reflections
Games

My Favorite PC Word Games

Boggle Supreme - It’s a race to find the most words
Letter Linker - Click the letter wafers to spell out a cornucopia of words
Scrabble - The classic crossword board game, now for Windows
Text Twist - Think of as many words as you can with the given letters
WhatWord - Swap letter balls in a 5×5 grid to form words
Wild Wild Words - Rustle up some words with the Cowboy-themed word game
Word Blitz Deluxe - Assemble words out of an ever-increasing pile of letter tiles
Word Emperor - A crossword game with a Roman theme
Word Search Deluxe - Play hundreds of word search puzzles on your PC
Word Slinger - A brand new twist on crossword puzzles and Scrabble

Game Articles

Bingo Numbers

Bingo is a game that has lived on over the years.  To this day, you see bingo halls firmly entrenched across neigborhoods all over the world.

While the phenomenon is amazing to see, it comes as no surprise.  Bingo is a compelling social game, immensely fun, and filled with windrous facts behind its cards.

Do you know it is unlikely that all possible Bingo cards will be printed in one lifetime?

With 75 numbers broken into five groups of 15 numbers each and only 24 numbers on each card, we can have as many as .5 quadrillion combinations.  In exact numbers, that’s 552,446,474,061,129,000,000,000,000.  Un-fucking-believable. The entire world can play a single game and each person can have as much as 92,000,000,000,000,000 cards to play with absolutely no duplicate.  If you can produce one million bingo cards in a single second, it would take 17,505,972,382,599.7 years to print every possible BINGO game card.

So play on!

Games

Backgammon PC Games

This is a list of backgammon games you can play in single player mode.  While the level of AI skill varies depending on the game, backgammon fun is guaranteed!

BGBlitz

GAME DEVELOPER:  Frank Berger.
PRICE:  USD 23 for player version, USD 46 for professional version.
GAME DETAILS:  One of the strongest backgammon players available for Macintosh. You can roll out positions to get a better approximation of real winning probabilities. A built-in tutor warns you of possible errors in play. Also plays Nackgammon. Collect and analyze matches played online. The program is internationalized for English, German, Dutch, and Danish.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:  Windows 95 or later, or Macintosh 9.2 or later, or Linux 2.2 or later. Also requires a Java runtime environment, which you can get from java.sun.com.

MaxGammon

GAME DEVELOPER:  Alex Saenko.
PRICE:  USD 19.95 (shareware).
GAME DETAILS:  3D playing board. Choice of human, computer, or network game. Different skill levels. Adjustable skins. Optional rules. Save and load games (upon registration).
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:  Windows 98 or later, or Windows NT. 64 MB RAM. 3D accelerator. Sound card recommended.

Monte Carlo Backgammon

GAME DEVELOPER:  Gamer Cafe Software.
PRICE:  Free.
GAME DETAILS:  A very strong player (third only to Snowie and Jellyfish on this list). This version of the program plays only “one-point matches” (no doubling cube, no gammons). Ask Monte Carlo to evaluate any backgammon position using this online form.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:  Windows 95 or later, or Windows NT.

Backgammon 2k

GAME DEVELOPER:  Stand Alone, Inc.
PRICE:  USD 15.
GAME DETAILS:  Save and reload games. Use doubling cube. Choice of computer-rolled dice or manual entry. You can take notes. Choose from several styles of player. Take back and replay moves. Get advice on how to move.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:  Mac OS.

PC Gammon IV

GAME DEVELOPER:  Sentient Software.
PRICE:  USD 15 (shareware).
GAME DETAILS:  This PC version has a very nice menu system that makes it very easy to use. The game can also store the score history of every player (a very handy feature if you want to proclaim your superiority later).
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:  DOS and a mouse required.