Games
Entrepreneurs around the world love this Soviet-era storytelling game
The psychological game “Mafia” pits a well-connected minority against a civilian majority. It was invented in the Soviet Union as sort of spoof of KGB thinking, but it has gone global. The Russian government uses it to train spies, and would-be entrepreneurs around the world play it to practice their negotiating skills.
To understand life in East Germany, all you need is this board game
The board game called Bürokratopoly isn’t about getting filthy rich, though players might feel filthy after they’re done playing. The popular German game was created by dissidents in communist East Germany years ago as a satire about power and corruption. Now it has become a teaching tool for German kids trying to understand what it was like to live in the Communist East.
‘Dr. Fill’ vies for crossword solving supremacy, but still comes up short
Computers may be getting smarter and faster. They may revolutionize industrial and social policy by using ‘big data’ to make massive calculations. But in the modest realm of crossword puzzle solving, computers are still no match for the complexity and creativity of the human mind.
The Italian Bobby Fischer is making chess history in St. Louis
A tournament in St. Louis has everyone in the chess world mesmerized. Norway’s glamorous, 23-year-old World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen was the favorite. But a younger upstart has won a record-setting seven games … and could unseat him.
Concussions in soccer are a real thing. So why not change the substitution rule?
Soccer’s governing body FIFA is being sued in California over the sport’s handling of concussions. One key to the debate over concussions in soccer is whether FIFA will change its rigid substitution rules at the top professional and international levels.