In the name of playing games

IF YOU don’t have a board game there are plenty of games you can play using pen and paper.

Battleships

The object of this pen-and-paper game for two is to hit your opponent’s ships on their grid by making strategic guesses as to where they are.

Both players have paper with two grids each that are sectioned out 11 by 11; the top row marked 1-10, the side reading A-J.

Each player gets:

1 carrier (5 squares) 2 battleships (4 squares each)

3 destroyers (2 squares each)

2 cruisers (3 squares each)

1 submarine (3 squares) The players shade or mark their own ships on one grid and then guess the other’s co-ordinates.

The opponent responds with “hit” if it hits a ship or “miss” if it misses, (marking down their guesses on the other grid). Miss = X Hit = O

When one player hits all the squares of the ship, it’s been sunk.

Five-in-a-row

Players: Two Players take turns in marking squares on a grid. The first player to get five squares in a row wins.

Description

The game is played on a large piece of squared paper, at least 15 x 15. The players take turns in marking a square with their symbol (eg O and X). The first player to get five squares in a row, horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, wins.

Chomp

Players: Two

The players take turns in chomping squares out of a bar of chocolate. The player who eats the last square loses.

Description

Draw a rectangular grid of squares representing a bar of chocolate. A good size is 4 x 3. The top left square is marked with an X. Players take turns in taking a rectangular bite out of the bottom right corner of the bar, by shading a square, together with all the squares below and/or to the right of it. The top left-hand square is poisoned, and the player forced to eat this loses.