Shattered Veils

Take Jenga and Clue.

Place Professor Plum on top of the Jenga tower.

Play Clue normally, except every time a suggestion is made and disproved, pull a block from the Jenga tower and don’t replace it.

Solve the Crime before the tower falls and Professor Plum plummets to his death.

You all understand that I had to do this

Yummy Rummy is a game I co-made with a friend a few years ago. We used to get drunk and play it before we went out dancing (hence the JD design). 

Its rules are the same as Rummy - you get seven cards, and you can make pairs or runs with them. This set may look like we just put hot men on the cards (yeah we did), but in Yummy Rummy, you ignore the number and look at the man (such a hardship). 

So you can have David Tennant and David Morrissey as a pair because they were in Blackpool (or Who) together. Ditto CKR and Paul Gross for Due South. 

You make runs by linking people together. So Paul Bettany was in Wimbledon with James McAvoy who was in State Of Play with John Simm. Easy. It’s like Six Degrees Of Hot Separation. 

Occasionally it backfired when we began to hate someone who only went with one other person. I keep thinking about updating it (it would just be Hot Brits these days) and started a new list. Benedict Cumberbatch currently goes with sixteen other people because he is a manwhore. You could also make a Classic Hollywood one, and I would be terrifically tempted to make a 30s-50s Brit Cinema one. But it’s a collaboration, so you need someone to play it with who knows the connections as well as you do. 

Also, looking back on it now, we spent a ridiculous amount of time deciding who would be which card. REALLY. Try it. Some people are such obvious numbers, and suits. All the loveliest cutie pies got to be Hearts. 

Gallium

Gallium is a silvery metal with atomic number 31. It’s used in semiconductors and LEDs, but the cool thing about it is its melting point, which is only about 85 degrees Fahrenheit. If you hold a solid gallium crystal in your hand, your body heat will cause it to slowly melt into a silvery metallic puddle. Pour it into a dish, and it freezes back into a solid.

While you probably shouldn’t lick your fingers after playing with it, gallium isn’t toxic and won’t make you crazy like mercury does. And if you get tired of it, you can melt it onto glass and make yourself a mirror.

Price: $80