The "LA" in "PLAY": Archive

Sounds Eccentric: An ipOdyssey

Wise Guys is pleased to announce a collaboration with GuerilLA. Presenting, SOUNDS ECCENTRIC, a Los Angeles premiere MP3 event:

For those of you who have never heard of an MP3 experiment, you are in for a treat. It is a mass participation adventure invented by Improv Everywhere. You can read about it and watch videos of previous experiments here.

Though the experiments have been staged in various US cities beyond New York, there has never before been such an event in southern California- until now.

EDITED TO ADD: Download the MP3 from this site RIGHT NOW. Meet tomorrow at 1 PM in Palisades Park, on the grass at Ocean and Arizona.

Did we mention this game will be entirely free? Show up wearing a yellow shirt and good walking shoes, and get ready to cause some public silliness on a beautiful summer day. Afterward there will be drinking. See you there!

Jul 27, 20104 notes

New LA public games

Out of the Box is an LA-based scavenger hunt company and, near as we can tell, is the brainchild of Kristin K. Castle. She’s got a new game open to the public next weekend, and if you love games as much as we do (and she does) you should try hers out!

Here’s the info on her Santa Monica game on July 31st. (I’d be playing, but I’m officiating a wedding that weekend. That’s right, I’m not just minister of games, I’m also an actual minister!)

Here is another new company that I just discovered when they started following us on Twitter. Unfortunately I cannot attend either of their upcoming games, but I hope one of you will participate and let me know how it was. They have games this summer in Carlsbad and Riverside and it all is for a good cause. Here’s the web site.

And last, if you’re like me and are unluckily unable to attend these real-life games, how about some terrific board games? Here’s a blog from the self-appointed Major Fun, Bernie DeKoven, which was recommended to me by new friend Drew while at the ComedySportz World Championships in Philadelphia PA. Any of these games will make your weekend terrific.

Whatever you end up playing, however you end up playing, and whomever you play with, I hope your weekend is terrific.

Jul 23, 2010

Well where did you see it last?

That was careless.

Some puppets lost $10K in gold, buried somewhere in New York City. Starting 1 August, there will be clues posted to the site leading would-be solvers to its location. Between these knuckleheads and the dummies who lost the emeralds off their clock, we’re beginning to think people actually WANT this stuff to be found by strange solvers like us.

Any New Yorkers who would like to help the California-based Wise Guys find the treasure, please write to myles@wiseguysevents.com. If we find it, we promise not to lose it.

Jul 20, 2010

A dandy and very informative piece on the history of emoticons. I wonder what puzzle master Don Rubin thinks of these things; I could see him doing a fun game with them.

My wife Laurel and I had a typewriter at our wedding; it was a period piece from the 1920’s and we had guests type us a message in lieu of a guest book. A few people left emoticons and it seems that is probably the first time this nearly 100-year old typewriter has been used for that purpose. Breaking new ground in communication, I give you: the emoticon.

What’s your favorite emoticon?

Jul 13, 2010

The Julia Morgan of Team Building

Anne Thornley-Brown is a Toronto-based MBA and a blogger on team building who speaks with authority. And no, I didn’t liken her to Julia Morgan just because she’s a woman who made buildings, but because the JM is a major icon in my home town of Oakland and she had class. Like Anne.

Anne’s blog, corporateteambuilding.wordpress.com, has more content about team building than you could read in one sitting, unless you are prepared for a very long sitting. But you’ll find articles worth your time as soon as you start investigating. As designers of team-building games, we particularly liked this one.

We’ll be re-posting more of Anne’s blogs in the future.

Jul 12, 2010

The best moments in the games we create are the moments of inspiration, when what was a bunch of nonsense becomes clear in the flicker of an instant with the spark of understanding. It is always such a better place to be to get it than to be hidden behind the cloud of confusion! I never understand people who get mad at themselves for “not figuring it out sooner.” It took as long as it needed to take for you to get it: now you should appreciate being one of the ones who gets it! The next person to start solving it will be as clueless as you were when you began.

One of the first things we started doing when we began the business was learning about intellectual property, which is a subject followed especially carefully by inventors in the toy and games business. There is a great LinkedIn group for toy and game designers; here is a post from a recent conversation on that group. I like these stories because they feature those moments of inspiration that we like to catalyze in our games, and they are about familiar childhood toys. Every player of sophisticated games today started with the same basic childhood toys, and anyone who hasn’t seen “Toy Story 3” is nuts.

Jul 8, 2010

Jul 1, 2010

Hurry up, mail

I am really regretting waiting so long to order a copy of The Clock Without a Face. All but 3 of the numbers are found, the game is still very much alive, and they are posting new clues on the blog every day. I’m sure the 3 remaining numemeralds are not in CA but I’d like to dive into the online community that’s solving.

Anyone got a part of a page they want to share with me? What’s with the hints about geometry, and the answer to a geometry problem being more difficult than it appears?

http://gustwintig.com/

Jul 1, 2010

#clock without a face

The "LA" in "PLAY"

July 2010

8 posts