In Praise of Addictive Games

I have always secretly envied people who can spend hours on end solving crossword puzzles, playing chess, solitaire, Free Cell or Sudoku. There has got to be a tremendous sense of joy when people get absorbed in a game like that, and forget about the outside world. It is even better if the passion transforms into a mild addiction for then there is always an escape from our worldly woes.

Last year, on an international Delta flight, I got introduced to the game of Mahjong for the first time. To a lay person, this will look like a boring game of matching tiles or cards. But the game is much more interesting than that. The tiles are stacked in various different shapes and the idea is to remove all the tiles in the fastest possible time. It combines a common sense approach with some analysis, strategy and an iota of probability theory. Since it was a touch screen on that Delta flight, I borrowed a pen from by wife and started to play the game by matching all the similar tiles. I must have played fifty games straight on that flight. I lost many of them and won a few.

As I was playing the game, the lady in the front seat got up and looked around all over trying to locate that "annoying tapping sound." I realized quickly that it must have been my pen tapping against the screen. She asked me to cease immediately as it bothered her quite a bit.

I stayed quiet for a while but couldn't resist the itch. This time, I borrowed a pencil from my wife and started to play the game by gently taping on the screen with the eraser side so it would muffle the sound. I played it all the way till touch down. The fifteen-hour flight suddenly seemed like a domestic flight of not more than two hours!

It is nearly a year since I played the first game, but I still average atleast 10 games a week. I believe there was a lady in China who got a blood clot in her leg because she sat in the chair and played for over twenty hours non-stop.

A simple version of this game in the shape of a "turtle" is available in Yahoo! games. But the one I like the best is in the shape of a fortress. See if you locate one and play it for a while. I am sure you will like it.