Card games have been around for a long time. They’ve existed in various forms for a millennium, having been invented in the Far East. From there, they came West with trading, and in the 1400s the French solidified the 52-card deck and the four suits — spades, clubs, hearts, and diamonds — that we use today. While different cultures and nations use different sets of cards, that system is the most widely used around the world. For literally centuries now, friends, families, and strangers have convened around bar tops, campfires, and dining room tables to play friendly and perhaps not-so-friendly games of cards.

The Appeal (and Manliness) of Card Games

What is it that makes card games so appealing, and why have they found such a particularly prominent place in the culture of men?

Portability. Rather than having to cart around a game board and various easily-lost pieces, a deck of cards can readily fit into a pocket or other small space. This is one reason they’ve long been popular with sailors and soldiers (as well as travelers and adventurers of all kinds); they can easily be thrown in a pack or seabag and cracked open on the frontlines or the bunk of a submarine.

Speed. Board games often require lengthy set-ups, and games can take a long time. It’s easily forgotten where one is at in the game if a break is needed. Card games, on the other hand, just need a shuffle, and you can play almost anything imaginable. And most games, even long ones, have natural breaks at the end of a hand or deal. You can just as easily play for a few minutes or a few hours.

Extra man points if you can identify the fella putting down the card.

Adaptability and informality. Most card games are folk games, with rules being passed on and changed from generation to generation (which is what makes tracing each game’s specific history particularly difficult!). Every family and even region has its own set of rules they prefer, and those rules can continue to evolve based on what’s most enjoyable for the folks playing it. Most games can also be scaled up or down on the challenge level to incorporate kids and expert players alike.

Balance of chance and skill. Games scholar David Parlett writes: “A major attraction of card games is that they are in general neither wholly mindless, like most dice games, nor excessively cerebral, like Chess, but offer a reasonable balance of chance and skill. The actual balance varies from game to game, enabling well-informed players to select from the vast repertoire of card games the one or two best suited to their tastes and talents.” Even though players don’t have control over the chance aspects of games, in times past, a man who had a streak of luck in cards was considered favored by the gods, which enhanced his honor.

Manly competition. It is has often been noted that men’s games are symbolic representations of their more violent clashes in fighting and war. This is as true of something like football as it is of card games. When anthropologist Michael Herzfeld lived among the tough, rugged shepherds of a remote, mountainous region of Crete, he observed that their daily card games were a “medium for the expression of contest in emblematic form.” He writes:

“Contests they most certainly are. One of my most frequent card playing companies would announce, ‘Let’s clash lances [na kondarokhtipisomene]!’ Card games are often described as ‘struggling,’ and valiant opponents as pallikaria (‘fine young men’). Some basis of opposition beyond that of a friendly game is usually sought; when two kinsmen of different generations were matched against each other, even though they were fairly close in age, an onlooker jocularly justified the whole situation by announcing that it was a contest between the old and the young. Almost every move is made with aggressive gestures, especially by the striking of the knuckles against the table as each card is flung down.”

This echo of the basic quest for manhood and honor, the requirement of strategy, and the element of risk and reward, “lends spice to what would otherwise be a daily repetitive activity.”

Ease and enjoyment of conversation. Card games facilitate easy, no-pressure conversation; if someone has something to say, they can say it; otherwise, people can just concentrate on the gameplay. Especially when all the participants are men, jokes and insults are traded and contribute to the unique sense of male camaraderie that can emerge around card playing. As Herzfeld notes, while other male activities like hunting or war “require swift and often silent action . . . the card game provides a forum for skill in that other area of demonstrative masculinity, clever talk. The rules of the games themselves are fixed, and therefore of relatively little interest . . . But the conversational gambits, well-timed gestures, and of course the flamboyant triumph of the winners are all legitimate themes in male interaction.”

Element of mystery. Generally in board games, every player is aware of the possible moves of every other player. You roll a die, and everyone else can see what’s going on and if a player is close to winning. With cards, the only thing the other players see is the uniform back of what you’ve been dealt. There’s a fun air of mystery knowing that on your next turn you can go out, and nobody else is the wiser until the moment you exultantly drop your cards on the table.

6 Card Games Every Man Should Know

For the reasons above, and the rich history of cards — you can play the same game your grandparents and great-grandparents played, and of course folks well before them! — every man should know a handful of games. The 6 below are a set particularly worth learning, for reasons of both popularity and intrinsic value; they are games that you’re likely to be invited to play by others, and if you aren’t, you should consider asking others to play them, because they’re so enjoyable!

Note: A couple of those listed feature one specific type of a broader category of games (e.g., gin rummy is just one of many types of rummy that can be played). But the general principles of that particular “subgenre” will give you a good idea of how that broader category of game is played.

1. Gin Rummy

Gin rummy was popular in Hollywood; here co-stars Joan Fontaine and Louis Jourdan play in between shooting scenes for Letter From An Unknown Woman.

Rummy, as a broader category of card games, revolves around gameplay in which participants try to make sets, or melds (in card playing parlance) — generally either 3 (or more) of the same number/rank, or 3 (or more) suited cards in sequence (a run). It’s also a “draw and discard” game, in which players draw a card from either an undealt or discard pile, and throw out an unwanted card as well. When all a player’s cards are part of a meld (or as many as are needed based on the variation), they go out, and get points based on what the remaining players have in their hand. Generally, you’ll play to a set point number, often 100.

Games scholars believe that rummy was originally a card variation on the Chinese tile game mah-jong, and came into being perhaps as early as the 1700s. Through many cultural and regional iterations, gin rummy, as the folk tale goes, was created in 1909 by whist (another card game) teacher Elwood Baker and his son, Charles Baker (who went on to become a renowned screenwriter). It’s thought that they invented the variation as a faster version of standard rummy. The history of gin is hard to suss out, though, since it didn’t really become popular until the 1930s (as with many card games in the US), when the Great Depression forced families to entertain themselves at home. It’s an easier game to learn than bridge, and more family-friendly than something like poker.

Gin rummy then took off in Hollywood and became immensely popular on movie, TV, and Broadway sets as an easy game, with a better reputation than poker, that could be played in dressing rooms and picked up and left off between shoots. In the late 1930s and 1940s you’ll find references to gin and “gin sharks” in numerous films, shows, and plays.

From there, its place in American leisure and game-playing was cemented, and today it’s often a game the whole family knows and plays, particularly when visiting with grandparents.

Click here to learn the rules of gin rummy.

2. Hearts

The game of hearts falls into the trick-taking category of card games, originally stemming from whist. Rather than wanting to take tricks though, hearts is unique in that you want to avoid collecting tricks, depending on the cards in the pile; hearts are bad, as is the notorious queen of spades (also known as “Calamity Jane” or the “Black Lady” in the game). It’s usually played to 100 points, but the person who gets to 100 is actually the loser, and the person with the lowest points the winner (hearts being a point each, and the queen of spades being 13 points).

Hearts first appeared in the US in the late 1800s, but has origins going to back to a 1600s French game called “reversis.” Like the modern hearts, the goal was to avoid taking tricks that had certain cards in them. While one hindrance to playing hearts is that the modern version requires 4 players to get a game going (though it can be played with more or less, with rule changes), it still enjoyed pockets of great popularity in the 20th century, especially among college students.

The game was then given new life at the end of the millennium when Microsoft Windows included it as a built-in game in their operating systems starting in the 1990s. You had three players provided for you, and could pick up a game anytime you wanted. This was how I learned the game, actually. Practice and learn on a computer or on your phone, then find three friends to play with. It will be far more interesting than staring down Pauline, Michele, and Ben (the default opponents in early Windows versions).  

Click here to learn the rules of hearts.

3. Poker (Texas Hold ‘Em)

Poker is a quintessentially American card game. What makes it unique from any of its antecedents is specifically the betting factor. While the gameplay is reminiscent of some other world games (and also just card-playing in general), the structure of betting sets it apart from anything that came before.

It’s possible that the game originated in 1820s New Orleans on Mississippi River gambling boats. From there, poker spread north along the river, and West along with the Gold Rush, becoming an important part of cowboy lore. When the dirty and tired men were done breaking horses or driving cattle for the day, and needed some entertainment around the campfire, poker became the go-to diversion. It involved skill, luck, and bit more friendly competition than many other card games. Betting — even with just pennies or matchsticks — naturally upped the ante.

Various ranking systems and variations of game play also spread through the country (and eventually around the world), but poker really took off in the late 1980s when Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which legalized casinos on Native American land. Prior to that, gambling in all forms was far more regulated. Different regions had different popular variations, but Texas Hold ‘Em came to be the most played version in the Western US. In the 2000s, when ESPN began televising the World Series of Poker, and online gameplay took off, Texas Hold ‘Em became the dominant poker game around the world.

What makes poker great is that it retains a very competitive spirit even while playing for low stakes, and it can be scaled up or down depending on the proclivities of the group. You can play for $.05 or $5 or $5,000 or $500,000. Or for Chips Ahoy cookies. It’s also an ideal card game for a large gathering. Have a bachelor party to plan? Or a birthday shindig? Or a weekend guys night while ladies go paint and sip wine? A game of Texas Hold ‘Em in the garage or basement is perfect. To get you started, here’s a primer on the game, and here’s how to host a poker night.

4. Solitaire

Solitaire, as a group of games played primarily by oneself, was first developed in the mid-1700s, and first appeared codified in writing in the late 1700s. Unlike the other specific games in this article, I’m listing it here as the broad category. Why? For the simple reason that it’s likely everyone already has a preferred version of the game! (Mine is a variation of Kings in the Corners solitaire that I learned from my dad.)

Solitaire was actually first played with multiple people, either by taking turns making moves, or by each person playing with their own deck and seeing who would “win” first. It’s likely that the version played truly alone against just the deck itself came about by people practicing for the multiplayer variety. Soon, innumerable versions of solitaire came about, as any player could really make any set of rules they desired. It’s said that Napoleon played when he was exiled, and although a number of versions of solitaire are named after him, this rumor is likely just that.

As with hearts, solitaire really exploded along with the personal computer. No need to shuffle the deck yourself every time. Klondike, FreeCell, and Spider became the most popular (at least on computers), as those were stocked on most machines back in the 90s. Today, you can download apps that offer hundreds of versions of solitaire.

Try some out (you can peruse the “Solitaire” section of this book, or look them up online), practice playing them by hand versus on a device, and next time you’re bored, rather than automatically jumping to your phone for entertainment, deal out some cards and play solitaire.  

5. Cribbage

The game of cribbage has been beloved by men for centuries. While it incorporates a board, it’s really a card game for generally two people (though three or four can readily be accommodated with just slight differences), with the board only used to keep easy track of points accumulated. There are two parts to cribbage: pegging (numerically counting your and your opponent’s cards up to 31) and counting (making sets, runs, and 15s with your cards — see rules for more detail). It’s a game that really defies being grouped into other broader categories of games, making it especially fun and unique; there’s not really anything else like it!

Believed to have been invented, or at least codified, by British soldier and poet Sir John Suckling in the 17th century, it was brought to American shores by English settlers where it became quite popular in the colonies, especially in New England. Requiring only two players, it was readily adopted by sailors and fishermen as a way to wile away the time. Cribbage boards, which have either 61 or 121 holes, were (and still are) crafted from a variety of materials (learn how to make your own board here!) and could be quite unique and elaborate in form and style. Eskimos would make cribbage boards out of walrus tusks to trade with the sailors and fishermen who made port near their villages.

Cribbage remained popular with mariners for hundreds of years, enjoying especially widespread play in the Navy during World War II. It was thought of as the unofficial game of submariners, who played round the clock as they patrolled for Japanese ships.

Cribbage continued to be played after the war, and was a favorite game of college students at least up through the previous generation. But it seems to have, along with most other analog games, largely fallen out of favor and sight. It’s not a game that easily adapts to digital play either, meaning a lot of folks know of the game, but don’t necessarily know how to play. Don’t be like those guys.

Click here to learn the rules of cribbage.

6. Blackjack

Blackjack is unique on this list as it’s primarily a game you’d be found playing in a casino. It’s actually the most widely played casino game there is. Why might that be? Largely because it’s fast to play and easy to learn. You and/or a group of other players are betting against the dealer — just the dealer, you’re not competing against other players — to see whose cards can get closest to adding up numerically to 21 (or at 21) without going over. There’s a bit more nuance to it, but that’s the gist. If you get closer than 21 to the dealer, you win (as does anyone else who did the same). If the dealer is closer to 21, you lose. The value of learning the game is that you’ll be able to walk into a casino — which can be an intimidating place — and know how to confidently play at least one game.

Blackjack (previously called just “21”) was first referenced in writing in a short story by Miguel de Cervantes (of Don Quixote fame) in the early 1600s, meaning it was invented and played likely sometime in the mid or late 1500s. When introduced into US gambling houses in the 1800s, an early, seemingly random rule dictated a 10-to-1 payout if your hand contained a black (spade or club) jack. The name obviously stuck, even though the 10-to-1 payout was quickly abandoned.

The game became more popular in the U.S. in the late 1950s when some math whizzes came up with strategies that enabled the player to gain an advantage over the house. Ed Thorp’s popular 1963 book Beat the Dealer was the first to lay out card counting to the general public, and hopeful players the world over have tried, both successfully and unsuccessfully, to (mostly) legally win millions of dollars (as portrayed in the popular movie 21).

While card counting is technically legal as long you aren’t using some sort of device to help you, it’s very hard to do successfully, and casinos have the right to kick you out and ban you if they don’t like your odds and suspect you of it. So don’t try. Do, however, know the basics of the game so that when you happen to be in Vegas for your brother’s bachelor party, you’ll at least be able to hang around and not just sheepishly watch over his shoulder as a spectator.

Click here to learn the rules of blackjack.

Know these 6 card games and you’ll be able to confidently join in a contest with friends, wile away time with your family on a rainy camping trip, entertain yourself on a long flight, and keep your grandma company every Sunday night.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

“My name’s Maverick. Named after my pappy. He’s the one who said, ‘Hell has no fury like a man who loses with four of a kind.'”

Thus mused the famous riverboat legend, Bret Maverick.

To ensure you’re not the sad sap that loses with a four of a kind, we’ve put together this illustrated guide that lays out exactly which poker hand beats which other poker hands. We walk you through every combo, from the lowly high card to the coveted royal flush. Whether you’re prepping for Vegas or just trying to hold your own at the regular poker night you host for your buddies, this guide has got you covered. 

Illustration by Ted Slampyak

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

An essential part of being an awesome uncle is having a repertoire of tricks and jokes that will amaze your nieces and nephews, and crack them up. So from time to time we’ll be offering you current and future uncles out there a tutorial on some gags that’ll have them thinking you’re the coolest dude in the world. Check out all our Cool Uncle Tricks. 

The ol’ stick-a-pencil-up-your-nose-and-in-your-ear trick will leave your young nieces and nephews shrieking with both joy and terror. All you need is a pencil or pen. You could even use a straw if you’re at a restaurant and are wanting to entertain a toddler without a smartphone. Practice this trick in the mirror so you can see if you’re hiding the trick well enough. To add to the effect, make grimacing noises and faces to really sell the idea you’re actually shoving an object into your cranium. 

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Puzzles may seem like fairly pedestrian pastimes — fun ways to while away a rainy afternoon. And while they certainly do make for satisfying diversions, my guest would say they’re also more than that, and can teach us plenty about life as well.

His name is A.J. Jacobs, and he’s the author of The Puzzler: One Man’s Quest to Solve the Most Baffling Puzzles Ever, from Crosswords to Jigsaws to the Meaning of Life. Today on the show, A.J. explains what makes a puzzle a puzzle, and why we’re drawn to them and enjoy them so much. We then discuss the charm of certain puzzles, from crosswords and Rubik’s Cubes, to jigsaws and mazes. Along the way, we discuss some of the strategies behind solving these puzzles, and how these strategies can help you become an all-around better thinker and decision maker, and better at navigating the puzzling dilemmas of life itself.

Resources Related to the Podcast

• A.J.’s previous appearance on the podcast — Episode #53: Experimenting With Your Life
• Maki Kaji — the father of Sudoku
• AoM Article: The Best Riddles for Kids
• A.J.’s wife’s scavenger hunt company, Watson Adventures
• Wordplay
• The Great Vermont Corn Maze
• Tanya Khovanova’s Math Blog
• Kryptos — art sculpture with encrypted code on the grounds of the CIA
• Apophenia
• Sunday Firesides: Take It Bird by Bird

Connect With A.J. Jacobs

• A.J.’s Website
• A.J. on Twitter

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Read the Transcript

Brett McKay: Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of The Art of Manliness podcast. Puzzles may seem like fairly pedestrian pass times, fun ways to while away a rainy afternoon. While they certainly do make for satisfying diversions, my guest would say they’re also more than that. He they could teach us plenty about life as well. His name is AJ Jacobs, and he’s the author of The puzzler: One man’s quest to solve the most baffling puzzles ever, from crosswords to jigsaws, to the meaning of life. Today in the show, AJ explains what makes a puzzle a puzzle and why we’re drawn to them and enjoy them so much. We then discuss the charm of certain puzzles from crosswords and rubik’s cubes to jigsaws and mazes. Along the way, we discuss some of the strategies behind solving these puzzles and how these strategies can help you become an all round better thinker and decision-maker, and better at navigating the puzzling dilemmas of life itself. After the show’s over, check out our show notes at awin.is/puzzles. AJ Jacobs, welcome back to the show.

AJ Jacobs: I am delighted to be back and Brett it’s been since episode 53.

Brett McKay: Man, yeah, you were on one of the first ones. You were among the first you know.

AJ Jacobs: I was honored to be, yeah.

Brett McKay: Yeah, and now we’re in…

AJ Jacobs: And now look at you.

Brett McKay: No, yeah, now we’re in the 800s and you got a new book out called The puzzler: One man’s quest to solve the most baffling puzzles ever from crosswords to jigsaws, to the meaning of life. And again, this book is you take this sort of George Plimpton-esque adventure, sort of immersion journalism, and this time you explore puzzles. What led you down on that path?

AJ Jacobs: Well, I’ve always loved puzzles since I was a kid, I used to do crosswords. I would make these pencil mazes and that took up my whole living room floor, and I think it informed my world view. I think I saw all of life as a puzzle. So some of my previous books, I actually can sort of reframe as puzzles. I wrote a book on The Year of Living Biblically, and that was about the puzzle of religion and what do I teach my kids? So I’d always loved them, and I like to have a nice strong starting story for my books, and a few years ago, I had this crazy experience that provided me one, which was that I was the answer to one down in the New York Times crossword puzzle. It was author AJ blank, and I was the answer, AJ Jacobs. And I thought as a word nerd, this is the greatest moment in my life. Yeah, this is the Holy Grail. My wedding was pretty good, but this, this is great. And then my brother-in-law emailed me and he did congratulate me. He did say, “Congrats.” But he also pointed out I was in the Saturday New York Times puzzle.

And as you may know, that is the hardest puzzle of the week, harder than Sunday, all the answers are totally obscure. So his point was, “This is not a compliment. This is actually proof that no one knows who you are. This is proof in black and white of your obscurity.” So then I was kind of bombing out, the roller coaster had hit the navier, and then I went on a podcast and I told that story, and it happened that one of the New York Times crossword makers was listening, and he decided to save me and put me in a Tuesday puzzle which is one of the easier ones. It’s not Monday, but Tuesday is where Lady Gaga and Joe Biden… That’s where they appear. So he saved me from my obscurity and I’ll forever be grateful and I thought, “Well, this is fun.” And it had gotten me back into doing crosswords on a regular basis. I had become addicted and I thought, “Well, why do I love these so much? Why do millions of people spend millions of hours on puzzles of all kind?” So I thought, “Let me do a deep dive and just spend two years hanging out with the best puzzle makers and puzzle solvers, and going around the world when I could.” And that’s what I did, and that’s the… The book is the result of that.

Brett McKay: Okay, we’ll start off with a very basic question. What makes a puzzle a puzzle? Are there philosophers knocking this question around?

AJ Jacobs: I think so. It’s not as popular as the meaning of life, but it is… It all depends on your definition. And I have a very big tent for my definition of puzzles. So in the book I talk about 20 different kinds of puzzles, everything from visual puzzles like Where’s Waldo, to crosswords, to Japanese puzzle boxes, but I think what unites them all is that they all are a problem that requires a solution that involves ingenuity. You’ve got to have an unusual idea to solve them. I guess the cliche is out of the box. You’ve gotta think outside the box, and that cliche comes from a puzzle, so I feel okay using it. It was originally meant there’s a puzzle with nine dots in a square and you have to draw four lines to connect all the dots. The only way to do it is to go outside the box with your lines, so that to me is what a puzzles the definition and also the attraction, because I think… I personally love to think of creative ideas, and I think that’s what has propelled humans. That’s how we got the wheel and fire. That is the type of thinking that has brought us humanity’s greatest advances.

Brett McKay: Well, I like… A Japanese puzzle maker gave this really succinct definition of a puzzle and I really liked it and it uses just symbols. It’s question mark, arrow, exclamation point.

AJ Jacobs: Yeah. I love that. And it means the question mark is when you arrive and you’re baffled and, “What’s going on?” The arrow is the struggle, the trying things out, trying to figure, to solve the problem. And the exclamation point, is that aha moment, that Oh my God, that’s great. That is… And what’s interesting… Two things, first of all, I think that’s a good… Not just for puzzles, I think is a good summary of so much of stories, stories that require conflict and resolution, life perhaps.

Brett McKay: But I also love this guy, his name was Mackay Kanji, he’s the godfather of Sudoku. He popularized Sudoku. And he said The key to puzzles and the key to life is you have to enjoy that arrow, you can’t be all about the exclamation point, you have to enjoy the solving process and the journey. And I love that, and I try to remember that when I am in the middle of the most frustrating puzzle and you wanna throw it across the room. And I try to remind myself, this is the arrow. Just enjoy the arrow. It’s all part of the journey.

Well yeah, so that arrow part, puzzles can be really frustrating at times, and yet people spend hours on them, there’s something enjoyable about the frustration. What is it about puzzles? Why do we even do puzzles anyways.

AJ Jacobs: Well, I think it’s the same reason we do marathons and climb mountains, and I don’t know if you’ve had Paul Bloom on your podcast, but he’s a great psychologist, and he talks a lot about why do we enjoy painful things? And there are a couple of reasons. One is the cultural. We have the puritan work ethic, we are sort of accustomed to associating hard work with good things, but the second is that is wired into us as humans, we are wired to want to work hard to achieve our goals, and there’s the cliche, no pain no gain. I actually don’t think that’s technically true, you can have gain without pain, but a lot of times the pain does yield something good, so I prefer different people like different kinds of pain, so I am not someone who’s gonna climb Everest, but I am happy to tackle the hardest puzzles in the world.

Brett McKay: Also too… You talk about this throughout the book. Some of the people you talk about, that puzzles, you know there’s a solution to it, and a lot of life is just uncertain, and you don’t know what the right thing to do is for in a relationship, or should I take this job, puzzles, even though it might take you forever, you know there’s an answer and there’s something satisfying about that.

AJ Jacobs: Oh yeah, especially now that life is so confusing and there are no easy answers, this is the platonic ideal of a problem where there is always an answer, and I say to me, there are many parallels between life and puzzles. But life is more like a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces are always changing shape, and maybe the picture is also changing, so it’s more complicated. But puzzles are good training for it, nonetheless.

Brett McKay: Do we know how long humans have been doing puzzles, like what’s the earliest known puzzle?

AJ Jacobs: Again, it depends on how you define puzzle, there is… I talked to a scientist who studies slime molds, and they solve mazes, she’s studying how they put food at the end of a maze and a slime mold figures out how to get to the food. So there’s that type of puzzle, the earliest puzzles that I know of in terms of actual what we consider puzzles are probably riddles, riddles have been around for millennia, and in every culture, you can find them… The earliest riddle, I’ll tell it to you, it’s not a knee slapper, it’s not like the whole… You’re not gonna love it, but I guess it was funny back in ancient Babylon, it’s a Babylonian riddle, and it says What gets fat without eating, and pregnant without having sex. And the answer is, I won’t even make you guess ’cause it’s…

Brett McKay: I remember it. It’s clouds.

AJ Jacobs: Oh you do. Yeah, exactly. It’s a rain cloud.

Brett McKay: A rain cloud yeah.

AJ Jacobs: Nice work, remembering. So yeah, that was the first… And that has continued. Riddles continue to be a puzzle form that’s in every culture, and also there’s the crossover of history and puzzles. I talk in the book about a puzzle that helped save western civilization, which was… It was in 1942, and there was a really hard puzzle in the London Telegraph Newspaper, and at the end it said, If you have solved this crossword in less than 12 minutes, then contact this number, and that number happened to be the code-breaking arm of the British spy agency, it was the Bletchley Park, where they helped crack the Nazi Code and win the war. So puzzles can save the world. That’s my thesis.

Brett McKay: That’s great. So let’s talk about some of these puzzles you highlight, you start off with crossword puzzles, which is a good starting point because this whole thing kick-started with you being a an answer to a crossword puzzle clue. One thing I was surprised about crossword puzzles is it’s a relatively new type of puzzle. When was the first crossword puzzle published?

AJ Jacobs: The first one was in 1913 in the New York World newspaper. And what I love, my favorite part about that history is the New York Times looked down on crosswords, a lot of other newspapers started to print them and they became a big craze. There was a Broadway show about them, but in the 20s and 30s, if you look at The New York Times, they ran articles about how horrible crosswords were for society, it was like… They treated it like crack cocaine, they said it was a pestilence, they said that people were murdering each other and divorces were happening, that there were prison riots over crosswords, literally, these are all headlines in the Times. And then in 1942, World War II came and they decided, people needed a distraction and they finally embraced it, and now they’re considered the top of the puzzle pyramid.

Brett McKay: So what makes a good mix for a good crossword puzzle? Have they… The have crossword puzzle makers… They have this down to a science yet.

AJ Jacobs: I wouldn’t say it’s a science, it’s still an art and a science, but there are definitely parts that make it better, and to me, there are two parts of the crossword, there’s the trivia, so what’s the river in Uganda, and then there’s the word play, and that is what true crossword puzzle lovers usually prefer the word play. Will Shorts, who’s the editor of The New York Times crossword says, his favorite clue ever… It was something like, it turns into another story, and the answer was spiral staircase. So I am a fan of Word Play as well.

Brett McKay: So you do these crossword puzzles, you do the hard one, and along the way you find these insights about problem solving from crossword puzzles. What were the big ones that stood out to you that were applicable to other parts of your life?

AJ Jacobs: Well, a whole bunch. One is, some people do the crossword in pen. I do it in pencil and I am proud, because I think the eraser is one of the greatest inventions we have. Or the delete key. I do it online sometimes. So the key to me solving any problem is cognitive flexibility. You cannot fall in love with your hypothesis and say, This is the way it’s gotta be, whether in crosswords or in life. And I think that’s a huge problem that afflicts us as a society. We are so sure that our answer is the right one, we are unwilling to listen to evidence or to the other side.

So, eraser, the way of the eraser. That’s a big one. Another one I have is… And Bill Clinton actually talked about this in the crossword puzzle documentary, it’s called Wordplay. And he talked about, sometimes you look at a really hard crossword and nothing will click for five minutes. You’ll just be going through and nothing. And then finally, you get the… Get one answer, you get a little toehold, and from that you can work out and get another and another and another. So that is a way I solve a lot of problems, is I just find that one toehold, that one way in, and then you can expand out. Even writing the book or a chapter, I’ll find that one quote or vivid anecdote that I know will work, and then I will expand from there. So that was another lesson. And there are tons others. But, yeah, I find crosswords and puzzles are like… They’re like wise philosophy teachers. They teach you how to think and live.

Brett McKay: Yeah. The find the toehold… I mean, I think people naturally do that with a crossword puzzle. They just find a the clue they can answer right away, ’cause then it just… From there, it just gets the ball rolling. I’ve done that technique, like you in writing, when I have to write something and the… You try to write the beginning, it’s like, This is not coming, but I’ll just write the part that just… It’s really easy. And then the beginning writes itself, once you…

AJ Jacobs: Exactly.

Brett McKay: You get going.

AJ Jacobs: Oh yeah. That’s so huge. Right.

Brett McKay: And the other thing I noticed with crossword puzzles, when I did them, being patient, being able to put it aside, and then sort of marinating and letting it stew, and then you come back to it and you look at it again, it’s like, Oh yeah, this is what that is. It was so obvious. And I’ve applied that to my life as well.

AJ Jacobs: So important. I mean, first of all, I love the word marinate, ’cause I think that’s what your brain is kinda doing, marinating on the problem, not consciously, but somewhere back there. And there is… There’s lots of science on this that one of the best ways to solve problems is put it away, do something else for an hour, a day, a week, and then you come back and you’ll have a fresh perspective, and you’ll have been working on it. And what I love is this is not a new insight. Leonardo Da Vinci wrote a guide to how to be a painter, and one of his main suggestions is, if you get to a tricky part, a problem in your painting and can’t solve it, walk away and then come back, and you will be able to solve it.

Brett McKay: Well, another thing that I did… So I did crosswords puzzles a lot when I was in high school. This one summer I worked at the paint shop at the University of Oklahoma’s Medical School. And I was just with these salty… The were like 50, 60-year-old guys, just really gritty. But they love doing the crossword puzzle. I’d get there in the morning and there’d be some guy there with the paper folded, doing the crossword. And we’d work on it at lunch break and then our different breaks. But it was… It’s a very communal activity. We did it together. So you have these guys who were telling dirty jokes five minutes earlier and trying to figure out some word play, sophisticated word play.

AJ Jacobs: Well, I love that you bring that up because there is a stereotype that puzzles are a solo activity and let you just sit in the corner with your crosswords. But almost everyone in the puzzle community I ran into, it’s the complete opposite. It’s such a communal activity and you’re talking with your friends and comparing and saying, You have any hints for this, or, What do you think that is? And it really bonds people together. There’s even some social science that says, One of the… If you have people of different opinions, like liberals and conservatives, one of the best ways to bring them together is to have them solve a puzzle. And you can see that in team building… My wife actually owns a company, Watson Adventures, it’s wonderful, and they put on scavenger hunts and it’s all about people collaborating to solve these puzzles, because it works for the… Everyone has a strength. Someone might be really good at visual puzzles or at math puzzles or word puzzles. So I love that aspect.

Brett McKay: We’re gonna take a quick break for a word from our sponsors. And now back to the show. Okay, so we’ve talked about crossword puzzles. Another puzzle you highlight is the Rubik’s cube. It’s an interesting… This is a new puzzle too, but it became this cultural phenomenon. I can’t imagine a world without Rubik’s cube. So what’s the… Yeah, what’s the story there?

AJ Jacobs: Oh yeah. Now. Well, first of all, what’s your history with… Have you ever solved it?

Brett McKay: I solved it when I was like 10 by taking it apart and then putting it together. I had… There was actually… There’s that book that was written in the ’70s by that one kid. My parents actually had that. And I remember, I think I was like nine or 10, trying to follow the instructions in that book, and I was like, “No, I’m just gonna take it apart and put it together.” That’s the only time I solved the Rubik’s cube.

AJ Jacobs: Well, first of all, that is one interesting way to solve a puzzle, is… It’s sort of the Gordian knot. You chop it in half and say, Enough of this. I’m gonna… So kudos to you for solving it that way. It started in the ’80s, and it was huge. And then it kinda faded away. But then it came back because of YouTube. So now there are millions of kids who are obsessed with it, and they… There’s the speed cubing competitions, which will blow your mind. These kids… The world record for solving a Rubik’s cube is three and a half seconds. It’s crazy. I can’t even look at it in three and a half seconds, and I don’t know where to start. But anyway, I did… I, eventually, during this project, I solved the Rubik’s cube. It took me 50-plus years. I guess, 40-plus years.

But I learned a lot about Rubik’s and the allure of it and why people love it so much. And I think part of it is, is just an extraordinary fact that this little cube has, I don’t know if you remember, but the number is insane, 45 quintillion possible arrangements. It’s just a mind-boggling number. We can’t even comprehend that. That’s more than the stars that you can see. It is just insane. And yet, if you do it correctly, you can get that one arrangement that is the right solution. So to me, that’s… That is super inspiring. 45 quintillion. That’s like the smallest needle in the biggest haystack ever. You can actually solve something that has 45 quintillion options.

Brett McKay: Yeah. The 45 quintillion number really instills a lot of humility in you.

AJ Jacobs: Yeah, I agree.

Brett McKay: Thinking about it, how big it is. But I like how you use the Rubik’s Cube to explore the difference between creative problem-solving and skill. And there seems to be some tension there between the generations, like the original Rubik’s cube solvers and today’s kids who are solving these things in three seconds. Tell us about that distinction and problem-solving that the Rubik’s Cube can shed a light on.

AJ Jacobs: Yeah, I… One of the people I spent some time with was one of the original champions, way back in 1981 or two. And he is the one who wrote the book, “How to solve the cube in 45 seconds,” which now is like an eternity, but back then, that was a big deal. And he’s funny. He loves that kids love the Rubik’s Cube, but he’s a little grumpy, because he does say that it’s different. Back then, people had to discover how to solve the Rubik’s Cube. You had to create your own algorithm, your own way of solving it. And now you can go on YouTube and memorize a couple of dozen algorithms and solve it that way. So it’s a different skill. It’s sort of an exploratory and science versus memorization. And both are important. I admire both. But I do prefer puzzles where you have to come up with the solution in a totally new way and it doesn’t require as much memorization. So maybe I’m on the old fogey side, like this guy.

Brett McKay: Yeah. I’m kind of on the old fogey side, ’cause it kinda takes the puzzle out of the puzzle, if you just… You know what the answer is. If you just put these things, you’ll get it. I don’t know, it doesn’t seem as fun.

AJ Jacobs: Although I just wanted to defend these young kids ’cause it does require some… A lot of skill to figure out which algorithms to do, so that is a puzzle.

Brett McKay: Sure. Yeah. And I noticed with my kids too, they… YouTube is crazy. It’s great. I like how it motivates them to do things. But I’ve noticed that they’ll… My daughter’s really into Minecraft. And instead of trying to figure out how to build things on her own, she’ll just watch a YouTube video and just kinda pause and then do the thing and then watch it. And she builds this cool thing, and it’s… I mean, it took a lot of patience to do it, but it’s like, Yeah, I don’t wanna diss on my daughter, but I was like, “Well, you just watched a video on how to do that. It would have been cooler… I wanted to see what you wanted… If you were free building, what would you make?”

AJ Jacobs: Right. Well, it’s like the difference between Legos when we were kids and Legos now.

Brett McKay: Oh yeah.

AJ Jacobs: When I was a kid, it was just a bunch of blocks and you had to create something. And now they have these elaborate kits where you have to follow 150 instructions and get it. And they are both… They both have their benefits. So I don’t wanna be too much of an old fogey and in just following instructions to create this spaceship. But I still… I think I prefer the old type where you’re just given a bunch of random Lego bricks and you create yourself.

Brett McKay: So let’s talk about my favorite puzzle, which is the jigsaw puzzle.

AJ Jacobs: I love that you love it.

Brett McKay: So I’m curious, you’ve spent your time talking to people who make just really simple jigsaw puzzles to individuals in Vermont who make $100,000 jigsaw puzzles, hand-crafted, and you’ve been putting together a lot jigsaw puzzles. Did you figure out what it is about jigsaw puzzles that are… They’re so relaxing and soothing, but at the same time, they’re incredibly addictive?

AJ Jacobs: They really are. I know. I had that feeling when… It’s just one more. I’m just gonna get one more piece and then one more, and then it’s 3:00 in the morning. And it’s funny because I was a jigsaw puzzle skeptic, and I became a convert. And I don’t know why I was so snobby, but I, for some reason, hadn’t done them, and then I started to do ’em, and I was like, Oh yeah. And I think there are two different ways you can do jigsaw puzzle. One is as meditation. And I think that was big in the pandemic. I mean, jigsaws at the beginning of the pandemic, you couldn’t find them. They were like hand sanitizing. You couldn’t… And people just snapped ’em up because they needed that escape. And you can get into the flow and the hours just pass by like minutes. So that is one. But then there are the jigsaw puzzles where it’s more about trying to solve a really complex puzzle. And either that could be speed. There are people who are obsessed with solving ’em quickly. And I wrote in the book, one of my favorite adventures that my family and I went on was we went to Spain and competed as Team USA in the World Jigsaw Puzzle championship.

And we humiliated our country. I apologize to my fellow Americans. We came in second to last. But it was wonderful, ’cause you got to see these people at the top of their game, the LeBron James of jigsaws, and just how fast their minds and hands were moving. And it was remarkable. But then there’s another type of challenging jigsaw, which are the ones you mentioned, sort of these artisanal wood-cut jigsaw puzzles that are super tricky and have… And edge pieces look like regular pieces, there are 3D, there are pieces from other puzzles thrown in just to mess with you. And I learned to love those. Those you have to have… You have to know that frustration is gonna be a large part of it, but I find them just fun and weird and absurd and delightful.

Brett McKay: Yeah, my… I do jigsaws for the meditative purposes. That’s why I do them. And I was saying earlier, I’m very particular about my jigsaw puzzling.

AJ Jacobs: What do you like and what do you not like?

Brett McKay: Okay. So, well, there’s one, there’s jigsaw puzzle season, and it starts September 1st and goes through December 31st. That’s the only time I do jigsaw puzzles. And they have to be… I like the Americana folk art puzzles. Charles Wysocki is my favorite. And then I have to listen to my puzzle playing playlist, which is… It’s primarily schmaltzy, easy listening, and Muzak. So I’m talking like the Sedia Orchestra. I basically wanna feel like I’m walking through a Montgomery’s ward in 1987 when I’m doing puzzles.

AJ Jacobs: [chuckle] I’m relaxed just hearing about it. That sounds lovely. Yeah. That sounds fun.

Brett McKay: Yeah. But you highlighted some things like the same sort of things that… How to tackle puzzles that I’ve kind of picked up on on my own. You get that toehold. Sometimes you just start with the… If you see something that you can put together easy, start there, and from there you can build off. And then you have found some other little… Cool little tricks to put together jigsaw puzzles?

AJ Jacobs: Yeah. One that I did not expect, but these high-level jigsaw-ers, they don’t only do it by color. They also paid a lot of attention to the shape. And if you’re hit with a big blue sky and you don’t know what to do, they will sort the sky pieces by shape. So they’ll have a section of one outie and three innies and two outies and two innies, and they’ll have these little piles, and then, using those, they’ll be able to assemble it quickly. So I think that’s great. I just… I never thought of jigsaws as having a lot of strategy. But they do. At the high level, you can really separate yourself using these tricks.

Brett McKay: So you also did mazes. You talked about when you were a kid, you drew mazes on the ground that covered your whole apartment. I’m sure every kid has done that when they’re in class and they’re bored, they’d make their own maze on their folder. How long have humans been using mazes as puzzles? Did you figure that out?

AJ Jacobs: Well, yeah. Definitely millennia. There’s the myth, I don’t think it actually existed, of the Minotaur at the… In the middle of a maze in the Island of Crete. And that was a maze you didn’t wanna go into, because if you got lost, then the Minotaur would eat you. But they have been used… They’ve been used for spiritual purposes. People talk about how amazes are like prayer through walking. But then they’re also entertainment. In the Middle Age… Or, yeah, the Middle Ages or a little later, Europe had a ton of hedge mazes and people would have trysts in them. So they have a long history.

Brett McKay: And then you tackled one… Something that became really popular in America in the past, I would say, 25, 30 years, are these corn mazes. And you went to Vermont to tackle the largest, most complicated corn maze. Tell us about that experience.

AJ Jacobs: Yeah. I love this. This was the Great Vermont Corn Maze, it’s called. And it’s huge, 24 acres. And there’s no governing body that says, “This is the hardest corn maze,” but it seems that this is probably the hardest in America. And the guy who started it, Mike Boudreau, he’s a great guy, and just delightfully sadistic, though, he is… He’ll… He will gleefully tell you that people will weep, they’ll get lost, they’ll get in fights. One father drove… Abandoned his family, wife and kids, and drove off because he was so frustrated. And he says, “Don’t bring your teenage kids, because it’s too hard.” And it is… Yeah, I got… It took me over four hours of twists and turns. And there are all sorts of dead ends that will just mess with your mind. And I love it.

One of the things I loved was talking to him, because he says he stands up on a platform above the maze and watches like a God. He watches these mortals as they try to make their way. And he says it’s a real lesson in human psychology. And he says, “A lot of times, people,” he says, “Especially young men,” which I thought was telling, “Will have that cognitive inflexibility,” I was talking about. They are so convinced they’re right. So they’ll go down a corridor, they’ll hit a dead end, and they’re like, Okay. And then they go back and they go down it again. And they just keep going down that same corridor so convinced that they’re right, despite the evidence, the clear evidence that it’s a dead end. So mazes, like every other puzzle, and I think every activity, you need to be more flexible.

Brett McKay: You have talked about logic puzzles, and this reminded me, there was a period in my life where I became obsessed with logic puzzles because they’re part of the LSAT, the test you take to get into law school.

AJ Jacobs: I remember you did… Yeah.

Brett McKay: Yeah. And so tell us about… What does a typical logic puzzle look like? And why would law school think you need to learn how to do these things in order to get into law school?

AJ Jacobs: Well, that is interesting. Do you remember any of the logic puzzles that you solved?

Brett McKay: Yeah. So there’s sort of things where there’s like, There’s five people, Sam, Alex, Jane, Brad, and they are going to bring five different items on these seven different days. And you had a clue like, Okay, Brad brought this on this day, but not on that day. And then you had to figure out who brings what on what day, that sort of puzzle.

AJ Jacobs: Right. That’s interesting. Yeah, I… There are lots of different types of logic puzzles. That one I think of it as sort of the Clue, the board game Clue.

Brett McKay: Yeah, it’s like Clue.

AJ Jacobs: And to me, the big lesson of those is they’re not that hard if you figure out how to diagram them. So it’s… If you do it in your head, then it’s a mess. But if you just diagram it correctly and you’re able to check them off, then it’s pretty easy. And I don’t know why the LSAT people put it in, I assume it’s because they think that it’s a sign of clear thinking and rational thinking, which I do believe. I don’t know how much it helps you as a lawyer. But there are lots of other types of logic puzzles. I am particularly a fan of the lateral thinking puzzles. I don’t know if you know those, the ones where it’s like a… There’s a man in a field and he’s got an unopened backpack on his back, and his face down and he’s dead. What happened? And you have to try to figure it out.

Brett McKay: My kids love those. My kids love those. Yeah.

AJ Jacobs: I love ’em. Yeah. And the answer to that one, just in… If you wanna pause it and try to figure it out, but he’s a parachutist and the pack didn’t open, so he fell. And then there’s other ones that are similar. I wouldn’t call them quite lateral thinking, but they do require some sort of leap of imagination. So, for instance, there are two girls in a classroom, and they were born to the same mother on the same month, the same year, the same day, but they’re not twins. What’s going on?

Brett McKay: Yeah. I remember my… Actually, my kids told me this one. I can’t remember. What is the answer?

AJ Jacobs: [chuckle] They are triplets. Or quadruplets. Could be quintuplets, you name it. So, yeah, I am a fan of the logic puzzles. And one of the people I interviewed, one of my favorite, was the Soviet mathematician who is… Well, formerly Soviet. She’s an immigrant. She came here and fled the Soviet Union. And she has a math blog called Tanya’s Puzzle Blog. And it is so… She has solved pretty much every logic puzzle ever created by humans. And one thing she talks about, she talks a lot about how you do have to think outside the box, but her students have taught her to think even farther outside of the box, that she’s in a box of her own. So the example she gives is, there’s a famous logic puzzle where there’s…

You have a basket full of five apples, and you give out all the apples to… You have five friends, and you give an apple to each of your five friends, but there’s still one apple left in the basket. What’s going on? And the answer, the traditional answer is that you give that last apple to a friend in the basket. You’re gifting them a basket in addition to an apple. A little bonus. So that’s why… But she says her students have come up with all these other creative possibilities, even one of your… Could be that the basket is your friend. Maybe inanimate objects are your friend. Or maybe one your… One of the five people died. So it’s… I love that idea that you can think outside the box, or you can think way outside the box.

Brett McKay: There’s another genre of puzzles you tackled, and that is ciphers and codes. And you went to the headquarters of ciphers and codes in the United States, to the CIA. And there’s an art installment there with this code on it that has not been cracked in over 30 years. What’s going on there? Why is there art with a code that can’t be cracked by the CIA at the CIA?

AJ Jacobs: Yeah, this was one… And that chapter was… I loved researching, ’cause codes are everywhere. That is… It’s why we can use credit cards, it’s… There’s… Cryptocurrency is all about codes. But the CIA, one of their stated purposes is to crack codes. And about 30 years ago, they hired a sculptor to create a sculpture on the grounds of the CIA headquarters in Virginia. And he teamed up with an ex-CIA cryptographer, and they created this work of art that’s a huge metal wall, and into it are carved hundreds of letters. And those letters, they’re… They look random, but they are a code. And even though it’s in the middle of the CIA, no one has been able to fully crack that code in all of those 30 years, including the CIA. They’ve cracked parts of it.

So we have parts, and some of ’em… Some of the code seems to be a longitude and latitude maybe of some buried treasure, some of it are quotes from the guy who discovered King Tut’s tomb. But there’s a part that is still unsolved. And what I love is that there are thousands of people, mostly in an online community, who spend inordinate amounts of time trying to crack this code. And it’s been 30 years, and they… Every day they have a new theory. Oh, I think it’s Morse code, I think it’s related to the Navajo Wind Talkers, all sorts of theories. But they haven’t given up. And it’s been 30 years, 32 years. And so I try to take that as inspiration. When I’m helping my kids with their math homework and I wanna give up after 45 seconds, I think, “You know what, these guys have been going for 32 years. Let me give it another couple of minutes.”

Brett McKay: But the world of code breaking and cipher puzzle solvers taught you a lot about the dark side of puzzles. What was that?

AJ Jacobs: Well, this is interesting. I think puzzles are all about finding patterns, and science is all about finding patterns, and that can be a great thing that has huge benefits, but we are wired, so hard-wired to find patterns that sometimes we find patterns that don’t exist, and that is… The word for that is apophenia. That’s the psychological word. And, for instance, finding the Virgin Mary’s face in a piece of french toast, that’s classic apophenia. And the problem with apophenia is you become attached to that pattern and you refuse to let it go, even if you are presented with evidence that it’s not true or it’s not going anywhere. So the key to avoiding apophenia is to keep your mind flexible. But apophenia has huge, real life repercussions, and I think it’s responsible for a lot of the problems we have right now.

So people are finding patterns in the world that don’t exist. It’s what can… A lot of conspiracy theories are basically solving puzzles that don’t exist. So, QAnon, they have found all these puzzle pieces and put them together, and they have “solved this puzzle”, but the pieces don’t fit together, it is not true, but they refuse to change their thesis no matter how much evidence they’re given. So apophenia is solving puzzles that don’t exist, and you’ve got to be very careful. So don’t fall in love with your hypothesis. Keep an open mind, keep flexible. That is the only way to battle this dangerous drive in our minds.

Brett McKay: And I think all of us experience apophenia on some level. It might not be conspiracy theory level, but I’m sure we’ve all encountered things where we think… We try to read people’s minds, for example, and we start seeing things like on what they’re saying or not saying or what they’re doing, we’re saying, Yes, this means they don’t like me, and they got this vendetta against me. And basically you’re just putting together pieces of information that are disparate and have no meaning to make meaning in your head.

AJ Jacobs: It’s so true. I mean, I’m sure that half of my beliefs are based on apophenia. And I’ve kinda tried to go through and think about them, but it is such a drive, and even during this year, solving puzzles; I remember I was doing a scavenger hunt, I didn’t even write about it, but one of the clues had to do with a mouse in Central Park and it had arches, and it just so happened I had seen Stewart Little 2, the movie, and it was Stewart Little had an airplane and he drove it through arches in Central Park, and so I was like, Oh, it’s gotta be Stewart Little, that’s the answer. And I went to Central Park and I spent hours trying to verify my… And it was totally wrong, it had nothing to do with the answer. But I was so attached to it, I couldn’t see through it.

Brett McKay: So one thing you’ve taken away from this book after researching and writing it is trying to take the lessons you’ve learned from puzzle-doing and puzzle-solving and puzzle-creating and applying it to life. Do you think it’s possible to treat all of life’s problems and challenges and annoyances as puzzles? Do you think that, is that something do you think we can do in our head, that and it can actually make things better?

AJ Jacobs: I definitely think that that frame can make things better. I don’t know about all problems and puzzles, but a lot of them. And I try to do it in my life. Quincy Jones, the great musician, he has a quote where he says, “I don’t have problems, I have puzzles.” And I think it’s so inspiring, because problems are thorny and depressing and insoluble a lot of times, whereas puzzles, they can be solved, and they are inspiring, you want to solve them, and even sometimes they involve playfulness. So I try to frame my life’s challenges as puzzles. How can I solve them? And one of the hardest puzzles we face now is just how do we bridge the gap between the culture, the culture war. That to me is a huge puzzle. And when I’m talking to someone from the other side of the political spectrum, I could try to debate them, but rarely, the sort of war of words, it rarely yields anything, in fact it usually polarizes both sides. So instead I try to treat it as a puzzle, and I say, You know, why do you believe what you believe? Why do I believe what I believe? Is there any evidence that we could change our minds?

Where do we go from here? Is there any common ground we have? Now, all those are puzzles that you can work on collaboratively in a conversation, and I think that’s much more likely to yield something useful than to berate each other. So, to me, one of the phrases I learned during the pandemic was, Don’t get furious, get curious. And I think that is a very nice little puzzle motto that I try to remember all the time.

Brett McKay: Have you tried to help your kids to take up the puzzle mentality with their life?

AJ Jacobs: Oh sure. And it’s a puzzle of how to get them to listen to me, which I have not solved that puzzle. [chuckle] But I do think… Yeah, if they are faced with something that… We often talk about the strategies we use in puzzling, like if they are faced with a big sort of term paper, well just take it step by step. Anne Lamott has that great quote, “Bird by bird.” Her brother had to write a paper on all birds in North America, and he’s like, What do I do? And their father said, Just do bird by bird. And that is a great puzzle strategy. Just one step at a time.

Brett McKay: Well, AJ, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

AJ Jacobs: I’m at ajjacobs.com, or the puzzlerbook.com, or I’m on Twitter at AJ Jacobs. And I would love to hear from folks about their favorite puzzles. And there’s tons of puzzles in the book for them to solve, so if they need hints on that, then they can also contact me.

Brett McKay: Well, AJ Jacobs, thanks for your time, it’s been a pleasure.

AJ Jacobs: My pleasure, and I hope to come back before episode, it would be like 1700.

Brett McKay: [chuckle] Right. We’ll make it happen.

AJ Jacobs: All right. Thanks.

Brett McKay: My guest there was AJ Jacobs, he’s the author of The Puzzler. It’s available on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about his work at his website, ajjacobs.com. Also check out our shownotes at aom.is/puzzles, you can find links to resources or you can delve deeper into this topic.

Well, that wraps up another edition of The AOM Podcast. Make sure to check out at our website at artofmanliness.com, where you can find our podcast archives as well as thousands of articles written over the years about pretty much anything you can think of. And if you’d like to enjoy ad-free episodes of the AOM podcast, you can do so on Stitcher Premium. Head over to stitcherpremium.com, sign up, use code Manliness at checkout for a free month trial. Once you’re signed up, download the Stitcher app on Android or iOS, and you can start enjoying ad-free episodes of the AOM podcast. And if you haven’t done so already, I’d appreciate if you take one minute to give us a review on Apple podcast or Spotify, it helps out a lot. And if you’ve done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you would think would get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, this is Brett McKay. Reminder to you all listening the podcast, but put what you’ve heard into action.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If, like us, you’re a fan of Rudyard Kipling’s manliest of poems — “If—” — you’ve probably read those lines many times before.

But did you ever stop to wonder . . . “Hey, what is pitch-and-toss, anyway?”

That’s the question that crossed my mind the other day while reading the “If” poster hanging on my son’s wall for the dozenth time. And I decided I’d finally figure out the answer, and learn what exactly pitch-and-toss was, and how to play it. If you’d like to learn how to play it too, read on.

A Brief History of Pitch-and-Toss

Pitch-and-toss goes by various names, including “pitching pennies,” “pigeon toss,” “chucks,” “tinks,” and “jingles.” Versions of the coin-tossing game have existed across cultures going back thousands of years. The ancient Greeks played it with bronze coins. It rose to popularity in the West in 19th century England, though as the winner of a round of pitch-and-toss gets to keep the coins that are played, it’s a form of gambling, and as such was illegal; those caught playing could be punished with a fine, days to weeks in prison, and even hard labor. But that didn’t stop it from being played by grown men in gentlemen’s clubs, nor by working-class street kids, amongst whom the game was especially popular.

In English cities, boys would gather in back alleys and along canals to play covert games of pitch-and-toss. Sometimes these gatherings were small and informal; in other cases, large, organized competitions took place during which hundreds of pounds changed hands. Lookouts would scan for the police; if a bobby was spotted, the players would scatter in all directions.

Pitch-and-toss migrated to America and remained a popular pastime on both sides of the pond into the 1950s. Then, as with all street games, from kick the can to stickball, it started to disappear as boys increasingly sought their entertainment indoors, in front of the television.

How to Play Pitch-and-Toss

There are different variations of pitch-and-toss.

In its simplest form, a player just tosses a handful of coins in the air, and he and his chums place bets on the proportion that will land heads up versus tails up. It’s a game of pure chance.

Another common form of the game played back in the day involves a bit of skill. Players, who supply their own coins, line up at an agreed upon distance (often around six to seven yards) from a wall or a marker like a rock. The players then take turns tossing coins of equal value towards the wall/marker. The player who gets his coin closest to the target wins. Winner collects all the coins that were tossed.

That’s it.

There are a few variations on this version.

If the player who makes the first toss is happy with his toss, he can let it lie. In that case, all the players who follow him must let their first toss lie where it lands as well. If he doesn’t think his first toss is close enough to the wall to beat the subsequent players, he can pick it back up, and try tossing it again, after all the other players have made their toss. The next player can also either let his first toss lie or pick it up to take his chance on a second round toss. However, once a player decides to let his coin lie, all subsequent players must do likewise, e.g., if the first and second players pick up their coins, but the third player lets his coin lie, then the fourth and fifth players must let their first toss lie, and when the first and second players have their second chance at tossing, they must let those tosses lie.

You can also modify the game by making it so that the coin has to hit the wall before it hits the ground. Closest coin to the wall after hitting the wall wins.

If a coin lands on top of another coin, that coin wins the round even if it’s not the closest to the wall because landing a coin on top of another coin is some Dude Perfect stuff.

Distribute Coins With “Tips”

Rather than doing the winner-takes-all method, another way to distribute coins at the end of pitch-and-toss is called “tips.” Instead of the winner of the round getting all the coins tossed in that round, the winner gathers all the coins in his hands, tosses them up in the air, and calls “heads” or “tails.” He then gets to keep all the coins that land on the side he called.

The remaining coins are gathered by the player whose coin landed second closest to the wall. He shakes them up, tosses them in the air, and calls heads or tails. He collects the coins that land on the called side. If there are any remaining coins, the third-place player goes through the same process. If the player who ends up with the last coin calls heads and it lands tails (or vice versa), he passes it back to the first-place player who gets another shot at tossing and calling it. And so on.

The tips variation just distributes the coins a bit more equitably than the standard winner-takes-all version and allows for longer gameplay.

Make One Heap of All Your Winnings . . .

It seems that the lines in “If—” about making one heap of all your winnings and risking it on one turn of pitch-and-toss refers to winning a round of the game and then taking those winnings and going all-in on betting that you’ll win another round. It’s of course a metaphor for taking any kind of risk in life . . . and then being able to move on, with resilience, if it doesn’t pan out. But hey, now you know how to literally play a game of pitch-and-toss, too. And the same rules apply: there’s no whining if you lose!

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

The batter tightens his grip around the bat and stares down the pitcher with a flinty look.

The pitcher winds up and hurls the ball with all his might.

WOOSH

PLOP!

As the golf-ball-sized ball lands in the catcher’s mitt, the struck-out batter dejectedly walks away from the plate, leaving his broomstick-width bat behind.

Wait, what? Why are the ball and bat so slimmed down?

What might have initially sounded like a game of baseball isn’t America’s pastime at all. Rather, it’s a regional speciality that originated in the taverns, factories, and schoolyards of the early 20th century.

Welcome to corkball: a mutant baseball game hailing from the streets of St. Louis, that you just might want to import to your own neighborhood. 

The Origins of Corkball

In the 1840s, Irish and German immigrants came pouring into St. Louis. Many of the latter brought beer recipes from Deutschland and opened breweries that mass-produced German lagers for the country’s growing population. While brewing companies like Anheuser-Busch were innovating beer-making with pasteurization and refrigeration, the employees at these breweries were making innovations to American baseball and created a version of the game that allowed them to play with a limited number of players, in a limited space, without the usual regulation equipment. 

Legend has it that corkball got its start in an east St. Louis tavern sometime around 1900. Some bored, slightly drunk dude popped the cork bung off a beer barrel and wrapped some tape around it. He then tossed it to a drinking buddy who tried to hit it with a broomstick. 

Boom!

Corkball was born. 

The most significant difference between corkball and baseball was that corkball had no runners, so there were no bases. Because there were no bases or runners, men didn’t need a big space or many players to play corkball. They could technically get a corkball game going with just four total — two to a team. 

Corkball is obviously all about pitching and hitting. But the game’s uniquely small ball and bat make the latter frustratingly tricky. While corkball could be played with a broom and a homemade ball made with a taped-up cork bung, a few sporting goods companies like Spalding and Louisville Slugger started manufacturing “regulation” corkball equipment. A regulation corkball bat has a thin 1.5″ barrel at its widest point, about the width of a broomstick. A regulation corkball looks like a standard baseball but is smaller in size. It’s only 6.5″ around and weighs a measly 1.5 ounces (a regulation baseball is 9” round and weighs 5 ounces). Because the corkball is so light, throwing modified pitches, like curves and sliders, is much easier to do than with a regular baseball.

In the decades after its turn-of-the-century inception, corkball got somewhat more sophisticated, but not much. General rules were established, but each tavern, factory, or schoolyard had its own “home field” rules. The game was so popular with St. Louis tavern-goers that many pubs built “corkball cages” in the alleys behind their establishments. Supposedly, you can still see a few abandoned corkball cages here and there around the city.

The game of corkball spread a bit outside the Gateway to the West thanks to WWII. GIs from St. Louis taught the game to their fellow bored brethren-at-arms, and those men took the idea home with them after the war. A few southern states, like Georgia, really took to corkball, but St. Louis is still the corkball capital of the world.  

A few variations of corkball have sprung up in the city over the decades. The first is called “Indian Ball.” It’s similar to corkball in that there are no baserunners, but in Indian Ball you use a regulation-sized baseball and bat. 

Then there’s “fuzzball.” Similar to corkball in that there are no baserunners and you use a broomstick-width bat, but instead of a corkball, you use a tennis ball that’s had its fuzz burned off with a lighter.

There’s also a version of corkball where you use bottle caps instead of a corkball. Those are for the masochists of St. Louis.

While corkball is primarily a casual pick-up game, official corkball leagues have existed in St. Louis since the early 20th century and continue to live on today. While the competition can get heated, it’s mostly good-natured play. The atmosphere is similar to a softball beer league; it’s just a bunch of dudes getting together after a long day of work to blow off some steam and have some fun.

The tradition runs deep in the city: 75-year-old men are still playing this weird game they started playing as boys. You can find corkball games in St. Louis where three generations of men in a family are playing the game together. 

Corkball games look and feel like how I imagine the very first games of baseball looked and felt like. It’s kind of heartwarming to know that a bunch of grown men in St. Louis meet up to play a game just for the sake of playing a game. Long live amateurism. 

Corkball Rules

Want to try your own hand at the St. Louis tradition of corkball? Here’s how to play. 

Equipment

• Official corkball
• Corkball bat or wooden dowel that’s no wider than 1.5” in diameter or longer than 38”
• Baseball gloves

Playing Field

You can play corkball pretty much anywhere: parks, parking lots, baseball diamonds. 

Pitching rubber needs to be 55 feet from home plate. 

Unlike in baseball, in corkball there isn’t a diamond-shaped field of play, where foul lines run at angles to the left and right of home plate. Instead, there’s only a single foul line that runs behind and perpendicular to home plate. Because this foul line doesn’t connect to other lines, the width of a corkball field can be . . . indefinite. If you want. Or you can set boundaries to your field. It’s up to you.

Corkball can also be played in a corkball cage. A corkball cage usually measures 20 feet wide by 75 feet long. 

Number of Players

You need at least four players for corkball: two people per team. 

Each team needs at least a pitcher and catcher. 

You can have additional players and put them in the field of play as fielders. Usually, teams max out at five players.

Playing the Game

• Game length is five innings of three outs each for both teams.
• A hit that travels at least 15 feet, on the ground or in the air is a single.
• Five balls = a walk.
• Any combination of four hits and walks = 1 run. 
• An out can happen in one of the following ways:
  • The batter hits a foul ball.
  • The batter swings and misses AND the catcher catches the ball. If the catcher doesn’t catch the ball, it doesn’t count as a strike or a ball. It’s a dead ball.
  • The batter hits the ball, and a fielder from the opposing team catches the ball before it hits the ground.
  • The batter takes two called strikes without swinging, provided the catcher catches both balls.
  • The batter bunts the ball. (Bunting?! There’s no bunting in corkball!)
  • The batter gets hit by the corkball while swinging.
• The team with the most runs at the end of five innings wins.

That’s the gist of the game. You can add a variation in how you score the game by adding zones for home runs, triples, doubles, and singles.

The home run line should be 250 feet from home plate. Any hit ball that goes over the home run line in the air counts as a run.

Other lines can be marked at 150 and 200 feet from home plate. 

Any ball that lands before the 150 line (but traveling at least 15 feet) is a single.

Any ball that lands between the 150 and 200 feet lines is a double.

Any ball that lands between the 200 and 250 feet lines is a triple. 

Since there are no baserunners in corkball, if you’re going to use singles, doubles, and triples, you’ll have to keep track of “ghost runners” on imaginary bases in your head. 

Let’s say the first batter hits a single. There’s an imaginary runner on imaginary first base. 

The second batter hits a double. The ghost runner on first moves two bases to third, and there’s also a runner on second (this is the batter that hit the double).  

The third batter hits a triple. The ghost runner on third advances home, the ghost runner on second advances home as well, and you’ve got a single runner on third base. 

The fourth batter walks and moves to first base. The ghost runner on third doesn’t advance. 

And that’s pretty much it. You can adapt these guidelines as you see fit. As aforementioned, different teams have different homefield rules. Just make sure everyone is on the same page before you start playing. 

If you don’t have an official corkball or corkball bat, you can just play fuzzball. Use a tennis ball with the fuzz burned off for the ball and a broomstick for a bat. The same rules above apply. 

So the next time you’re feeling bored on a spring or summer evening, instead of queuing up Netflix, call up some buddies, find an empty park, and play the fun, quirky game of corkball.

If you’re looking to go deeper into the history and culture of corkball, check out the appropriately named website, Corkball.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

An essential part of being an awesome uncle is having a repertoire of tricks and jokes that will amaze your nieces and nephews, and crack them up. So from time to time we’ll be offering you current and future uncles out there a tutorial on some gags that’ll have them thinking you’re the coolest dude in the world. Check out all our Cool Uncle Tricks. 

Almost everyone has owned a yo-yo at some point in their life. It’s up there in the toy hall of fame with other classics like the hula hoop, pogo stick, and frisbee. Evidence of yo-yos goes back as far as the Greeks, when kids were given terracotta versions to keep them occupied while their parents ironed out the details of democracy. 

On Christmas Day, you can occupy your nieces and nephews while ironing out the details of who gets the last slice of chocolate cream pie by teaching them how to do some tricks with the yo-yo’s they may have just received in their stockings. 

“Rock the baby” is a classic to impart, though the trick requires learning a few basic fundamentals first. Specifically, you need to learn how to make your yo-yo “sleep.” Normally, you throw the yo-yo down and then flick your wrist up to get it to return. Making it sleep simply omits that return flick of the wrist. If you throw the yo-yo down hard and don’t flick up, it should spin at the end of the string until it eventually loses momentum and stops. 

Getting the yo-yo to sleep is essential, because it allows you to manipulate the string around the spinning yo-yo. Fortunately, though, you don’t need to perfect that part before practicing rocking the baby. As a bonus, sleepers are useful for a variety of other yo-yo tricks, such as “walking the dog.”

Illustrated by Ted Slampyak

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

The pandemic has canceled tons of activities, outings, and extracurriculars, leaving our calendars, including our familial ones, rather empty.

Quarantining with kids in summer — when the sun doesn’t set til late, the weather is warm, and you can spend your evenings doing things outside — is one thing. But quarantining in the cold and dark of winter? Woof. You get done with dinner, and then it’s like . . . alright, now what?

Sure, you can watch a movie or pull something out of the board game cabinet, but you probably don’t want everyone staring at a screen every night and you can only play The Floor Is Lava so many times.

If your family has been experiencing some pandemic-induced wintertime doldrums, below we present over 30 ideas for whiling away these long, dark nights. They have been selected and recommended based on the following criteria:

• Indoor. These are things you can do entirely within the confines of your house, because baby, it’s cold outside. 
• Easy. There are tons of involved crafts to tackle out there, but at the end of a long day, nobody wants to bust out a ton of supplies, spend an hour on some meticulous project, and then have a bunch of clean-up to do. The activities below require minimal supplies (and that which is required you’ll already have lying around the house) and minimal preparation and work. They’re turnkey. Save more involved crafts — like building a periscope, pencil catapult, or coin-powered battery — for Saturday afternoons. Which, let’s face it, are awfully long too.
• Novel. Sometimes a little weird and eccentric, these are activities that you may not have previously thought about doing, and that will give you a welcome break from your typical entertainments.

The McKay family has field-tested all of these ideas and given them our seal of approval. Some will keep your kid occupied for a fairly long time; others provide a short diversion and quick laugh. Some are one-and-done type things; others are games your kids will want to play night after night after night (sometimes to your chagrin!). Keep this list handy and pick a couple things each evening to try out and use to pass the time in some memorably interactive, full-bore wholesomeness. 

Wonder Ball Game

This old camp game, passed down to us by Kate’s father, has been a weirdly big hit in our household. It’s akin to hot potato: you toss a ball around a circle while all singing the Wonder Ball song, and whoever has the ball in their hands when the last word of the song (“out!”) is warbled, is, well, out. Keep on doing rounds of it until only one person, the winner, is left standing.

Here’s how the song goes:

The Wonder Ball

Goes round and round

To pass it quickly

You are bound

If you’re the one

To hold it last

The game for you

Has surely past

You

Are

Out!

In our house, we call the game “Wonder Toad” because instead of using a ball, we use a big plushie of Toad from Mario Kart. Here’s the tune:

Fortune Teller

This never fails to entertain. Fold a paper fortune teller by following the instructions here. The thing that makes this fun are the fortunes. You need a good mixture of good fortunes and bad ones. So for every “You’ll win the lottery” fortune, you’ll need a choice prediction like “You’ll live in a garbage can like Oscar the Grouch.” 

I also like throwing in things like “You’ll eat boogers for the rest of your life” or “Your breath will smell like farts.” Dad gets an immature kick out of it; so do the kids.

Finger Challenge

A physical coordination challenge in the vein of “pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time.”

Your left hand has your thumb up; your right index finger is pointing at your left thumb. Now, simultaneously switch your left hand to pointing and your right hand to the thumbs up position. It seems like this would be easy, but it’s not. It’s like something gets crossed in your brain to make it hard to do. With some practice, though, you’ll eventually be able to seamlessly make the switch between thumbs up and pointing.

Fort-Building

In the category of secret hideout creation, making a full-on teepee serves as a great weekend project, but improvised forts are the name of the game on a weeknight. The other week the kids built some creatively jerry-rigged forts using couch cushions, chairs, pillows, blankets, and bedsheets. They spent a good hour working on their respective constructions, and then got to sleep the night in them to boot. 

Flour Mountain Game

If you burned out on the early-pandemic baking craze and now have copious amounts of flour lying around, you can put it to good use in this game. It’s a good one for when you don’t mind getting a little messy (it’s wise to do it right before bathtime).

Pour a pile of flour out onto a plate, and then mold it into a cone/mountain shape. Place a match or toothpick upright at the top of the mountain. To play the game, each person uses a butter knife to cut away a bit of the mountain, trying not to let the toothpick fall. Participants can make whatever size cuts they’d like; they’ll naturally get smaller the closer they get to the toothpick. Whoever makes the toothpick fall first, has to pick it up with their mouth — which is likely to result in the person getting flour all over their face. If your kids are like our kids, they may be tempted to intentionally be the one who makes the toothpick fall, because they want to get flour all over their face.

Glass Bottle Xylophone 

You probably know that water-filled vessels can be used to play music, but have your kids ever actually experimented with the idea?

Fill up glass bottles (or drinking glasses) of the same size and shape with varying amounts of water. You can then play around with them in as nuanced or as loosey goosey a way as you want. 

Tap on the bottles with a spoon to see the way the water level impacts the sound; check out the difference in sound that is made when you tap on a water-filled section of a bottle versus an empty section; blow across the tops of the bottles to make yet another type of noise.

Now if you want to get fancy, you can actually “tune” the bottles to a scale and play some songs with your “xylophone.”

Hanger on Head

For a short, weird interlude of entertainment, have your kid close his eyes, tell him to relax his neck, and then put a plastic hanger around his head — above the eyes and ears, like where a ballcap would sit. Your kid’s head will magically want to turn to the side.

There’s actually a study that explains this strange phenomenon. 

Charades

A classic parlor game that still is fun in the 21st century. Charades shows up frequently in our after-dinner entertainment rotation.

We use a random generator like this one to come up with the words to act out; this allows the whole family to play (rather than the person who came up with the words/themes being left out because they already know the answers). 

Soap Carving

If your kids aren’t yet too handy with a knife, a good way for them to practice their whittling skills is by carving things out of bars of soap. Even if they don’t have experience with handling a pocket knife, the soap is so soft they can do this with a butter knife. We’ve got instructions on how to carve a turtle into soap here, but you can also just let your kids be creative and go to town on their bars, carving whatever they want. 

Sleeping Giant

We’ve talked about roughhousing on the site plenty of times in the past. Gus and Scout are now 10 and 7 and we’re still at it, and doing it even more on these long dark nights. 

I’ve invented some roughhousing games as the kids have gotten older. The one the kids like to play the most is called “Sleeping Giant.” It was inspired by the story of Polyphemus in the Odyssey. 

I put the kids in a cave area (it’s usually a spot between our bed and the wall) and block the entrance with my body. I pretend that I’m sleeping and the kids have to try to get over me without touching me. If their bodies glance mine in their attempts (I make that harder to avoid by moving my arms and legs up and down), the sleeping giant awakens and tries to devour them. 

If they get by me or I catch them three times, a no-holds-barred battle royale commences. I throw them on the bed; they do jiu-jitsu locks on me. It’s a hootin’ hollerin’ good time.

Floating Arms

Amaze your kid with this classic trick. Stand her in a doorway, and have her lift her arms until the back of her hands are pushing against the doorframe. Hold for 60 seconds. Have her then take a step forward and experience the feeling of her arms magically floating to the sky.

Put Your Head Through a Piece of Paper Challenge

Cut a piece of paper into fourths and give one of the slips to your kid, asking him to make a hole in it in such a way as to be able to put his head through it. He will hilariously fail. He will then enjoy learning the clever secret to making the seemingly impossible possible, which we’ve laid out here. 

Poor Kitty Game

All the members of the family except he or she who will first play the part of the cat sit down. The person playing the cat then gets down on all fours and crawls over to one of the family members and meows three times. This person then has to pat the “kitty” on the head three times and say, “Poor kitty, poor kitty, poor kitty.” The “cat” should act as silly and comical as possible, and the first person who laughs becomes the new kitty. 

We found this game in a book of kids’ activities from the 1960s, and it was so totally bizarre that it had us all in stitches before we even started. The laughter continued as we played and took turns meowing and nuzzling each other’s legs.

Make a Paper Balloon

Origami is a perennially effective boredom killer for kids, and arguably the most fun kind of origami is that which results in a creation that has some kind of functionality — like a frog you can jump, a box you can put things in, a ring you can wear, a ninja star you can use to vanquish your foes.

Perhaps the king of this category is the origami balloon. It’s just cool to blow something up that’s made out of paper. Once constructed, you can play hacky sack with it, throw it at your little sister, bat it around like a cat, and even fill it up with water and turn it into a water bomb; drop it off your deck and watch it go splat.

Find the full instructions to make a paper balloon here.

Heads Up, Seven Up

The game your elementary school teachers had you play when it was raining at recess. Admittedly, it’s not as fun when there are just four or five participants (we do our familial version with one person having their eyes closed/thumb up, while the three other participants are the potential thumb taggers — that way the eyes-closed participant has more potential taggers to guess between). But our kids still really enjoy it. The hoot of it is planning subterfuges designed to fool the person with their eyes closed as to who did the thumb tagging deed. If you need a refresher, here’s how to play.

Invisible Ink

Evoking as it does the worlds of secret agents and swashbuckling pirates, what kid doesn’t love invisible ink? The problem is that the classic formula for invisible ink — lemon juice + heat — doesn’t actually work all that well. We’ve ferreted out the recipe that actually does, which you can find here. Bonus: you probably already have everything you need to make it in your cabinets right now.

Musical Chairs

We played this the other night and it was a fun success, even with just our four familial participants. The kids enjoyed both participating in the game, and taking their turn as the “DJ,” who gets to pick their favorite song off Spotify, and be the one who starts and stops it as the other family members march around the empty chairs.

In one round, things got pretty rowdy in the fight over the last chair; a lip was busted; blood was spilt. McKays don’t mess around.

River Rat 

You can also try “River Rat” as a variation on musical chairs. Family members stand on either side of a small, elongated area rug, which represents a river. One person will start and stop the music. When the music plays, family members march back and forth over the rug. Whoever is in the “river” when the music stops, is a river rat, and is out of the game.

Paper Airplane Contest

Fold paper airplanes. Throw them. See whose plane goes the furthest. 

Levitate a Thread

Can your kid make a thread rise off the table? He can when he uses a comb which has been activated with the “magic” of static electricity. Just run a comb through your hair a few times, hold it close to a thread (or a small piece of paper towel) and — voila! — the thread will levitate upwards. 

Get Up Off the Floor Without Using Your Hands Challenge

A few years ago, we wrote about the Sitting-Rising Test. It’s a physical evaluation that can predict mortality. The fewer appendages you need to use to get up off the floor from the sitting position, the longer you’re likely to live. The more appendages you have to use, the sooner you’re likely to die.

Well, besides being a test to see how likely you are to kick the bucket, it’s also a fun game to play with your kids. See if they can get off the ground without using their hands/arms/knees. See if they can find more than one way to do so.

Dude Perfect Trick Shots

Think of the trick shots your kid watches on Dude Perfect and scale it down. We do a lot of bottle flipping, no-look sock shots into the clothing basket, and bouncing balls down the staircase and into a cup. 

Don’t forget to scream and run around like a crazy person after a successful stunt. It wouldn’t be a Dude Perfect trick shot without it. 

Pound it. Noggin. SEE YA!

Feats of Strength

Related to roughhousing are old-school feats of strength. These are games that pit participants in a mano-o-mano test of strength and balance. If you were a Boy Scout, you probably played some of these games. Foot boxing, Indian leg wrestling, and Indian staff wrestling are a few such showdowns; be sure to check out this article for more. 

If you’re much bigger than your kid, going head to head with him wouldn’t make for a fair fight. Instead, pair up kids of a similar size to compete. Though if you’ve got teenagers, they’ll probably be able to give Dad a run for his money.

Don’t forget to do your Airing of Grievances before performing these feats of strength too. 

See Through Paper

Put a piece of paper over a coin and ask your kid if they can figure out the date on the coin. They will be stumped. You then give a knowing chuckle, and rub the top of the coin with a pencil, creating a relief that will reveal the year it was minted. 

Cartwheel Contest

Have a contest to see who can do the best cartwheel (or the least worst one). Spoiler alert: Dad did not win.

You can also try somersaults, handstands (or at least a tripod headstand), and other variations of poorly performed gymnastics. 

3 Marker Challenge

This is an idea Scout gleaned off YouTube. Each participant reaches into a box of markers and, without looking, pulls out three. When each person has chosen three random markers, everyone has to use their respective collection to draw a picture on the same theme; e.g., everyone draws a hamburger, and if you’ve got a blue, pink, and orange marker to get the job done, you’ve got to figure out how to make the best of it. You then argue about who did the best job.

Paper Cup Phone

The technology of telephones may have changed a lot in the last couple of decades, but making one out of paper cups remains a source of perennial fun. 

Making a paper cup phone is easy: poke a hole in the bottom of a cup and stick a string through the hole. Tie the string inside the cup to a toothpick; this will keep the string from falling out when you pull the “telephone line” between the cups tight (tautness improves sound quality). Repeat with another cup, making a lengthy line between the two cups so you can stand far enough apart that you wouldn’t be able to hear each other talking without the aid of your telephone. One person puts the cup up to their ear to listen; the other talks softly into their cup. The sound volume/quality is surprisingly impressive for such a primitive piece of tech!

Indoor Obstacle Course

Ottomans, chairs, brooms, and cardboard boxes can all be used to create an obstacle course. Have the kids put it together and then bust out your phone’s stopwatch and have a contest to see who can get through it the fastest.

Shadow Puppets

Shadow puppets are fun to make as you tuck your kids into bed. But they can also be played with before bedtime. Point a lamp at a wall, and put your hands, specially positioned to form the silhouettes of different animals (here’s how to make 16 of them), in front of the light. Shadows of the animals will be projected on the wall, and each family member’s animal can interact with the others, to create a full-on puppet show.

Catch the Cane Game

All family members except for one should sit in a circle of chairs. The one not seated stands in the center of the circle, holding a broomstick or PVC pipe or other kind of stick, with one end of it touching the floor. The stick-holder then calls the name of someone sitting in the circle while simultaneously letting go of the cane. The person whose name is called has to jump out of their chair and catch the stick before it falls. If he does catch it, the stick-holder tries again and calls another person’s name; if he doesn’t catch it, the stick-holder sits down, and the person who missed the stick becomes the new stick-holder.

The Rope Trick

Give your kid a piece of rope about three feet in length and have them hold it with one end in each hand. 

Challenge them to tie a knot with the rope without letting go of either end of it.

Watch their fruitless efforts with your arms folded. When they finally give up, ask them (while your arms are still folded) to place the ends of the rope in each of your hands. Unfold your arms . . . and a knot magically appears!

Toothpick Puzzles

Puzzle set-up + answer

Use 12 toothpicks to make 4 squares. Can family members figure out how to take away 2 toothpicks to form 2 squares?

Now use 17 toothpicks to make 6 squares. How can you take away 6 toothpicks to form 2 squares?

Pass the Story

I actually played this game a lot back in my high school football days. On the ride home from away games, my buddies and I would sit in the back of the bus dirty and exhausted, and take turns collectively spinning a yarn. 

The game is simple: One person starts a made-up story. About a minute in, he stops and passes the story off to someone else, who then picks up where the first person left off and adds his own segment of the story for a minute. He then passes it off to the next person. Each person has to use the thread they inherited from the last, and then can take the tale in their own random direction. When done with your family, it’s always fun to hear the silly stuff your kids will add to the story.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

While we’ve compiled the best jokes for kids of all ages, as well as the best riddles, and even non-cheesy knock-knock jokes, little kids — roughly between the ages of 3 and 7 — need a category all to themselves.

Rather than require the grasp of nuance and sophisticated cultural know-how that jokes for older ages rely on, these jokes are based around kid-friendly references (to animals, body parts, food, etc.), puns, and sheer silliness. Children on the upper end of the 3-7 age range will likely understand the set-up and derive humor from the actual punchline; with those on the lower end, you’re going almost entirely for funny delivery, which includes goofy noises and laughing hard at yourself, which often gets them to laugh too.

Some of these you’ve surely heard before — when you were a kid! — while others are new to the cultural coffers, and quite funny. Share them far and wide, and encourage your kids to then come up with jokes of their own!

The 50 Best Jokes for Little Kids

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

With our archives now 3,500+ articles deep, we’ve decided to republish a classic piece each Friday to help our newer readers discover some of the best, evergreen gems from the past. This article was originally published in June 2018.

In a time before people could cure their boredom by looking down at their phone and immediately retreating into an individual silo of entertainment, slaying its specter was often a cooperative exercise, requiring nothing more than a pencil and paper.

Even though pen and paper games have been supplanted by phone toggling when it comes to passing the time, it’s still handy to keep a few of them in the back pocket of your brain. These “analog” games come in handy for times when your phone’s out of charge, or when you want to entertain a kid without resorting to handing them a device. Their discreet-ness also makes them useful for work or church meetings where you’re bored out of your skull, but not supposed to be on your phone. Pencil and paper games are an all-around great source of impromptu entertainment, as you’ll almost always have all the supplies needed for their play on hand.

When it comes to such games, you surely already know tic-tac-toe (which once you learn how to win, becomes super boring). So here are 5 more pencil and paper games that will help you, and a compatriot, while away the time.

Hangman

This classic boredom killer is an oldie but a goodie.

Hangman can be played with two or more players.

Start off by drawing a basic looking gallows. This is where you’ll keep track of incorrect guesses in this game.

One person thinks of a word (without telling the other players) and marks out the number of letters in dashes on the paper.

The other players take turns guessing letters one at a time. Whenever a player guesses a letter in the word correctly, you write that letter above the corresponding dash.

If they guess incorrectly, draw a body part of the hangman on the gallows. Typical order is head, body, right leg, left leg, right arm, left arm, noose. So basically, players have seven chances to guess the correct letters. If a complete hangman is made before the correct word is guessed, the game ends. You can increase the number of chances players get to guess by increasing the number of body parts that are added before the hapless stick victim gets the noose — left eye, right eye, nose, mouth, ears, etc. Just make sure everyone is on the same page as to what constitutes a complete hangman before you start.

A player wins the game when they guess the correct word. They can guess the entire word at any point in the game. A wrong word guess also results in a body part added to the hangman.

You can write incorrect letter guesses next to the gallows so players can see which letters they’ve already guessed. To make the game harder, don’t list missed letter guesses, and count duplicate wrong guesses against them.

Battleship

The classic board game (turned terrible movie) actually got its start as a pencil and paper game. The old-school version has the advantage of not needing those annoying little pegs or a manufactured game board, making starting a spontaneous showdown, or playing in the car on a long road trip, much easier.

This is a two-player game.

Each player creates two 10×10 grids on their piece of paper. Label one grid “My Ships” and the other grid “Enemy Ships.” Label each square on the x-axis 1-10, and each square on the y-axis A-G. 

Make sure neither player can see the other’s grids.

On the “My Ships” grid, each player outlines the five ships that represent their fleet.

A fleet consists of the following:

• 1 Aircraft Carrier = 5 squares
• 1 Battleship = 4 squares
• 1 Cruiser = 3 squares
• 1 Submarine = 3 squares
• 2 Destroyers = 2 squares each

Each ship occupies adjacent squares on the grid, horizontally or vertically. No diagonal ships.

Here’s an example of a fleet layout you might have:

Once each player has drawn out their fleet, the play begins. Players take turns taking shots at their opponent by calling out coordinates of a square. For example, B-10, G-5, D-3.

His opponent responds with “Hit!” if a coordinate hits his ship or “Miss!” if it misses. Each player should record their opponent’s shots on the grid labeled “My Ships” and their own shots on the grid labeled “Enemy Ships.” Use “X” to mark misses, and “O” to mark hits.

If an opponent hits all the squares in a ship, you must call out the name of the ship (e.g., “You sunk my battleship!”)

First player to lose all his ships loses the game.

Squares

This was a game my brother and I played quite a bit on the back of the paper program at church services.

Draw a grid of dots – it can be as large or as small as you want. The larger the grid, the longer the game lasts. 10×10 is good-sized “field of play.”

Each player takes a turn drawing a line between two dots. You can connect dots horizontally or vertically. The goal is to create a box. If a player completes the fourth side of a box, he writes his initial in the box. When a player completes a box, he gets another immediate turn to connect the dots.

The game is over when the grid has been completely filled with boxes. The player with the most boxes wins.

Obstruction 

This is a two-player game created by Hungarian mathematician László Kozma.

One player is “O”; the other player is “X.”

Create a grid of squares at least 6×6. The larger the grid, the longer the game will go.

Each player takes turns writing their mark in one of the squares on the grid. But here’s the catch: You can only mark a square if all of its neighbors (including the diagonal neighbors) are empty.

The first player unable to move loses.

Here’s an example of a game so you can see play in action:

Sprouts

Sprouts is another pencil and paper game invented by a math whiz. Actually two: John Horton Conway and Michael Paterson.

This is a two-player game. Start off by drawing two or more spots on a sheet of paper.

Players take turns according to the following rules:

• Draw a line connecting two spots, or loop a line to and from a single spot. The line may be straight or curved, but must not touch or cross itself or any other line.
• Add a new spot somewhere along that new line.
• No spot may have more than three lines attached to it.

The player who makes the last move wins the game, or you could play so that the player who makes the last play loses.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.