Fun and Not Fun

In advance of an overnight visit from Allyn, our 24-year-old goddaughter, I ordered a new game. Even though she spent lots of time here as a kid, it's been years since Allyn's last visit-- especially since she moved out to Oregon a few years ago-- now most of her East Coast time is spoken for by her parents and grandparents.

But she is in transit tonight. Her parents will meet her at the airport tomorrow, and the three of them will fly to Germany to spend Christmas with her younger sister, who is doing her junior year of college abroad. When the girls stayed with us when they were little, we always played games after dinner, and yesterday, when I saw an ad for Cat in a Box, I thought it might be a good fit to carry on the tradition. 

First of all, the title refers to Schrodinger's theoretical cat-- the one he hypothesized could be both dead and alive at the same time in his famous thought experiment concerning quantum physics. Allyn's dad is a high school science teacher, and they actually have a miniature schnauzer named Schrodinger (or Odie, as he is fondly known). I knew Allyn had suggested his name, too.

Secondly, it is a bidding and tricks game, and Heidi and I were recently at a teacher happy hour where folks were playing spades. Watching the game made us remember how much we like cards, and we agreed to look for more opportunities to play.

Cat in a Box ended up being a complicated version of Spades. The cards had numbers, but no suits;  each player has to declare the suit of their card when they play it. There are guidelines and trackers, because while any card can be both a red six and a green six when it's in your hand, once played, there can only be one red six per game. There is also bidding, and of course paradoxes arise, which is only fitting for a game inspired by Schrodinger.

As it turned out, Allyn had never played a plain bidding game, so these clever twists were lost on her. But, after watching an instructional video, we were able to play through the three hands required for a complete game. After the firs round, I checked in with Allyn. "How's it going?" I asked. "Do you get it?"

"Well," she answered drily, "I understand it better than quantum physics."