Insanely interesting games at school – Part 2

After discussing about a game based on luck, we now move on to a set of games which depend more on the skills of players. In the late 1990’s, Faber Castell, Camlin or Natraj must have noticed an unusual spurt in their sales and that too during off season time (no exam or school reopening). I can bet that they would have never found out the reason. Kudos to the imagination of whoever struck upon the idea of the scale, rubber and sharpener games. And thanks to my crazy classmates who followed these religiously. But for them I would have certainly missed out so much in school

Ok now lets move on. The three ingenious games are similar to carom board, except that while in carom you pocket the coins, here you send the contesting objects overboard by employing skillful maneuvering and striking techniques.

The requirements :

1. The striker can be:

A. a 15 cm scale, preferably made from wood (and as thick as possible for maximum impact)

B. a sharpener (ideally steel sharpeners can give maximum impact load but can lead to injuries of the striking finger, hence used only in cases where the drought of wins has extended for too long)

C. An eraser – the most preferred is the apsara non dust eraser (erasers in the shapes of cartoon figures/stars/any other attractive figures have been found to be totally useless and end up having the worst record in tournaments often)

2. A well contoured, relatively frictionless, large battlefield – the class desk.

As many contestants as space permits but low enough to cause commotion that can attract the next class teacher, can play together. All objects are positioned at the corners of the desk to start off. The starter (the first person to exit in the previous game) kicks off proceedings by sending his object right into the middle of the battlefield (normally it’s a hapless looking natraj plastic scale or the smallest of the erasers/sharpeners). Any attempts to kill the neighbors’ objects positioned near yours on the first strike itself is strictly forbidden and considered detrimental to the spirit of the game.

The killer strike:

The usual aim is to deliver killer strikes asap. The shape and mass give rise to a different killer strike for a scale as compared to the rubber or a sharpener. Owing to its length, the ‘see-saw slam’ (as i would call it) is the perfect ‘stick it up his a**’ move to blow your contestant scale out. This can be used when two scales are fighting it out on the edge of the desk. Lets say your scale is positioned perpendicularly to the edge with a portion of it sticking out (enough to be used as a see saw handle) and a contestant scale (by virtue of mindless maneuvering) happens to come on top of yours in an exactly perpendicular position to yours. No explanation is needed beyond this. ‘Astalavista baby’ used to be the killer dialogue before this strike. But caution needs to be exercised since in some rare cases, the scale delivering the blow out ends up turning turtle and goes over while the one that has been launched out manages to fall back into the desk making you red in the face. The rubber and sharpener games do not have such a complicated killer blow and it is a pretty straight in the face eat that strike. The basic requirement being that the rubber or sharpener is big enough to blast the other one away and not stop on impact.

Important factors :

- Slope of the battle ground – contestants starting out at the top of the slope need to exercise caution in delivering blow outs since their momentum can send them over the edge along with the contestant.

- Friction – becomes particularly important in the case of rubber games since the rubbers can stop short of their intended target.

- Size of objects – bigger is always better in these games.

Benefits:

- Guaranteed edge of the seat excitement.

- Oppurtunities to pit different objects against each other eg. scales vs rubbers, rubbers vs sharperners (that was more one sided) giving more interesting matchups.

- Easy and fun way to learn complicated names in biology – this arises due to the names given to the contesting objects ( names of amoebas/ bacterias) then thinking that it was stylish

Potential Problems:

- The striker may have to move around the desk many times to execute the shot perfectly, this becomes a problem in case of too many persons.

- Can be played only during lunch time/toilet breaks/free hours since it attracts too much attention to be played during the class.

- Scales and sharpeners can break, unfortunately there is nothing you can do about it (rubbers are safe in this regard).

- Can piss off kids sitting nearby who are relatively studious and not vetti like the players.

- Possibilities that the scales/rubbers/sharpeners may be seized by an irritated next class teacher.

Not even the PT period during school hours generated such excitement as the trio of these games. I dont know though how many of you guys have played these. Neverthless, meet u all in the third part soon !

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Insanely interesting games at school – Part 3 »