Sports/Games/Chess

Now comes Bananagrams! The Official Book, which translates the brain-twisting word fun of the game onto the page, and adds much, much more. Even if you've never dipped your hand into the Bananagrams pouch, the book stands on its own with hours of challenging play. Written by the only three-time National Scrabble Champion, Joe Edley, Bananagrams! offers sixteen clever puzzle types, including Banana Trees, where the object is to build word grids based on a theme; Banana Splits, a collection of four quick anagram puzzles to be solved in rapid-fire style; Banana Leaves, with its four-, five-, six- and seven-letter words; Banana Filling--what happens when you add a K?; and more. The puzzles have four levels of difficulty, from one banana to four bananas. Plus, there are glossaries; special strategies for Bananagrams: The Game; a list of Weords--weird words that are cool to play; two- and three-letter words to take your game to the next level; fun banana facts; and, of course, an answer key.

A New York Times bestseller, David Halberstam's The Breaks of the Game focuses on one grim season (1979-80) in the life of the Bill Walton-led Portland Trail Blazers, a team that only three years before had been NBA champions.

A Pulitzer Prize-winner for his groundbreaking reporting on the Vietnam War, Halberstam wrote more than 20 books, almost all of them bestsellers. His work has stood the test of time and has become the standard by which all journalists measure themselves.The tactile authenticity of Halberstam's knowledge of the basketball world is unrivaled. Yet he is writing here about far more than just basketball. This is a story about a place in our society where power, money, and talent collide and sometimes corrupt, a place where both national obsessions and naked greed are exposed. It's about the influence of big media, the fans and the hype they subsist on, the clash of ethics, the terrible physical demands of modern sports (from drugs to body size), the unreal salaries, the conflicts of race and class, and the consequences of sport converted into mass entertainment and athletes transformed into superstars -- all presented in a way that puts the reader in the room and on the court, and The Breaks of the Game in a league of its own.

1st edition. Signed by author. Dust jacket in protective cover; small creases along top of front cover; one closed tear front spine edge; black cloth over gray paper boards; small area at top of spine and along front edge scuffed; binding tight; text clean and bright. G/G

This beautifully illustrated deck of cards can be used to play pretty much any regular card game, and they also come with gin cocktail illustrations and recipes! This set was designed to be smart as well as fun, so each suit is a distinct type of gin:

• Historic styles: Genever, Bathtub and Old Tom
• Traditional i.e. London Dry
• Modern
• Flavored (including sloe)

Ace through ten cards in each suit features a bottle of gin, and the face cards (Jack, Queen, King) are the cocktails.  You'll find a booklet alongside the cards in the box which contains information on each of the gins, including garnish suggestions for the gins featured in the traditional and modern gin categories, along with full recipes for each cocktail in the deck.

Roll out the fun at home, camp or on the road with this travel-friendly game set. Canvas playing board features a colorfol Pendleton pattern, and rolls up for easy toting. Includes 32 silkscreened wooden game pieces that reverse for play as chess or checkers, plus a vegan leather storage bag. Instructions included. 

• Playing board is 10" x 14" unrolled; 10" x 2" rolled
• Canvas and wood
• Imported

A classic rummy game with robots for categories instead of suits. Playful illustrations add to the fun.

Features:

• For ages 5 and up
• Cards are 3.25" x 4.5"
• Instructions included

No wires. No screens. No batteries. Just pick a few cards and let them lead you into a story. How you tell it is up to you. Write it, draw it, sing it! Play by yourself or in groups. Perfect for early writers, parents who need some fresh bedtime stories, teachers who want to nurture creativity, and grandparents who want to play with the kids. 

• 360 cards = gazillions of stories (includes 20 blanks so you can invent your own prompts)
• Content is appropriate for children and anyone who's a kid at heart
• Comes with a booklet filled with prompts, games, and suggestions
• Light and portable with a vintage design
• Wild cards prompt you to go in all kinds of fun ways 
• Cards have rounded edges––easy for small hands to hold, fun to "build" stories
• Made in U.S.A.

May your Storymatic Kids bring you countless hours of fun and inspiration!

• "Such a great choice for improving storytelling skills." –– Forbes
• "These 360 cards can take you in an endless number of directions." –– TIME for Kids
• "Inspire young bards with fun creative-writing prompts. Will your next protagonist be a jump-rope champion or the tooth fairy's silbing? Pick a card and find out!" –– Scholastic

No one is better than Nikoli at rounding up such a collection. A Japanese puzzle and game company that started the Sudoku craze over twenty years ago, Nikoli is known for creating the only handcrafted puzzles around. As Tim Preston, publishing director of Puzzler Media, Britain's biggest seller of crossword and cryptogram puzzles, has said: "It is a matter of great pride to get your puzzle into one of Nikoli's magazines. Handmade puzzles are much better. . . . It gives you the satisfaction that you are pitting your wits against an individual who has thought about what your next step would be and has tried to obscure the path."

For X-treme Sudoku, the puzzle-makers at Nikoli went out of their way to obscure the path. There are puzzles with entire boxes empty. Puzzles with whole rows left blank. Puzzles that form mysteriously beautiful symmetries, but demand a calculating logic to solve.

For the X-treme solver, paradise.