It’s only because the ‘Frank’ brand is so strongly associated with jigsaw puzzles in my mind, that their Funville Games imports seem so incongruous. This week I tried Flipping Frogs (`195), and marveled at the many variations of a simple design idea.

Playing a bizarre version of two-player half court basketball on a rug at home turned out to be more exercise than I imagined. Our launchers were placed almost a foot away from the net grid.

For `299, I got myself 40 trees. Ten each of apple, pear, orange and pine. Playing farmer, all I had to do was plant four trees of each type in five rows. The math, however, just doesn’t add up.

Thinktank Games powered their way into gaming stores across India with the Don 2 franchise.

Witch Hunt from Dr Wood Challenge Centre is a clever strategy game, beautifully finished with gorgeous artwork, suitable witchery-relevant typography and cunning silver foil printing. Retailing at just `299, this is incredible value for money and the local manufacturer in Noida has done a first rate job.

I am now the proud owner of my eighth Gigamic board game. At Rs 1,500, Pylos is yet another exquisitely produced masterpiece from a company that boasts an incredible number of international awards, and encourages users to propose their own game ideas with the promise of royalties to be earned, on each game sold!

Despite my deep rooted distrust of Reliance ADAG, it’s hard to not be impressed with their relentless presence — Marks&Spencer, the iStore, etc. To see the big Zapak logo on the Alias box was a serious deterrent to buy. A quick read of the reverse of the box had Password written all over it.

Howard Gardner of multi intelligences fame was in India recently. The Varthur-Whitefield Road in Bengaluru had an impressive number of post dedicated to his dramatically photoshoppped picture in shades of black, with the ends of his long coat curling around his knees.

A dramatic portrait of Cedric Villani, winner of the 2010 Fields Medal, the Nobel Prize of Mathematics, was a compelling start to a gripping piece about France’s domination in Mathematics.

It was a long drive back from a tech park on an expressway that suggested speed, but delivered long stationary periods and moments of inch forward bumper-to-bumper traffic. The mood was angry. Drivers willed cars to irrationally edge out of lanes into impossibly tiny spaces best left to the ways of steel hearted motor bike riders.