Goatdown

[Martin Gardner]

Me and Christine tried our first few games of Goatdown yesterday. We tried a little variation. The game we play is 15 rounds with 3 numbers games and no conundrum, as there is nobody to write one! For the numbers, the player chooses 5 numbers then chooses the last one voluntarily - the only condition is that it has to be one of the remaining valid numbers. For instance, you can't choose two 100's or two 25's, nor can you just make up any old number which would be amusing I admit, like a 26 or a 144. If you do something like 4 large it's not much of an advantage, because it depends wholly on the target. However if you choose 5 small ones you can then either choose another small one, like a 10 to make the game easier or if you're really evil you couldn't choose a 1, or if you want an easy game you could choose the 100. My highest score so far is 119 although we both declared nothing on the second numbers game, and neither of us got the last one spot on either, although it was actually quite easy.

Martin