Pyramids found in Torrington!

My kids have a copious supply of Lego bricks – they’ve been bought plenty over the years but they were also given my Lego that my brother and I played with as a child. It’s one of their favourite toys and at 32 years old I still enjoy building with it too!

My daughter has a ‘set’ model that she consistently makes – and that is pyramids. She will normally only build them about 8 or 10 rows high. As I passed her bedroom yesterday I spied her making another pyramid so I suggested that we have a go at making the biggest pyramid we can, using all the bricks we have.

The first task was sorting out all the bricks. We worked together as a team one foraging through the box for bricks whilst someone else sorted the bricks into colours. One person was tasked with construction! We took it in turns to do the construction as this is quite a tedious and frustrating task (particularly when the sides collapse).

Here’s pyramid #1

The top of the pyramid is the original model that I spied my daughter building. We just decided to start adding to it. We started off trying to colour co-ordinate it but the final layers ended up being random!

The construction process is fairly awkward as you need to rest the pyramid upturned on your legs and build it upside down. The bigger it got the more delicate become and we had the sides collapse on us a few times.

When this pyramid was finished I decided we might be able to make a large pyramid if we built it in a square shape (rather than rectangular like this one). We dismantled it and sorted out the bricks into pots.

Construction of Pyramid # 2 then began.

I started with the colour bricks that had the least amount – this was clear blue and clear red (or sapphire and ruby as my kids call them). I then worked through the bricks finishing with the red bricks that we seem to have loads of!

Disappointingly after all the effort of sorting the bricks and taking care to use the colours in order of amount – this ‘square’ pyramid is not any taller than the rectangular one anyway!

Next project – Leaning Tower or Lego!

How to get a high score on Word Challenge (facebook).

I have recently achieved a very high score on the facebook game “Word Challenge“. At the time of writing my score is 70,637. My friends (& even my own sister. Pah!!!) have accused me of cheating but my score is simply down to playing hard, having a good vocabulary and gaining a good understanding of the game. Here’s my tips to help you achieve a high score:

1) I can touch type, this gives an advantage because you’re up against the clock. I only use the keyboard shortcuts to play (‘Return’ enters the word you’ve guessed, ‘CTRL’ gives you the bonus round or the next level, ‘space’ shuffles/reorders the letters). Time is key – you can’t pause, hesitate or hang around. You literally need to be entering words rapid fire, non stop!

2) Every word you get over 4 letters gives you more time on the clock. The longer the word the more time is added (I think?). I don’t really bother going for 3 letter words as they don’t help you gain time.

3) When you get the six letter word you then get the bonus round (a pink crown button appears to the left of the letters). In the bonus round you have to find one of your friends names in the letters and then you get bonus points. If you guess the friends name quickly you can get over 400 points.

4) You can press the yellow (ABC) button to move to the next level (and change your letters) if you can’t find any more words (but this button is only active after you have found a certain amount of words – I think it is about 5?).

5) From the games FAQ:
“The score is 25 points for the first letter, and increased by 1 point for each subsequent letter. So for example if you get a 3 letter word first, then the score will be 25 + 26 + 27 = 78. Then if you get another 3 letter word the score will be 28 + 29 + 30 = 87. You have a better chance to achieve a higher score by playing the same set of letters and find as many words as you possibly can, rather than to move onto a new set quickly.”

Enjoy!

Have you got any questions or other tips for this game? Please reply in the comments.

Stupid addictive games

I have been playing this card game called ‘speed’ for about 45 minutes. It’s very addictive. The idea is to get rid of all your cards before your opponent. It’s very simple to play. My highest score is 4185