Mystery Game

July 18, 2006 10:47 AM

Can someone identify this mystery "game"?

My family and I visited Wheeling Park, in Wheeling, W.Va. They playground was super cool. There was this objects without instructions, what I'm guessing is some sort of deduction game similar to Mastermind. Has anyone seen one of these? Do you know how to play?



More pictures in this flickr set.

posted by TuxHeDoh to grab bag (11 comments total)

You can request a catalog from the company here. Maybe this game is on that site somewhere; I can't find it.
posted by interrobang at 11:03 AM on July 18, 2006

Thanks interrobang- I looked there also. Didn't see it. I suppose I could call and ask also... but figured the MeFi collective would enjoy the question too.
posted by TuxHeDoh at 11:05 AM on July 18, 2006

Granted, those versions are far more complex, but we always used similar toys (when I was a camp counselor) to just make pictures, play tic-tac-toe type games, write messages, etc.

If they really expected kids to do logic puzzles, I'm sure there'd be instructions — my bet is that it has no particular purpose and is just to be creative and have fun with.
posted by rafter at 11:07 AM on July 18, 2006

I wonder if it's played like battleship (it has a similar sort of set up), though it looks like there is no place to mark down the guesses.
posted by drezdn at 11:10 AM on July 18, 2006

Do you just try to match the upright one with the roll-y abacus one, but turned 90 degrees (and then maybe do it in reverse, decoding the roll-y one for the upright one on the other side)? If that makes sense. Just a guess. The roll-y one is 7X5, and the upright one is 5X7, so...
posted by unknowncommand at 11:25 AM on July 18, 2006

Hmm...I think I'm seeing the pictures wrong.
posted by unknowncommand at 11:28 AM on July 18, 2006

I think it's meant to be fun to touch and spin or push the pieces. It's open to imaginative interpretation by the child.
posted by Sprout the Vulgarian at 11:31 AM on July 18, 2006

you might ask the city of wheeling recreation department whether they're a game or just meant to be interesting doodads like sprout said.
posted by sergeant sandwich at 12:34 PM on July 18, 2006

I'm willing for it to be just a tactile-imagination game, but thought there had to be more...
2 -identical stations, there are arrows on the horizontal part marking certain sections of the rotating beads (fwiw, one of the pictures was rotated incorrectly, I fixed it), the vertical part swings to either side, the blocks on one side are seperate from the blocks on the other.

I don't know... perhaps I just want it to be more complex.
posted by TuxHeDoh at 12:41 PM on July 18, 2006

They might not have been created with a game in mind, but you could always invent one.

So the yellow and blue things, you can flip them between yellow and blue? And you can see them through the grid when you are standing on the opposite side, but you can't flip them? I can see why you were leaning towards a Mastermindesque game.

How's this? The "mastermind" sets a pattern, then the guesser gets a glance at the pattern for three seconds, before it's flipped over. On the other side, the guesser has to replicate the pattern from memory.

I used to invent board games all the time when I was a kid, so I'm sure some kids out there have come up with something.
posted by RobotHero at 1:28 PM on July 18, 2006

Damn...I just lost the game.
I'm going with the "no rules, just make patterns" idea.
posted by bystander at 6:26 PM on July 18, 2006