Jenga
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
|
| Players | 1 or more |
|---|---|
| Age range | 6 and up |
| Setup time | < 5 minutes |
| Playing time | Usually 5-15 min |
| Random chance | None |
| Skills required | Manual dexterity |
Jenga is a game of physical and mental skill created by Leslie Scott, and marketed by the Milton Bradley Company, a division of Hasbro. In Jenga, players take turns to remove a block from a tower and balance it on top, creating a higher and increasingly unstable structure as the game progresses.
The word jenga is the imperative form of kujenga, the Swahili verb "to build".
Contents |
[edit] Rules
Jenga is played with 54 wooden blocks; each block is 3 times as long as it is wide, and slightly smaller in height than in width. The blocks are stacked in a tower formation; each storey is three blocks placed adjacent to each other along their long side, and each storey is placed perpendicular to the previous (so, for example, if the blocks in the first storey are pointing north-south, the second storey blocks will point east-west). There are therefore 18 stories to the Jenga tower. Since stacking the blocks neatly can be tedious, a plastic loading tray is included.
Once the tower is built, the person who built the tower moves first. Moving in Jenga consists of taking one and only one block from any storey (except the one below the incomplete top storey) of the tower, and placing it on the topmost storey in order to complete it. Only one hand at a time may be used to remove a block; either hand can be used, but only one hand may be in contact with the tower at a time. Blocks may be bumped to find a loose block that will not disturb the rest of the tower. Any block that is moved out of place may be left out of place if it is determined that it will knock the tower over if it is removed. The turn ends when the next person to move touches the tower, although he or she can wait 10 seconds before moving for the previous turn to end if they believe the tower will fall in that time.
The game ends when the tower falls in any significant way—in other words, any piece falls from the tower, other than the piece being knocked out to move to the top. The loser is the person who made the tower fall (i.e. whose turn it was when the tower fell.)
[edit] Origins
Jenga was created by Leslie Scott[1] based on a game that evolved within her family in the early '70s using children's wooden building blocks[2] the family purchased from a sawmill in Takoradi, Ghana. Scott manufactured and launched the game she named and trademarked as 'Jenga' at the London Toy Fair in 1983[3], selling it through her own company, Leslie Scott Associates, until first Irwin Toy of Canada, then Milton Bradley (Hasbro) of the US, acquired the license to publish Jenga in 1986. Though a British national, Scott was born in East Africa where she was raised speaking English and Swahili, before moving to live in Ghana, West Africa.
[edit] Official Hasbro variants
Throw 'n Go Jenga is a variant marketed by Hasbro. It consists of blocks that are colored red, blue, or yellow plus a six-sided die. Before each move, the player throws the die and then follows the instructions on the die:
- Yellow/End: Remove any yellow block or remove any color end block.
- Red/Mid: Remove any red block or remove any color middle block.
- Blue/End: Remove any blue block or remove any color end block.
- Any two: Remove any two blocks of any color in any position.
- Wild: Remove any color block in any position
- Reverse: Don’t remove any blocks, but pass the die to the next player in the opposite direction.
Other than the fact that the die determines the proper move, play continues the same as regular Jenga.
Jenga Truth or Dare is an adult variation of Jenga also marketed by Hasbro. This version looks like regular Jenga except there are three colors of blocks, red, green and natural, instead of just the natural color of Jenga. Play is the same, but if you move a red block on your play, you have to complete the dare printed on it before stacking the block on top. If you move a green block, you have to truthfully answer the question printed on the block before stacking it. The natural blocks have nothing printed on them and are played as in Jenga. However, it is permissible to write your own truths or dares on the natural blocks if desired.
Jenga Xtreme uses blocks with a beveled cut (shaped like pink pearl erasers) instead of straight cut blocks.
Casino Jenga: Las Vegas Edition employs a roulette-style game play, featuring a felt game board, betting chips, and additional rules.
Uno Stacko is a Jenga-Uno crossover. The blocks are colored red, blue, green and yellow, and are numbered from 1 to 4. In early versions, each player rolls a die with four colored and numbered faces from 1 to 4, and then pulls a block with the same color or number. Later versions removed the die, and each player must instead pull a block of the same color or number as the one pulled by the previous player.
As well, there have been a number of collector edition Jenga games, featuring the colours and logos of the Boston Red Sox, Oakland Raiders, New York Yankees, John Deere, among others.
[edit] Mathematical analysis
Uri Zwick has analyzed the game using techniques of combinatorial game theory[4], under the assumption that players have perfectly steady hands and so the game only ends when a player is forced to collapse the tower through lack of any remaining move which would leave it in a stable state. In a two-player game starting with a tower of n ≥ 4 layers, the first player can win if and only if n is not divisible by 3.
[edit] Video game
Jenga World Tour was announced by Atari in July, 2007 for the Nintendo Wii and DS and released on December 7, 2007.[5] That version of the Jenga video game has received extremely poor reviews, such as that by Game Daily.[6] A better version of the Jenga game for the Nintendo Wii is available directly from Hasbro as part of its Family Game Night 2 offering. The two versions are by different companies and play entirely differently.
[edit] Notes
- ^ The Playmakers:Amazing Origins of Timeless Toys.Tim Walsh(Keys Publishing 2004):244[1]
- ^ Strong National Museum of Play
- ^ About Jenga: The Remarkable Business of Creating a Game that Became a Household Name. Leslie Scott (Greenleaf Book Group Press)[2]
- ^ Zwick, U. 2002. Jenga. In Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (San Francisco, California, January 06 - 08, 2002). Symposium on Discrete Algorithms. Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Philadelphia, PA, 243-246.
- ^ Miller, "Review of Jenga," Game Informer 177 (January 2008): 95.
- ^ Workman, "Jenga Review," Game Daily December 19, 2007[3].
[edit] External links
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jenga |
- Jenga at Hasbro
- Jenga Truth or Dare (Truth or dare questions on blocks) at Hasbro
- Jenga World Tour: Atari Official Website
- Jenga at Oxford Games
- The Jenga Chair in the Brohan Museum
- Sears Tower Jenga
- The Jenga House
- Jenga at the V&A Museum of Childhood
