Our Latest Gaming Obsession: Quatro

I saw this game at my sister's place last weekend and my first thought was "Wow, this is fun!" followed by "Yea, I can make this!" and here it is.

The game is called Quatro (Spanish for "four." Or a German luxury car, take your pick) and it's pretty darn addicting.

To play you have sixteen wooden pieces, each slightly different from the next, and players take turns trying to place pieces on the board such that they can make a row of four that shares one of four characteristics.

For example, the first player picks a piece and hands it to the person at his or her right. That player takes the piece and puts it anywhere on the board, trying to somehow make a row of four. After placing that piece they pick another piece and hand it to the player at their right who also places it and tries to complete a series of four.

Around and around you go (you can have as many players as you'd like), each player playing the piece they were given and choosing a piece for the next player to place. As soon as someone is able to complete a row of four in any direction the person who handed them the winning piece is out and the game continues until only one person is left to claim victory.

The trick lies in the connections. You have round pieces and square pieces, white pieces and brown pieces, short pieces and long pieces, hollow pieces and filled pieces. Of the sixteen total pieces no two share all four characteristics and it's very tricky to train yourself to see all the possible combinations on the board.

If you look at the picture at left here you can see, for example, that the bottom horizontal row can be completed if someone places a hollow piece in that empty spot because then all of the row would be hollow pieces even though some are short and some are tall and they are of different colors. Same for the diagonal--one more brown piece in that upper right hand corner and you've completed a row of four brown pieces diagonally even though the pieces are not all exactly the same otherwise.

What makes the game tricky is that you might be concentrating on the fact that there are three hollow pieces in a row but not notice that you also have three square pieces in a different line so things can sneak up on you and get you out unexpectedly.

It's a great game for children but entertaining for all and we've been playing it all weekend.

How do you make your own game? Well I'm so glad you asked!

For the board you can use anything you want--a piece of plywood, a pre-cut piece of craft wood from Michael's, a plastic lid, a piece of cardboard, whatever you've got on hand. I used a $2.79 piece of pine from Michael's then sanded it a bit and stained it with a light stain.

Then I used sixteen wooden discs (also at craft stores) and stained those with a dark walnut stain and glued them with wood glue in a four-by-four grid on the top. I drilled a hole in the corner of the board and attached a drawstring bag with a leather lace to hold the pieces when they're not in use.

In a burst of creativity I also used my woodburning tool to write the instructions for the game on the underside of the board should anyone forget how to play (though as much as they're playing around here I doubt very much that will happen).

As for the playing pieces I used a square dowl and a round dowl then cut them into eight 2 1/2 inch segments for the tall pieces and eight 1 1/2 inch segments for the short pieces. I drilled part way into the tops and bottoms of eight hollow pieces and then stained eight of them with a light stain to match the board and half with a dark stain to match the discs. Easy huh?

Here's a breakdown of the kinds of pieces you'll need (one of each kind for a total of 16):

short white round hollow
short white square hollow
short brown round hollow
short brown square hollow
short white round filled
short white square filled
short brown round filled
short brown square filled
tall white round hollow
tall white square hollow
tall brown round hollow
tall brown square hollow
tall white round filled
tall white square filled
tall brown round filled
tall brown sqaure filled

Total price to make? Not including the paint stain, leather lace, scrap of fabric for the bag and sandpaper (which I had already on hand) about $10.50 with some discs leftover. Not bad.

Sponsored by Tiny Prints for the holiday party invitations for children.