We know the feeling. You’ve been writing so long that you just can’t write any more. The harder you try to think of ideas, the harder it is to come up with one. You’re experiencing writer’s block.
To make sure you avoid these ruts, it’s important to take regular breaks. It helps keep your mind fresh allowing you to consistently produce your best work. The best part is, you can do whatever you want in your break, as long as it’s relaxing. Here are 6 fun and quick games to play to help take the edge off.
Freecell
Freecell Solitaire has been around for decades and it’s become a sophisticated parlor game. In this version of the solo card game, you try to move your cards from eight foundation piles into four sequential suits of ace through king.
You locate the cards to build your sequential stacks by moving the top card of each pile to another pile. You can only play the top card of the pile, and you can only stack cards in alternating black and red colors, so you have to proceed carefully to find the right cards without locking yourself out of any possible moves.Try playing FreeCell.
Spider Solitaire
One of the best forms of solitaire for strategic thinking skills is Spider, a solo card game played with two decks at once. Like Freecell, you’re trying to arrange cards in suits from ace through king by moving them from foundation piles in sequential order. The twist is that in Spider, some cards are face down, so you need to play the face-up cards in ascending order before the entire deck is available. Try your luck with Spider Solitaire.
Mahjong
Mahjong is a tile-matching game invented centuries ago in Asia. Players start the game with 13 tiles each. A hand may contain a combination or sequence of at most five tiles, including either more than one tile from the same category or a mix of individual sets or sets of successive numbers. Players get rid of tiles by swapping them with other player hands or by picking them up and discarding them. Try winning a game of Mahjong.
Hearts
Hearts is a trick-taking game played by 4 players with an equal number of decks with an Ace high and 2’s low. In its simplest form, the objective is to win the most hands or “tricks.” Each player draws cards until each has 13. Once all the cards have been dealt, the lead player plays a card face-up onto the center of the table. Each player in turn then plays one card from their hand, face-up, onto the center of the table. The player with the highest card wins the trick.
Spades
Spades is played in a similar fashion to Hearts. In this variation, you try to predict the number of tricks that you’ll win during play. You score 10 points for each trick you win, but only one point for each trick higher than the bid you made. As a result, instead of trying to simply win as many tricks as possible, the goal in Spades is to strategically control the number of tricks you win based on the cards you’re dealt.
This twist makes Spades a more challenging game since you must sometimes try to “lose” tricks on purpose rather than simply trying to play the highest card as much as possible.
Minesweeper
Don’t step on the mines! In Minesweeper, you’re attempting to clear bombs from a rectangular field. You click on a space to uncover it, and if there are no bombs, that space and all adjacent clear spaces will be revealed. However, some spaces will reveal a number, and this number is a clue that tells you how many bombs are hidden in the adjacent 8 spaces.
You have to carefully piece together these clues to determine where the mines are hidden. If you click on a mine, you lose!