on that tile. Not surprisingly, players often target the settler with the most points.

In addition to deploying the Robber, players will usually stop trading with any clear leader. In tandem, these two lines of attack can reduce a front-runner’s progress to a crawl. Meanwhile, lagging opponents have multiple avenues for catching up.

All of this means that players must use strategy and move smartly, but even flawless play doesn’t necessarily lead to easy victory. This is why kids can play with adults, or beginners with experts, and everyone stays involved.

“When a lot of us saw it, we thought this was the definition of a great game,” saysPete Fenlon, CEO of Mayfair Games, Settlers’ English-language distributor. “In every turn you’re engaged, and even better, you’re engaged in other people’s turns. There are lots of little victories—as opposed to defeats—and perpetual hope. Settlers is one of those perfect storms.”

If you like playing games—of any sort—and have people to play with, go pick up a copy and introduce yourself, and them, to Catan.  You’ll be glad of it.

check this out—it’s Heather McDougal at her most unfetteredly creative.  I don’t know if I dream dreams like this, but if I do, I wish I remembered them.