jigsaw puzzles, marbles..

[na§tee]

and other old-school methods of entertainment.

my acting flatmate recently returned home from tour and has become obsessed with jigsaw puzzles. she and the rest of the people in her play spend hours putting together these 1000-piece puzzles of fruit bowls or.. running horses or.. napoleonic war scenes in frames. frames! SERIOUS, man.

i hadn't considered jigsaws in years. YEARS! i wouldn't even know where to buy one nowadays, but now i am strangely tempted to seek one out. i remember the real satisfaction of working on a jigsaw puzzle and completing it. do kids even receive jigsaws now? or do they just get handed a DS aged 6 and that's it?

my parents went through a phase of buying me mystery jigsaw puzzles - a NEW HEIGHT of dorkdom where you read a short story, assemble the puzzles (no picture on the box, bitchez) and solve the mystery/murder oooooooohhh. haha.

the world's largest jigsaw puzzle (http://www.worldslargestpuzzle.com/index.html) is a whopping 24,000 pieces. it is 14ft x 5ft. dayum. it looks like a total head fuck.

what other now-neglected childhood toys/games did you engage in? i was also curiously into marbles (yes.. marbles.. how very peter pan. i wasn't the coolest of kids) when i lived in germany for a time. there was a huge 'course' in a little cleared bit of forest that all the army kids used to gather in. it was like a miniature youthful stock market. you'd come and haggle and bet however many of your marbles for however many of the other dudes and determined the difficulty of hole, LOL. sometimes you would get a crowd. ha!

i can't even remember the names of all the different marbles you could get now, or the value. i remember the really small shiny, sparkly ones being the most treasured and the shitty cat's-eye sort of ones were throwaway. lol. they were just pieces of glass. loves it.

yeah, everyone get on the nostalgia train. and i'm not talking N64. i'm talking timeless stuff here.

[gbsuey]

charity shops for puzzles

i used to love those domino runs that took 12 years to build and 30 secs to fall. and the tricks they put in were awsome.

pretty much puzzled out at the mo-three year old in the house...

[na§tee]

yes! i played dominoes with my grandad. they were kept in a green leather box. god, memories i haven't accessed for years are coming flooding back.

looking back, dominoes (the actual game, not the stacking-em-up-and-watching-them-fall) is pretty piss poor. aahahah.

[hitmonlee]

bored with a pack of cards and sick of poker, my housemates and i resorted to "snap" one night.

[Yorkshire~Rose]

I was the marbles queen when i was at junior school! Cats eyes, steelies, pearlies...

We used to play on the grates in the playground...not grates, sort of man hole covers.

It's not a puzzle but as we're talking about childhood games does anyone remember french skipping using elastic looped around two people's legs?

I loved that :D

[gbsuey]

yes! i played dominoes with my grandad. they were kept in a green leather box. god, memories i haven't accessed for years are coming flooding back.

looking back, dominoes (the actual game, not the stacking-em-up-and-watching-them-fall) is pretty piss poor. aahahah.

oh god me too!! my great-nana-she used to have the tv turned up as loud as possible and the colour up to florescent-i used to sit in her room that smelt like marshmellows and play dominos-and yeah it sure is a dull game!

and i've always been way too clumsy for skipping games-at my first senior school we had a big mound of mud to run around on-we probably were old enough to know better but we had hours of fun!

[na§tee]

I was the marbles queen when i was at junior school! Cats eyes, steelies, pearlies...

We used to play on the grates in the playground...not grates, sort of man hole covers.

It's not a puzzle but as we're talking about childhood games does anyone remember french skipping using elastic looped around two people's legs?

I loved that :D
no, skipping counts! it's a game.. sorta. an activity. playground games i want to hear about too. i don't remember french skipping but i do remember being really, really shite at normal skipping and not pursuing it any further.

cat's cradle! i loved doing that. snap! oh man. i would get so pissed off if my brother hovered at an unreasonable level above the cards.

i am going to challenge you to a game of marbles one day, yorkie. you watch your back! heh. we used to play between the roots of trees.. holes had been created and it was a real freakin' assault course. pros man, pros.

[gbsuey]

i went off marbles after the trauma of losing all my shiny new ones to
my arch enemy-i doubt my kids could play any of these at school now- they probably aren't "safe" enough-twats

[Pres Zount]

The world's largest puzzle looks like some sort of horrible, cheap t-shirt that is generally found at what I think the world refers to as a 'thrift' store. Still 24,000 pieces is pretty impressive.

I sat down and had a good long think about it. Not whether or not I would do it (of course I would accept the challenge) but how to come up with a design that would do the concept justice.

Well, you didn't. I haven't done a puzzle in a very long time, and I don't know if I would enjoy it.

In primary school I played marbles like my life depended on it. We didn't have an obstacle course, we probably could have, but we had instead a long, thin, gutter. A straight one. It was just wide enough for a marble to run through the channel.

To play, two people would start with their marbles on each end of the channel, then roll them down the straight track and crash into their opponent. I don't know how we determined winners, or how I ended up losing some and winning others, but I suppose it might have been down to shouting.

I had a Dulux paint tin full of marbles. Cat's Eyes were the crappest, sure. There were tiny ones, and bigger ones; jacks, queens and kings. Kings were just huge hunks of glass that kids would use to smash the other person's marble, then their jaw if they complained.

[camo]

I had a Hulk jigsaw that I loved to do when a was a little 'un.

I also had a monkey puzzle. One of those jisaw type affairs where you slid the boxes around in a frame and you coudn't take the pieces out. I really hated it because I could never do it. I was gutted when I came across the same style puzzle in Resident evil 4, it took me bloody ages to get it done.

[na§tee]

wow. a straight gutter. really stretching your, eh, marbling (??) skillz there, joe.

monkey puzzles! i so wanted to bash them out of their frames half the time. you are right. they are bastards.

no-one has mentioned conkers yet. where's aidan? if memory serves...

I had a big-ass conker at Primary (elEMENtaRY!!!1one) school that whooped everone elses nuts into a big steaming puddle of nuttiness.

Then two bigger boys came and smashed it into the playground with their feet :/

[camo]

monkey puzzles! i so wanted to bash them out of their frames half the time. you are right. they are bastards.

mine just had a picture of a monkey, but what were they actually called I can't find one anywhere.

[na§tee]

haha, i was just about to edit there to reflect that. a monkey puzzle is a tree. whatever the sliding puzzle is called.. fuck 'em.

[camo]

SLIDING BRAIN SPAZ FUCKER'S

[gbsuey]

SLIDING BRAIN SPAZ FUCKER'S

yes that's their official title. we have them in the house and they only serve to remind me how much more stupid i am as i get older coz i used to be able to do them but am fucked if i can now

and then there's the rubix cube, or ball or snake. my head just never worked the right way for them

[ms.peachy]

I like doing jigsaw puzzles. I haven't done one since Mattie was born and I reckon I won't be allowed to for a few more years, until she is old enough for us to work on one together. I kind of miss it really. I do small ones online sometimes but it's nowhere near as absorbing and satisfying as actually sitting and sorting through the pieces by hand.

[camo]

all I remember is that I mithered my mum for mine at the post office. I think it was about 50p too.

[Guy Incognito]

I had a version of this when i was a kid.

domino rally (http://www.handbag.com/?module=images&func=display&fileId=56710)

[Yorkshire~Rose]

i am going to challenge you to a game of marbles one day, yorkie. you watch your back!

Bring it on! :D

[MC Moot]

ohhhh I have a plethora of old skool games at my diposal everday...

Checkers
Chinese Checkers
Connect 4
Twister
Operation
Simon
Snakes and Ladders
High Q
Sorry
Game of Life

:)

[Yorkshire~Rose]

I used to LOVE operation!

[ToucanSpam]

Ball in a cup
pickup-sticks
jenga
tv tag
freeze tag
search and destroy

[instigator7022]

POGS! i had this sweet-ass slammer that was like a spiral. I used to think it could hypnotize you.

Haha i remember in elementary they banned pogs b/c it was too distracting to the learning process.

AND

pokemon cards

[ToucanSpam]

Charizard.

[instigator7022]

Charizard.

1st edition holographic charizard POW!

[ToucanSpam]

My favorite was the Chansey card.

Those were the days...

[paul jones]

my favorite jigsaw was a picture of Chewie,Luke,Obi-Wan and Han in the cockpit of the Millenium Falcon,looking all serious because Obi-Wan told them it wasn't no moon that they were looking at,thinking it was a moon but actually a 24 hour garage

[MC Moot]

Paddle Ball (http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41MQ8MGP1RL.jpg)

And 4 da record I never hula hoop'd,skipped rope or hop scotched...that was girls stuff...;)

[MC Moot]

pickup-sticks

oh yeah a personal fave...(y)

[MC Moot]

Red Rover,British Bulldog and Dodgeball of course...the first competitive games I remember...(y)

[Dorothy Wood]

The world's largest puzzle looks like some sort of horrible, cheap t-shirt that is generally found at what I think the world refers to as a 'thrift' store. Still 24,000 pieces is pretty impressive.




I'm sorry, but it's got a Tiger bounding into the ocean after a dolphin. SOLD!



I never used to play marbles, but I played jacks.

also, did a lot of jump roping and making forts. played a lot of simple card games, and tons of Sorry. and checkers! lots of made up games too.

I haven't done many puzzles in my life, but they're pretty enjoyable. I did one last year, it wasn't mine, I was only supposed to be "helping", but completed the whole thing on my own since the person it belonged to got bored of it.

[b-grrrlie]

Doing huge jigsaw puzzles has always been my Christmas activity.
In our family we had one really big (I think it was 10000 pieces) lying on the floor for years,
because it was impossible to finish (the sky covered more than half the area).
I think quite a few pieces ended up in the vacuum cleaner and I guess the whole jigsaw was trashed when the house was sold...

Now I have another huge one which I haven't been able to finish, too many similar parts in both shape and colour.
My favourit puzzle is 500 piece Beatles-puzzle which I bought for 37,75 SEK about 25 years ago.
It was really cheap then (I think they had a sale at the department store in my neighbourhood) and guess it's a collectors item now.
I like it cause they all have dark suits (except Ringo's got psychedelic cuffs sticking out) and the background is pink
so it takes a while to get some parts together.


And another thing we always play at Christmas is the Star Of Africa (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/5130).

[mate_spawn_die]

a cardboard box

[na§tee]

I'm sorry, but it's got a Tiger bounding into the ocean after a dolphin. SOLD!
yes! ahhaha. it also has a kangaroo running after said tiger, and what looks like an iguana running on water. i like the lone dolphin showing off with a ball. and.. ATLANTIS!

board games could be a whole different thread, that's why i didn't mention them. but since we're on the topic i LOVED the game of life! i loved adding little blue and pink pegs to my plastic car! sometimes i got so many children i had to pile them up there. SLUT.

we had electronic battleships and that game.. rules. i want and need this shirt (http://www.threadless.com/product/212/You_Sank_My_Battleship). when you fired it went "PPPPPPEEEWWWWWW!" and either "SPLLLASSSHHH" or "KKERRRPPOWWW!" when you got an entire ship an alarm went off and it went "GLUG GLUG GLUG GLUG GLUG GLUG GLUG GLUG". awesome.

pogs i attempted for a time. for a while here we got them free in packets of walkers crisps. ha! anyone remember that?

pokemon i think i was a little too old for when that whole scene came about.

[camo]

pogs i attempted for a time. for a while here we got them free in packets of walkers crisps. ha! anyone remember that?


the ones that came in spicy monster munch always smelt like spicy monster munch no matter how much you cleaned it

[Pres Zount]

I was always a fan of Glo-caps. Did you guys get those? They were like pogs except they had wacky characters on them that glowed (glew?) in the dark. GLO CAPS GLOW. I remember stacking them and slammin' them on the netball courts after my sister's training - best surface for it. Also during games.

My problem with the world's biggest puzzle is that there is way too much going on. At first I thought there were just too many balloons, then too many planets, then too many fish, too many dolphins, way too many Atlantises... too much going on. I can't handle it, and if I was trying to put that puzzle together I think I would explode (into tiny puzzle pieces).

Would it be easier if the puzzle itself had the picture of the smiling woman sitting cross legged on it?

Rather than British bulldogs, my friends and I played brandings with an old cricket ball. Did anyone else play that?

[camo]

Rather than British bulldogs, my friends and I played brandings with an old cricket ball. Did anyone else play that?

British Bulldog was banned at our school because some kid clothes lined his mate and knocked a bunch of his teeth out. All I remember is the huge patch of sand that the dining ladies put out to cover the blood.

Brandings sounds like something they would play at an all boys public school. What is it?

[Kid Presentable]

Throwing a ball at people as hard as you could. We played brandings with a golf ball once. We also invented a version of baseball where you swing with a cricket bat and the other team had to brand the entire batting team as they made their way around all of the bases in one go. Then there was the old tennis ball version where you all just stand in front of a wall and a person tries to brand youse.

[camo]

Oh I see. Over here we call it 'Kingy'. I was quite good at that. We used tennis balls but we were encouraged to used sponge balls but they have no weight and curved all over the place.

We also played 'Kissy catch'. Ah good memories (y)

[mate_spawn_die]

a dried up stick of feces. you can give it 2 rocks as eyes and give it a shirt made with a candy bar wrapper. you can make a village of feces so the they can live in harmony. you can also use nail clippings as a smile. once you make the shit castle with the shit king and queen you can make a moat of vomit. you can also use pubic hair to give them afros or mullets (your choice). in the winter season to keep your feces warm just make a sweater with rotten ground beef. don't forget the maggot farms.

i can't believe i was eating while typing that.

[funk63]

^lol. but is it a game or just for scenery?

[na§tee]

sounds like you had a really delightful childhood.

[camo]

...making poo pies

[Pres Zount]

Kids nowadays! Pókemon is rubbish!


I had a rock pet though. I painted blue eyes on it. I guess I got bored of it after a few minutes because it never got a mouth or any other facial features, and I never saw it again.

Did anyone make a grass person where the grass grew out their head?

[camo]

Speaking of hair... how about those Iron filing facial hair games were you had a hairless picture of a guy and moved around iron filings to give him hilarious porn tashes and mohicans.

[taquitos]

^wooly willy

[camo]

not really, it's all maintained nicely down there.

Anyways, back to the subject - what was the name of the beardy thing?

[taquitos]

har dee har har

[camo]

sorry, couldn't help it

[taquitos]

OMG LOL (http://lh5.ggpht.com/RSterzinar/RwBXY28taBI/AAAAAAAAGF0/OLf-9u-LHNw/DSC09984.JPG?imgmax=512)

[camo]

hahaaaaa. Oh dear :D

[Lyman Zerga]

2000 piece puzzle was the biggest i could beat

[b-grrrlie]

When I was even younger I played with these (http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3190/2574036212_19bf9b703c.jpg?v=0) kindsa (http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3151/2574035966_39bafe3ec2.jpg?v=0) things...

[Freebasser]

Duck Fight.

[na§tee]

Speaking of hair... how about those Iron filing facial hair games were you had a hairless picture of a guy and moved around iron filings to give him hilarious porn tashes and mohicans.
ahahaha. yes. the iron bits would get everywhere and my mum would get a bit pissed off. i also had a little fingerprinting set. i got everyone in my family to give me their fingerprints so i could put them in the slammer should they commit any punishable crimes (like stealing cake/monopoly money). that was me.. dna profiler, 9 years old.

[instigator7022]

Then there was the old tennis ball version where you all just stand in front of a wall and a person tries to brand youse.

that last one sorta sounds like what we played. Wall Ball. You bounce the tennis ball against the wall and then try to catch it when it comes back but if the ball touches you and you don't catch it then you have to run and touch the wall before you get pegged.


ah recess.

[hpdrifter]

I rediscovered a love for jigsaw puzzles about 5 years ago. Sadly all of my free time now is dedicated to staying 1-2 missions ahead of the fiance in GTA IV. I curse the day that game came into my house!

[Pres Zount]

When I was even younger I played with these (http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3190/2574036212_19bf9b703c.jpg?v=0) kindsa (http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3151/2574035966_39bafe3ec2.jpg?v=0) things...

Those are awesome. This (http://bp0.blogger.com/_AGm7EQe9boE/R38nTLBDzvI/AAAAAAAABSM/yOQZ4HuWDJw/s1600-h/IMG_1317.jpg)is the Australian version of which I did similar things.