Bletchley Juniors Codebreaking Club opened its doors today for its first intake of codebreakers. I started with some steganography, explaining that it is an Ancient Greek word meaning “covered writing”. I asked for a volunteer. Every child put their hand up. I said it was lovely that they were all so keen, but they did not know what they were volunteering for! I then chose one child and asked them to come to the front. I explained that they had to act the part of a slave in Ancient Greece. They looked a bit doubtful, but gamefully carried on. I played the part of Histiaeus, and Anna played the part of Aristogoras, his son in law, who lived in different parts of Greece. We role-played me shaving the slave’s head and tattooing a message on their head. We then waited several weeks for the hair to grow back. I then gave the slave their instructions (they had to memorise a line) and sent them on their way to Aristogoras. When they arrived they said “shave my head and look thereon”. Aristogoras did this and read the message. The slave then had to wait for their hair to grow back again before they could travel home. I wanted to start with something quite light-hearted but which would also get the children thinking about the different stages to sending a message.

I then showed the children a scytale, a tool used by the Ancient Greeks to communicate during military campaigns.

I showed them one I made earlier. I unwound the paper to show that when you try to read down, the message makes no sense. I demonstrated that the person receiving the message must have a scytale of the same diameter, or the message cannot be read.

The children then had a go at making their own scytale using cardboard tubes and long strips of paper. They first had to plan and write their message on separate paper, to make sure it was the correct length. The wound their strip of paper around the tube, attached it with tape and wrote their message on it, putting one letter on each strip. They unwound their message and swapped it with another child, then tried to read and write down the new message. The children seemed to really enjoy the opportunity to use their hands and make something. We gave them spare strips of paper to take home if they wanted to, along with the tubes.

We ended by giving out log books I had made (and hand-stitched!). I asked the children to write in steganography and scytale as our two topics from the session.

 

 

 

 

This was our first Adult Board Games Club after our Christmas break. We started with Uno (Mattel, 1971). We noted the similarity with the boneyard in Dominoes i.e. having to keep taking a card from the pile until you have one you can play. I find some of the special cards a little confusing so we introduced them gradually. On our first game we used the wildcards and the reverse direction card; on our next game we added in the skip card. We enjoyed working out the strategy of using the reverse and skip cards to miss out a player who has less cards than you and keep them in the game longer.

Our second game was Rainbow Rage (Big Potato, 2016) (which I prefer to call Rainbow Race). The first thing to do is set aside the colours of the rainbow you learnt as a child (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet) as this game uses purple and pink instead of indigo and violet. Once you have got over this annoyance, this is a good game of visual perception. A card is turned over and players race to shout out the two colours that have swapped places. They win a block of each colour. Some cards are a perfect rainbow with all the colours in the correct order: the first to shout “rainbow” gets to choose which coloured block to add to their collection. Players can trade three spare blocks for a colour of their choice. The first player to collect a block of every colour and build their own rainbow is the winner. I do enjoy these games which are easy to explain and quick to start playing, and which can be enjoyed by all ages.

 

It was our final Adult Board Games Club before Christmas, so we played two old favourites: Dominoes and Draughts. People found it relaxing to play Block Dominoes, as it was something they could remember from their past, as opposed to the many unfamiliar games we have bombarded them with since September! In one game I emptied the entire boneyard. Good job we weren’t adding up the pips. We discussed some of the strategies, such as getting rid of doubles early and watching why people are digging in the boneyard and trying to memorise what tiles they lack.

We then had a marathon game of Draughts, interspersed with delicious stollen and mince pies brought in by one of our members as a surprise. Lots of kings were made, but we ran out of time before we could decide on the best strategy for ending the game.

We are looking forward to playing lots more game in 2019, and will welcome any new members who want to join us.

It was our last session of the term, so we asked the children to request their favourite games from this term. We played Mastermind, Ghost Blitz and Frog Rush. I brought in one new game: Foxy (MB, 1977). There is a 6 x 6 board, with 32 shallow holes (the corners do not have holes). There are 11 purple wooden discs, which are randomly distributed across the board. Each player has a tube which they fill with 11 wooden discs (one player has blue, the other yellow) and position on opposite corners. (I am always blue by the way, even when playing a child). Players take it in turns to move their tube in any direction, over any number of spaces, but they cannot turn direction mid-move. As the tube moves over an empty hole a disc drops down. The first player to empty their tube is the winner. A good strategy is to try and block the other player’s tube with your own tube, limiting their options on their next turn.

At the end of the session we explained to the children that in the new year we introducing a new after school club: Bletchley Juniors Codebreaking Club. We had a brief chat about the role of Bletchley Park in the Second World War. We do hope the children return for this new club, as we have enjoyed their company and we can see how much enjoyment they get from playing games and exercising their minds.

 

We played a few different 5 in a row games this week at our Board Games Club for Adults. We have played Pente, Pentago, Cavendish and Cambio before, so brought them back: some people played them for the first time; others played them as a recap and enjoyed reflecting on the similarities and differences between the games.

We played Swish (ThinkFun, 2011), a game of visual perception, for the first time with the adults. There are 60 transparent cards; each card has some combination of balls and hoops on it, in different positions, with these shapes being in four colours. A Swish is two or more cards that can be laid on top of one another in a way that every ball fits in a hoop of the same colour. Flipping and rotating are allowed. To start the game, 16 cards are laid out in a 4×4 grid. Players simultaneously try to create a Swish, keeping the cards used, with new cards laid to fill in the gaps in the grid. The player with the most cards when the deck runs out is the winner. Some people enjoyed this game more than others did. We reflected on how different games use different parts of the brain, and appeal to some people more than others. Anna said she wanted to attached probes to people’s brains to see the different parts firing up. Strangely no-one volunteered for this assignment.