And about time, I hear you say.

I quite agree.  I fully intended to continue the topic of games the very next day.  Then life caught up with me – I got busy and distracted, then grew progressively more intimidated.  Something about promising a topic ahead of time just made me nervous about addressing the topic at all.  Silly, I know.

I’d say my excuse in recent months is that I’ve just been too busy writing, except… well….  Passing completely over the fact that one of the Residents of my Apartment is Enabling my Avatar: The Last Airbender addiction, I’ve played so much minesweeper that I see grids with numbers in my sleep.

No, unfortunately, I’m not joking.  On several occasions, I’ve been in bed – either just waking up or trying to fall asleep – with eyes closed, and I see the Minesweeper Grid.  And I start playing it in my head.  I don’t get very far – my memory’s nowhere near that good – but it’s the principle of the thing.  Just a hunch, but I think I better lay off the minesweeper for a little while….

Anyway, I was going to write a post on the role of Spying in the Three Little Ghosteses game my niece and nephew invented.  It’s quite simple, really (though, this role was nonexistent in early versions of the game).  The Spy follows the Hider, then reports back to the Seeker with information about the Hider’s whereabouts.

The number of Spies depends on the number of players.  If you really enjoy a mental workout, you can employ Spies and Counter-Spies.  The Spies look for the Hider and report to the Seeker; the Counter-Spies do much the same, except that they’re on the Hider’s team.  They report back to the Seeker, but they report misinformation.  Their goal is to mislead the Seeker and aid the Hider.  Everyone Hides, Seeks, or Spies.  Lots of running and mayhem fun.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  These kids come up with their own games on a regular basis….