Cameron's Games Page

Akron	Triad	Plex	Py	Phwar
Antipod	Druid	Margo	Lingo	Savoy
Truchet	Moloko	Mambo	Holomino	Trugo
Rombo	Halves	Trilbert	Yavalath	Pentalath
Osbo	Osbox	Oxvo	Boche	Gates
Chroma	Ankor	Limit	Vasco	Xutoli
Palago	Mutton	Octex	Hextiles	Marque
Che	Trichet	Dragons	Blobs	Hop It!
ESP	Boloko	Celtic!	Triablo

Richard Rognlie's Gamerz.net is a play-by-email (PBeM) server that coordinates email play for a variety of games. This has proved to be an excellent forum for play testing new games and discussing ideas with like-minded people; I've spent over 15 years playing various games there and generally welcome challenges when time permits (my userid is camb).

Most of the games shown above are available for online play at Gamerz.net. Most can be played through the server's graphical web interface.

Gonnect is an abstract board game similar to Go except that: (a) players win by connecting opposite sides of the board with an unbroken chain of their pieces; and (b) neither player can pass. This second modification sounds trivial but has profound strategic implications for the game and leads to a beautiful mechanism for resolving deadlocks and clearing the board. Read this article written in conjunction with the game's inventor Joao Neto and published in Abstract Games Magazine to learn more.

Scrabble has to be one of the 20th century's great inventions, an endlessly fascinating word game that improves players' vocabulary and constantly pushes the boundaries of language as it develops. My grandmother was one of the toughest opponents I've met and still hard to beat in her 80s. She was expert at those weird two and three letter words that close down the board while racking up the points, the antithesis to my more open high-scoring but high risk game. I've learnt a lot from playing her.

The Scrabble Book by Derryn Hinch is the best player's guide that I've come across. Recently updated and released as The Ultimate Guide to Winning Scrabble, it covers many aspects of strategy. His advice on rack management for improving the odds of seven letter bonus plays is indispensable.

The PBeM game Scramble, based on the similarly named classic word game, is worthy of note. Players can experiment with large 19x19 and 21x21 boards while maintaining eight letters in their rack rather than the usual seven. This allows freer and more open play and often leads to bewildering scores. The standard 15x15 board feels claustrophobic by comparison.

I enjoy the odd cryptic crossword and was once lucky enough to win The Australian's national crossword competition. The prize was a copy of the Concise Oxford Dictionary which gets regular use to this day!

There's never any reason to get bored as word games can be played anywhere. How many words on that bus stop poster form valid anagrams? What amusing phrases might form the acronyms on the numberplates of passing cars? How much can you irritate and bore people by making puns and deliberately misconstruing their words (English is a wonderfully ambiguous language)? In fact no external stimulus is required: what valid sentences can be formed with the letters of your name? Without such noble pursuits, Baron Newcomer would never have realised that CAMERON was an anagram of ROMANCE and the world would be a poorer place.