Whiting's Most Recent Presentation; Games People Play -- A Note About The Granddaughters

From Whiting's most recent presentation.

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Notes to the Granddaughters

This is for the family.

Last night the granddaughters (ages 7 and 10) found "Bananas" lying around. I don't know if anyone knows how to play the game, but after drawing the first 21 tiles, the goal is to complete one's own crossword with all the tiles before anyone else. If unable to play, one draws more tiles from the pool. The photo below is our second game, just the two of us, the seven-year-old and me. She won.

I was still working on my crossword puzzle when Olivia showed me her 21-tile winning crossword. (I was interrupted to help the older one with her homework -- logging on to my computer -- she knows the password but I like to enter it, just in case -- that's why my crossword puzzle was not that far along. Her math teacher sends homework out over the web.)

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While the older granddaughter worked on her homework, the younger one, after beating me at "Bananas" asked to play chess.

I obviously don't play my best, but I don't play to lose. I used to give her advice, but she says she doesn't want any advice from me because she says she might have a strategy and I won't know what it is, so my advice won't be helpful. Smile.

In the game yesterday, it was pretty evenly matched, and then not paying attention, I lost my queen. It was not on purpose. I wasn't paying attention and she took advantage of it. Wow, was she happy! At that point, I got serious, deciding I would play to win. Losing the queen really was not that big a set back -- there was no way I could be beat by her.

But then, sure enough, she worked hard at it, and beat me. I really got a kick out of how well she did it. The end looked like this:

My white king is in check by the black rook across the board. The white space to the "north" is blocked by her queen (a pawn reached the last row).  I can't take her queen with my white rook because it would still leave her king in check. Likewise, I can't move my white rook to block; she will take it with her black rook. I was quite surprised.

By the way: one of the best investments ever was a $29.99 drawing board from Hobby Lobby. It would have been difficult to play "Bananas" directly on the carpet.