The Remarkable Business of Creating a Game that Became a Household Name
Have just come across this 4 minute ‘documentary’ about Charles ‘biscuit’ Sinclaire, ranked number 4 Competitive Jenga player in the upper midwestern state.
The film’s blurb declares that ‘The world of Competitive Jenga is full treachery and deceit… or it could just be that ‘biscuit’ its rising ’star’ is.’
A must see for all Jenga players every where!
……so says Karl Pilkington of a collection of Egyptian pyramids in ‘An Idiot Abroad’ (Sky 1), which Ricky Gervais professes ‘Is the funniest documentry I’ve ever seen.’
Since publishing the book ‘About Jenga’, I’ve come across a myriad new examples of how Jenga, the word I borrowed from Swahili to name my game, has been adopted by the English language.
For example, I was fascinated to discover that Jenga, itself a word so new to the English language that it doesn’t appear in the Oxford English Dictionary (as yet?), is being used to …..
….Enhance Web Page Readability for Non-native English Readers
‘Readers face many obstacles on today’s Web, including distracting content competing for the user’s attention and other factors interfering with comfortable reading. On today’s primarily English-language Web, non-native readers encounter even more problems, even if they have some fluency in English. In this paper, we focus on the presentation of content and propose a new transformation method, the Jenga Format [so called because it inserts spaces between sentences, which create gaps that are visually reminiscent of the interlocking blocks of a Jenga game in play], to enhance web page readability. To evaluate the Jenga Format, we conducted a user study on 30 Asian users with moderate English fluency and the results indicated that the proposed transformation method improved reading comprehension without negatively affecting reading speed. We also describe Froggy, a Firefox extension which implements the Jenga format.’ Chen-Hsiang Yu, Robert C. Miller
Though Jenga was the first ( and the most commercially successful) of the forty or so games I have produced over the years, and of course remains a firm favourite of mine, Anagram & Ex Libris are two others that I never tire of playing. Sara Finch and I collaborated on both, and both games were published by Oxford Games Ltd in 1991.
Oxford Games manufactured and sold the games until early 1999, when Lagoon Games acquired the license to publish the complete Oxford Games Collection.
Now, almost twenty years since Sara and I first devised and published the games, Oxford Games Ltd will be reprinting and marketing EX LIBRIS – the games of first lines and last words, and ANAGRAM -the ingenious games of juggling words.
Researching, writing and publishing my first book, About Jenga, has opened both new and old doors. Some so old and so long unused that I had assumed their locks & hinges rusted tight and rendered useless.
So it has been with considerable surprise, and great pleasure, that About Jenga seems to have prised open so many creaky old doors into my past.
For example; as a result of coming across the book, John Durham of the Camphill Village Trust has made contact, and will be coming to visit me later this month. In 1982, then living and working in Camphill’s Botton Village, John was instrumental in manufacturing the first ever sets of Jenga. John and I had continued to bump into each other for many years at gift fairs, (he with Camphill’s range of wooden toys and I with Oxford Games Ltd) long after Hasbro had acquired the license to publish Jenga. But since Lagoon Games took over the Oxford Games Collection in ’99, I had not been to a gift fair in the UK until this year. And, in the lazy way we all allow these things happen, I had lost contact with John.
I’m thrilled that he has made the effort to push open that old door.
And I’m delighted, too, that as a result of About Jenga, I have reconnected with other old friends, Peter & Tessa Sulston. As I mention in the book, Peter, then working for Oxfam, introduced me to Camphill.
Now running their own art college in Cornwall, the Callington School of Art , I hope to drop in on the Sulstons later this year on my way down to visit my daughter, now at art college in Falmouth.
Apropos my recent discovery that the word Jenga in Kikuyu means feasting and fun, I came across this interesting blog from Alex Kjerulf – a self styled ‘Chief Happiness Officer’ – Your resume looks good, but how’s your Jenga? – about a fun way to discover an applicant’s true character in an interview. Challenge him to play a serious game of Jenga!
Jenga House. Laikipia. Kenya.
January 2000: My husband, two children (then 8 & 11) and I were the first tenants of a spanking new 4 bedroom house built for visiting senior scientists at the 50,000 acre Mpala Research Centre in Laikipia, Kenya. As I had donated funds from Jenga royalties to have the house built and furnished, the then MRC’s director, Dr Nick Georgiadis (who designed and supervised the building of the house) dubbed it – Jenga House – and the name stuck. Though it transpires now that few people here know the origin of the house’s name.
March 2010: Ten years later, and my husband and I, without children (now 18 and 21, they are both at university in the UK) are back in Jenga House for the umpteenth time. And Festus Ihwagi, a GIS expert, a friend of many years, and a frequent visitor to our home when in Mpala, surprised me by telling me that he had often wondered, but had never asked, why the house was called Jenga. So, I told him that it was called after a game I had designed, which I had called Jenga because – and I assumed that he as a Swahili speaker would know – that the word is the imperative form of the verb kjenga, meaning ‘to build’ in Swahili. He laughed and said that this now made sense, but that he had puzzled over the name for years because the word JENGA in Kikuyu, his mother tongue, has an entirely different meaning. Jenga, he told me, is a dish made of boiled, roughly ground corn that is commonly served only on festive occasions – such as wedding feasts. And because of its association with celebrations and festivities, the word has taken on a metaphorical meaning within Kikuyu culture beyond the dish it names. So that people will say ‘I’m going to eat Jenga!’ or ‘Hey, man! Where’s the Jenga ?’ – to imply that they want to celebrate, or party.
Though not my intention at all, I’m thrilled to find that the word I chose to name my game has connotations of feasting and making merry. But I’m not sure Dr Georgiadis will be quite so thrilled to discover that, for the past ten years, this world-class institution of sober research and learning has been harbouring a house of fun!
NEW YORK—The sixth annual Wonder Women of Toys Awards were granted in nine categories on Feb. 14. The awards, which honor achievements by women all along the children’s entertainment supply chain, were presented by networking group Women In Toys and Playthings magazine at a gala at The Penn Club in Manhattan.
Written by Leslie Scott, the woman who invented the game, About Jenga is an interesting memoir nestled in the story behind the creation of Jenga. But her book also offers charming and entertaining anecdotal and experiential insights into the world of business making it a worthwhile and inspirational read for aspiring inventors and entrepreneurs.
Who Would Like This Book
Any Jenga lover interested in learning more about the origins of the game will find enough gossipy and anecdotal details to make the book enjoyable. The book puts to rest any suggestion that Scott stole the idea for Jenga from African customs or that the game had its origins in some other ancient culture. Scott briefly compares her game to others and presents enough historical data to prove her case.
The book will also appeal to any aspiring entrepreneur (especially women) who have an interest in inventing, the trademark process, and in laughing while reading a book that cheerfully delivers some serious business lessons learned the hard way.
Full Review on About.com, which is part of the New York Times Company
A few weeks ago, Nic Ricketts, the museum’s games curator, and I traveled to Chicago to attend the second annual TAGIE Award dinner and explore the world of toy and game inventors. Our first stop was the design studio of Lund and Company Invention. The firm and its founder, Bruce Lund, are probably best known for TMX Elmo, but they’ve created dozens of other fun and famous playthings as well. We felt honored to get a peek behind the scenes.
From there, we made our way to Navy Pier where Nic and I appeared as part of TAGIE’s two-day seminar for new toy and game inventors. We were excited to share information about Strong National Museum of Play with a group of eager inventors and to learn firsthand about their creations. Nic’s high point for the afternoon was meeting Leslie Scott, the creator of Jenga, who was promoting her new book and playing Jenga with her fans.