Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Pasta Pastimes...

...or Using Your Noodle.

Two games to play on a rainy afternoon, using dried pasta from the pantry. Once you are done playing with your food, you can eat it for dinner!

Tic Tac Toe

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Tic Tac Toe (known to many as "noughts and crosses") was played here using whole wheat spaghetti to set up the board and some calypso blend pasta as the pieces. Anyone remember playing this game with a friend at the back of the lecture hall in Junior college?

Pick-Up Sticks

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This is a very neat game I played with my cousins for hours on end. It is called Pick-Up Sticks and various other names like that. You hold a handful of thin sticks (usually made of wood or plastic, but dried long pasta is an awesome substitute) in your hand, then drop them on a surface. Then you try and pick up sticks one at a time as carefully as you can without disturbing the other sticks. You lose your turn when any other stick in the pile moves. This is a game of dexterity, skill and concentration- way more fun than you would imagine from such a simple set up. It is one of those timeless games that helped my aji keep a giggle of granddaughters occupied during hot summer afternoons, decades after she used the same faded box of sticks to keep her own kids busy during their summer vacations. Read more about this game here.

The first picture is being sent to Jugalbandi's Click: Noodles event, just for fun!

40 comments:

  1. Ohh these two were my fav games....you have got a really good imagination Nupur...

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  2. nupur..actually my friend and myself would play tic-tac-toe sitting in the first bench in junior college..we figured that the lecturer was always busy looking at the last benchers to slack off...we used to do it right under her nose!!

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  3. that is the most fun entry ever. thank you. for pickupsticks, i recommend wholewheat spaghetti. they are sturdy. :D

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  4. Creative indeed Nupur:) nice ideas and the Tic-Tac-Toe is a colorful pic for click:)

    -Mansi

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  5. love the tic tac toe entry... looks great

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  6. Love these entries! But it also means I have to put my thinking cap back on!

    Pick up sticks is so much fun. What is even more amusing is that Medha does not get that there tci-tact-toe has a finite set of solutions so it's always easy to beat her!

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  7. Ohh Nupur...u just took me back to those summer afternoon when I used to play this pick up sticks (i didnt know the name of the game then) with my mom and aunt....as u rightly said, something which needs lot of concentration and flexibility...:) very sweet post :)

    Shn

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  8. Nupur thats very creative .love the tic tac toe.

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  9. Nupur- You brought back fond memories .....I had almost forgotten pickup stick game! Nice entry for pasta.. very creative & different i must say!!

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  10. Lets play tic-tac-toe rightaway :). Such cute pictures, Nupur! i still play tic-tac-toe with my friend's daughter ;).

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  11. Very creative and out of the box post for pasta! Thanks for the idea, I will try out the games with my five year old. TicTacToe was such a fav and the last pages of our school notebooks would be devoted to it.
    Namita.

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  12. That's very creative Nupur. I loved playing Pick-Up sticks with my cousins...

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  13. I want to come over and play! What a whimsical entry, Nupur! :)

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  14. what an imagination! Cool entry:)

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  15. Very sweet post Nupur, and I remember how we used to play tic tac toe being all time back benchers throughout my school life..:)) creative entry for CLICK..:)

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  16. Great pasta-party games, Nupur! We too loved pick-up-sticks as kids :)

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  17. such a cute post :)
    pick-up sticks was such a fun indoor game during the hot summer vacation!

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  18. Tic tac toe is the game i always play while travelling....nice post to the event

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  19. These photos make me smile -- I still play both of these games, albeit not with pasta!

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  20. What a beautiful tic tac toe game Nupur! I always liked tic tac toe and actually tried to show Cassidy how to play it recently... I think she's not quite ready :) I certainly remember an old pick up sticks game being around and I think we played a little - it now occurs to me that this was sort of a precursor to Jenga!

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  21. This is a g8 way to play with food..literally ;)

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  22. Great ideas you hav got for the entries:)

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  23. Hey Nupur!! You did bring fun into food this time!!! I love playing tic tac toe with noel even now!! Amazing idea!! Great entry!!

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  24. oh that looks lovely..nice idea..now that you have played aren't you going to cook mw??..:D

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  25. Thank You so much Nupur for ur advice. You definitely have a point and will correct myself from this post on to mention the respective website's name as courtesy rather than 'Google Images'. I know, how bad plagiarism could be and I am totally against it. Thanks again for letting me know and correcting me dear..:)

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  26. My frnds and I still play tic tac toe, especially when we are watching a boring late night movie and in no mood to sleep. The brain is already asleep and so this becomes the best past time :) Its been ages since I played the sticks game. Those are very creative photographs.

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  27. I had almost forgotten those games. What a fun presentation!

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  28. Your entry is so innovative...love the way you think. Tic tac toe...played a lot. But haven't played the 2nd one..should start toady with the daughter :)

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  29. Hey Nupur,
    What a great idea to play pickup sticks with dried spaghetti. We played this at my Aji's in the summer too - with broekn pieces of colorful glass bangles.

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  30. Hi Nupur,

    WoW loved this post.Kids would love it.This will be so much fun to play with pasta.Thank you for sharing.Durga.

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  31. hi nupur i came across ur blog site very recently and have loves it absolutely crazily and i checked this blog looking for pasta recipes coz i am crazy about pasta but you have definitely taken me back to my childhood when me and my sis used to play pick up sticks we had a colorful set and each of the different colors had points to them and tic tac toe was my all time fav college game

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  32. Simple and elegant...looks unique and lovely Nupur

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  33. Love those pics and the idea! Awesome entries for the contest.

    Mamatha

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  34. Hi Nupur!
    That's a fav game for me too!!!! you brought back so many memories! thanks!

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  35. hey that's a really fun entry (click)...blog...

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