A chess board recently unearthed in the Czech Republic takes an fresh look at the classic game by adding a third player into the action. Apparently, the game starts out like regular chess, but somewhere near the middle all hell breaks loose in an orgy of complex diagonal moves. Moreover, because their are three players, a certain amount of cooperation must take place to determine a winner.
Go may not be very popular here in the US, but that didn’t stop me from actually taking a few lessons when I was a kid (ladies, quit knocking down my door). Plus, it didn’t stop this guy from designing an electronic roll-up Go board.
Shaped like a roll of parchment when contracted, the Go board rolls out to show the black and white pieces with what looks like e-ink. That’s a fantastic idea, which could be extended to chess, checkers or Chinese checkers—since when I play somebody usually gets angry and knocks the pieces off the board when they lose. And by somebody, I mean me. – Jason Chen
Electronic Go (Chinese Chess) Board [Yanko Design] More »
I'm not sure what the recent trend is, but everyone seems to be life-sizing my childhood. Remember the game Mousetrap? Yes, the game that was fun for 30 seconds, and not worth the effort and time it took to set it up. Someone has created a life-size replicate of the Mousetrap Rube Goldberg machine. Rather than dropping the cage on the mouse and cheese, like in the original, this monstrous version will drop a safe on any object of your choosing (to crush and destroy). It will be on display at the Maker Faire next month. –Travis Hudson
Full Scale Mousetrap Kinetic Sculpture [OhGizmo!]
