It was Richard’s birthday, so we had some cake too:

Close up:

We played Shadows over Camelot, a cooperative game:

Unfortunately we lost!

We came so close, but that Vivien card showed it’s true colors.

Cucumber yoghurt (a Persian favorite):

Rice:

And rice balls! There’s a story behind these, but I don’t recall the details:

Amelia’s amazing cupcakes:

Everyone grabbing food:

Salad:

Curry:

Fried rice:

Arman eating some fried rice:

And the normal rice, in a rice cooker that we’re all fond of:

It’s from Japan, as you can see from the writing inside. Very cute and hi-tech.

Some of you have heard about it already. For those who haven’t, the rules are simple. Every row and column will contain the numbers 1 to 9, with no duplicates. Every 9 cell box will also contain the numbers 1 to 9 with no duplicates. So it’s simply a matter of figuring out where each number goes, and the way they make the puzzles there will always be only one solution which can be figured out with logic and no guesswork.

Here’s a picture of one of the recent puzzles I worked on:

It was actually pretty easy up till this point. I can’t seem to figure out what to do next. So I used trial and error and got the solution fairly quickly – but I still need to learn what the logic rule I could have used was.

If you are interested in Sudoku visit http://sudoku.org.uk, they have some nice starting tutorials as well as a daily puzzle which I have been doing.

And another shot.

Richard and Kurt, discussing Tichu strategy:

Amelia’s fantastic cupcakes!

And the score:

As you may notice, this was a round of "Extreme Tichu"(tm). It involves starting the game as usual, with equal hope on both sides. Once one side starts to see they aren’t doing so well, they go into a Great Tichu Rampage (GTR, tm)! It usually involves a lot of excitement as well as dismay at the plumetting scores, but the whole idea of the game at this point is to maximize the score difference. May the best looser win!

Delicious pasta:

As well as pizza!

And of course, desert:

We played a card game called Tichu. Here are Saba and Faraz, the co-conspirators:

As you can see they suffered eventual defeat at the hands of their merciless enemies:

But they did enjoy some desert afterwards:

An action shot of Tichu:

Saba washing the dishes:

I’m doing something with the chicken – not really sure what:

And we ended up with a rice and chicken dish! The girls made the salad – it’s all about the sauce:

I had to finish the rest of the food:

So I could get to that piece of chocolate:

Yep, the one in the middle. Then, we played scrabble:

It’s a great game – you actually feel like you haven’t totally wasted your time! Amazing! Our resulting board:

Sieni won this game – congratulations! Till next we meet.

We split into two groups, the first playing a number of games:

And the second, which I was a part of, playing Power Grid:

We played with 6 players, and the one game took well over 2 hours. Very nice game though:

Thanks a lot to everyone who was there, I had a great time.