5 Numbers

A weird game with instructions in Japanese (I think), but actually a very simple concept. Click on each of the terminal things (the grey boxes), and use the clue to work out the five digit number. Type in the number, click "Lift", and away you go. If you get it right then the terminal will be replaced by bits of something else (I'm sure you'll work out what quite quickly).
I managed all but three fairly quickly, and have now managed all but the grey and black pattern puzzle (feel free to give me any hints!).

GoWind

Play Go against a computer. Unlike drafts and chess computers are supposedly pretty bad at Go, for more information about this see this Wikipedia page. However this program (GoWind) seems to beat me every time!
The aim of Go is to capture squares on the board by surrounding them, and also to capture the opponents stones by surrounding them. You aren't allowed to suicide a stone (place it somewhere it would be immediately captured) except in the case that you would use it to capture an opponents stone, and therefore free up some space. Repeating the same moves over and over is not allowed either, so you may not be able to capture a piece if it's the one which the computer just placed.
My best effort so far is b 232, w 129 (ie. a loss of 232 to 129).

Catch The Butterfly

When you click on the button then your mouse pointing becomes invisible, and you have to catch the butterfly without running over the walls. When you are over the butterfly a box will appear around it, and you can click the mouse button to complete the level. Oh, and if you click on the british flag symbol you get the instructions in English!

 

Weboggle

Play Boggle against people from around the world and try to get to the top of the score board. If you don't know how to play Boggle already then you should look at the Wikipedia page on it.

Have fun!
 

Seen On Screen

In this game the aim is to work out what to do in order to advance to the next level. There are no instructions, and you can see what level you've reached in the bottom left corner. We managed to reach level 13, but are now stuck! If anyone can do better then please let us know (and we'll probably sulk for a while).

 

Line Rider

Draw a track and then press play to watch a penguin on a sledge follow it. Use the blue pencil tool to draw normal track and the red lines to draw acceleration track. If you want you can even draw background with the green lines. Be sure to check out the videos page to see what can be done!

 

Submachine

Submachine is a simple point and click adventure, but I'm sure people will be quite relieved if they've previously got stuck on Hapland, or any of the 'coloured room' series (Crimson, Viridian, etc.)
Nicely animated and very intuitive, I give this game a nine! (Though I'm not saying what out of)

Quest for the crown

An adventure game like no other. If you enjoyed 1D tetris and clock patience, then you'll love this. For more detailed hints and tips then check out this (hilarious) page.

In short - I'm dumbfounded.
 

Grow Version 1

For some reason this has come after Grow ver.2 and Grow ver.3, but it's still great!
Choose between the different options and sculpt your ball into a creature. The 'aim' is to get the bar at the bottom to MAX, which (I think) there's only one way of doing. However whatever options you choose you get to see an insight into the weird mind of Dave.
 

Diversity

Another escape from the room type game, but quite a good one! There's about four levels and none of the things are too hard to do. We managed it without any help (go us!)

Ps. Hopefully Soph will understand it ;-P
 

TyperA

After a recent conversation I realised there is a need for people to be able to type faster. This will improve efficiency not just in essays and emails, but also in other mediums such as MSN. How good would it be to boost the amount of procrastination you could do per hour, without it taking any extra time!
Apparently I type at about 44 words per minute, although I made nine mistakes when doing it. This is much better than QWERTY Wars (which was recently posted on here) for training typing skills, because you don't need to hit enter after every word.

Grow Ornament

If you've played the many other Grow games, then you'll take to this like a duck to water. Add decorations to the tree in the right order to make them interact with each other, and ultimately create the best Christmas tree ever!


 

Overtime at Santa's factory

A festive treat for you here (I think it's about six years old, but nevermind!) You forgot to write a letter to Santa, and so you have to get your present requent to him. If you select that you've been naughty then it's a very short game, but if you select nice then there's quite a bit more of it! You should put in a real present request, because there's one part of the game which is more fun if you do!
Anyway it's probably aimed at kids, but it entertained me for five minutes or so.

Qwerty Wars

The aim of this game is to stay alive as long as possible, which you do by shooting the alien type things. You shoot the alien/robot things by typing the words underneath them. As the game progresses the enemies attack more frequently, get larger and have longer words words beneath them. You can shoot the 'FullHealth' crates to be returned to 100 health, and shoot the 'Detonate' crates to destroy all the enemies on the screen.
If you can't touch type yet then this might be one way to learn!

The Unsuggester

Enter the title of a book you loved, and it will give you a list of the top 100 books you probably won't like.
It's worked out from a database of people's libraries, by comparing the expected number of people owning both (worked out from the individual book popularities) with the actual number of people owning both, and comes out with some quite surprising results!
The same site also has a 'Suggester', but that's just not quite as exciting really.

Ashes Alarm

I'm not sure of all the rules on this one, but basically the BBC are offering a text service to recieve scores from the Ashes series down under. You send a text to a number (at usual text price), and they'll send you the live score, at whatever time of day you choose. Consequently I get woken up at 7:30 on the dot with news of England's latest.

Thanks to Paul for showing this one to me!

Movie Puzzle ver.0

This strangely titled puzzle is also strangely tough. It has less to do with movies, and more to do with a moving ball jigsaw puzzle. In fact it has everything to do with a moving ball jigsaw puzzle, because that's precisely what it is!

After completing the easy setting in a minute or so you should try the hard one, which I still haven't yet worked out. Anyway it's a great idea for a puzzle, and is perfect to use up a few minutes of your day. I think this is a trial version, so look out for future additions/improvements to it!

I've now worked out the hard puzzle - you have to use the left and right arrow keys to complete the puzzle!

Ver

This game is a lot like one I wrote when I was at school. The idea is to use the arrow keys to control the line, however make sure that you don't run into the walls, or you'll get insulted(?) in French, and then have to start the level again. To complete the level you have to run into the star, and on the next screen press 'up'. As the levels progress the mazes get harder and harder.

I think the French says "You need to practice more", but I may be completely wrong! If you get to this screen press 'up' ("haut") to continue.

Make Moving MSN Emoticons

Create you own animated MSN emoticons with this animated gif tool. Upload the pictures you want in the animation and then save the result to your computer. Go to the "Create..." option on the MSN emoticon viewer, and select the gif file you produced (Nb. The emoticon will come out 50x50px - so don't put too much detail into the original pictures).
 

Multiperson Jigsaw

What could be more fun than an online jigsaw?
Answer: A multiperson jigsaw of course!
Just when you thought you'd got some of those pieces in the right place some fool moves them all! Actually it's good fun, and most of the time feels like you're bonding with someone over an respectible old-fashioned pastime (without actually talking to them).

Rock Paper Scissors 25

Click on "Play This Game" to experience the wonderful world of RPS25. If you want to know more about the history of the game (it's actually very entertaining!) then there's the official (I think) page here.
Possibly even more exciting still is the new addition to the site - RPS101! Now over a hundred different hand gestures, and under one percent chance of a draw! So the next time you need to make a decision in a hurry, you should consider RPS101.

Slime Cricket

This is quite an old game now, but it's still good fun. Find a friend, and then while away the hours with some good old fashioned cricket (nb. it's actually not much like cricket at all).

 

Counties of Great Britain

Which counties have you been to? I think you have to have stayed overnight at the place to have 'been there', so places along the M6 you've driven through don't count.
Here's my map though I've forgotten a couple of places from when I was younger.

 

Diet coke + mints = ...

Before watching the video linked to on the left (experiment 214) you should probably watch the ones building up to it!
Experiment 6
Experiment 10
Experiment 13A
Experiment 137

Grow 2.0

So following on from Grow Cube, here is Grow version 2, which is a predecessor of it. It's very short, and fairly weird, but the idea is exacly the same - click on things in the right order to make stuff happen. I'm pretty sure that if you get to the stage depicted to the right, then you've already gone wrong!

 

50 States

Drag and drop the states of america into place. Try to keep your total error distance and the time you take down to a minimum! I want to see the same thing done for counties of Great Britain! I think the first time I did this I got 80% placed correctly, which I was quite chuffed with, although to be fair I did it mainly like a jigsaw puzzle.

 

Grow Cube

There's quite a lot of puzzles like this one on this site. Drag and drop items onto the cube, and watch it "grow". The challenge is to get all the items to maximum level. Weird, but very fun! Look out for more games from this site popping up here soon (when I've had chance to test them all!)

 

Visited Countries

Make a map of countries you've visited (like on Paula's blog). Here is mine, and here is an old one of mine from 2005. It should blatantly allow you to distinguish between the bits of Great Britain, because I've never been to Scotland or Northern Ireland.

 

UglyOverload

You may have seen the much acclaimed CuteOverload (eg. here on Sarah's blog), but here is UglyOverload! A brilliant site with pictures of some of the world's weirdest looking animals. It should be noted (and applauded) that all the animals on the site are naturally 'ugly'.

 

Stickman Odo

If you get worried when you don't understand what a game is about then this game might concern you a bit. Basically the aim is to do stuff without dieing. It doesn't take very long to complete, and I don't get what level 3 (the one in plan view) is about.

 

The White Chamber

The White Chamber is an escape from the room game, and is made by the same people as The Crimson Room and The Viridian Room. However it is less weird than both of those, and for a change it's possible to solve just using logic and a bit of guesswork. Also there aren't that many tiny things you have to click on (I can only think of one key that's difficult to spot).
 

Tetris 1D

A whole new take on the classic game of Tetris. Be sure to check out the high score table. This game is definitely in competition with clock patience and Don't Shoot The Puppy, for most fun game ever.


 

Chinese Pictionary

Here's a game which our cell last year played lots, and which we called Chinese Pictionary. They've called it The Sentence Game, but it's still the same thing. Draw a picture to match a caption, or write a caption for an existing picture, this repeats until the start and end captions are completely different, and then the results are published in the archives folder.
Brilliant!

Surname Map

Plot maps of surname frequency. See how your surname has dispersed between 1881 and 1998. Probably most people will think this is really sad, but I thought it was neat. Bonus points for anyone who can work out who's surname is in the picture here!

 

Clock Patience

The world's most pointless game brought to you here as online entertainment. Be enthrawled as you match the card to it's corresponding hour marker, gasp as yet another king comes crashing down and cheer as you finally manage to get round to closing your browser and throwing your computer out of the window.

 

Hike24 - It's happening again

It's back again. For those of you that missed the first or second hikes, here's your chance to support Team Hike 24 as they raise much needed money for a trip to work on an orphanage in Recife, Brazil this Summer. They set off on the hike on the 3rd of June at 5am, so keep yourself glued to the site for all the latest thrills and spills.

 

The Ultimate Film Desktop

You may well remember the Virgin music quiz thing where you have to find as many band names in the picture as you can. Well this is very similar, but with film titles. I liked it a lot more, because on the whole the films aren't all that obscure (whereas I'd never heard of maybe half of the bands). Anyway, there's 100 to find, go knock yourselves out.
 

Ask a ninja

This site is possibly the worst laid out site I've ever seen, but the videos are really funny. If you have anything you've ever wanted to know about ninjas then this site is the place to ask. I think the easiest way to get to the videos is to go to http://www.askaninja.com/tags/question-1 then change the number in the address to whatever question number you wish to view.
 

Time For Bed?

How much sleep does the average child need in comparison to a variety of animals? Complete with realistic sound effects and exciting facts.

Grat.
 

Face transformer

Ever wanted to change the way you looked? Well now you can! You need a photo of a face on your hard drive to upload, and away you go.


 

Pimp My Snack

A site based on a genius concept - take everyday snacks and make them HUGE. Be sure to check out the jaffa cake and the jammie dodger. I found that looking at most of these things made me hungry, with a few exceptions that made me feel slightly nausious (think of the sugar content!)

 

Hike 24

Have a look what these crazy guys are doing! Hiking non stop for 24 hours from Egham to Oxford and beyond!



 

Don't Shoot The Puppy

RRRRThats5Rs presents the genius that is Don't Shoot The Puppy!
There are 15 levels in all, how far can you get?


 

ReadPlease

I hate to do this, because it's a shareware program, not freeware, but this is a tool which I've found most useful for 'reading' excessively long blog entries (*cough* Sarah *cough* Laura *cough* Naomi *cough* Paula *cough* etc...) Just copy and paste the text, and away you go! The woman has an annoying american voice, and sounds like a bit of a harlot, but you can download a British add on pack.

Blue ball machine

Sit in awe as the little blue balls get transported about, bounce off things, get cut in half, glued back together again, etc. etc. etc. I must have watched this for at least 5 minutes, and would you believe it's animated in only 30 frames! I think it has music with it too, but I've not listened to that.

Teen Girl Squad!

Internet cartoons don't get much funnier than this! Tales of four stereotypical teenage friends. Genius, just genius!

Silly Tube Maps

An entire page of pictures of alternate Tube Maps. Maps showing actual locations of stations and lines, maps showing which parts of the Underground are underground, even maps showing where to go if you need the loo on the tube!

 

The Brick Testament

No doubt lots of people will have seen this before, but I thought it was worth adding here (if only to pretend there's still some kind of life in this blog!) Many thanks to Big Chris for reminding me of it!

Christmas Carol Maker

Click on notes at the right time to write a Christmas carol, listen to a load of elves sing it, then send it to a friend.

The Infinite Cat Project

Someone put a picture of a cat on the net. Next someone put a picture of their cat looking at the picture of the first cat on the net. Soon there were cats looking at cats looking at cats looking at ...