A gorgeous homemade game

Suitable for gifting! I know, I know. But stay with me here.

Dec 04, 2023

Oh, hi, it’s just me, getting my weird on! Because this game? Roy G. Biv? I have been wanting to share the idea for, like, 15 years! And now, over here at Substack, I am just letting my freak flag FLY! Probably I lost everybody else at “homemade game.” So it’s just the two of us now! Which is why I love you.

Let me start by saying: If this game sounds like fun to you, but you don’t feel like devoting an afternoon of your one wild and precious life to numbering paint chips, and you aren’t a total aesthetic snob? Just buy the game Rack-o. Done! That was easy!

It might even be worth buying Rack-O—especially if you find it for $1.50 on half-off day at the thrift store—just so you can use the nice sturdy racks it comes with.

But because everyone in my family is kind of obsessed with color chips, we made our own version years and years ago and have played it a ton. I mean, a hundred times? More? We play it still when the kids are home, and they’re bona fide semi-adults! It never loses its appeal because it’s so pretty and because, besides Qwixx, it’s one of the only very quick games we all love.

Did I convince you? Then come with me on a little field trip to the hardware store. Now is a great time to visit the mega one that rhymes with Blown Repo, even if you’re boycotting it for supporting the political campaign of an actual groping insurrectionist criminal. Drive up, park in the lot, and sit for a minute in the car, thinking about painting a rainbow. Then go into the store and select 60 paint chips in as close to rainbow order as you can get them. If anybody asks if you need help, you can say, “No, but thank you so much!” If they wonder aloud why you need so many paint chips, which they honestly probably won’t, say, “I was thinking about painting a rainbow.” Leave the store with your paint chips, which are free.

If you pick a row and move left to right, taking every paint chip, you’ll end up with 50 or so. Then you’ll just need 10 to slot in, which you can take from different rows, even though they won’t look quite right, which is something you’ll have to live with.

Home again, arrange your chips in the order you want them.

Now pick a corner where you’ll number them from 1 to 60 with a nice, sharp Sharpie.

I always do them vertical, but it might make sense to orient them horizontally, actually.

Maybe this would be better? Oh well! I’m not going to renumber them now.

Take an extra minute to cross out the color name where it’s written on the back.

This is just a precaution, since most of the names are, like, “Hunka Chunka” or “Dreaming of Azerbaijan” and you’d never know the color, but some of them are like, “Blue,” and then you would know. If you have a roll of contact paper sitting around, you could of course cover the backs in an even nicer way! (I have never done this and never will.)

Okay, now you just have to make the racks and you’re done! Michael once made beautiful racks out of wood that he. . . slit-sawed? Is that a kind of saw? Suffice it to say, he sawed slits. Very lovely. These, however, are made from card stock.

Roygbivtemplate

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You’ll just download this template that my excellent son Ben made me in the last hour he was home at Thanksgiving before he took the bus to NYC like the kind of jerk who grows up and moves somewhere to eat nonstop bodega egg sandwiches and have a life of his own, SOB! Print four copies of it onto any color of card stock.

The dotted lines are fold lines, and the solid lines are cut lines. Start by folding it at the mid-point fold line.

Then cut along the sold lines through both layers to make the slots.

Fold the paper across the middle the other direction so that all the markings will be on the inside (if you’re kind of semi-fussy like I am), then fold on the other two dotted lines and paperclip in place. (I like to paperclip so that it can be unfolded for storage, but you could secure it with glue if you feel confident that you’ve got the space.) Make all four racks this way.