How to beat anyone at Jenga by Dan Smith
Dan Smith of Wired asks Leslie Scott, the creator of Jenga, for her top tips on how to win the game.
Atomic Jenga
Atomic Jenga could turn domestic refrigerators green
For some materials, magnetism is like an atomic version of Jenga. Remove a few atoms from one place and their magnetic properties remain standing, but pull out others and these properties collapse. The discovery not only changes our understanding of magnetism, it could also speed the development of eco-friendly magnetic refrigeration.
Competitive Jenga – the film
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!
‘It’s like a game of Jenga that’s got out of hand’
……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.’
Anagram & Ex Libris
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.
OLD DOORS
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.
Investor’s Business Daily
Having read ‘About Jenga’, Victor Reklaitis interviewed me a few weeks ago when I was in Los Angeles for a book signing event at Chevaliers’ Books, hosted by Bob Peirce, Chairman of BritWeek.
I thoroughly enjoyed Victor’s always friendly, but challenging interview. And I really appreciate the resultant IBD article ‘Leslie Scott Raised Her Game’, primarily because Victor went to the trouble of interviewing and quoting two key figures in the story of Jenga’s success; Alan Hassenfeld of Hasbro, and Hal Ross, the toy expert’s expert.