Crazy Eights: Eight questions with Square Shooters designer Carmelyn Calvert

That’s a hard question. I like to play almost any game. I love to play chess. What I love about playing games is the interaction with the other players. People reveal a lot about themself when they play games. I’ve often been surprised and at times shocked at the competitive nature of people. I’m really not that competitive. I don’t care if I win or lose. I just love to play games. I tend to make the competitive players mad as hell, because I can’t help laughing when they are losing and getting sooo mad about it!

It really was a light-bulb moment. Late one night it just occurred to me that you could fit a deck of cards on nine dice if you included the jokers. 6×9=54. My next thought was, Why no one had ever done it?? I thought maybe you couldn’t place them strategically for it to be practical. My Dad taught me had to play poker when I was 5 years old so naturally I thought the lay-out of the dice had to allow a player to roll all 13 four of a kinds, all 40 straight flushes and every card had to be able to paired with the others to allow full houses.

The time involved was a couple of hours. I had to think like I was playing chess. ( If I put this card here then that card had to be on a different dice etc. I repeated this until all the cards were placed.) It’s really a stacked deck of cards permanently stacked in nine piles. If you did this with a deck of cards and only dealt each player a card from each stack, the odds of dealing a great poker hand or rummy hand are greatly increased.

Beside the games listed on the web-site. I’ve designed a casino table game. Picture this: a green felt top, all 52 cards are layed out. Players have chips they bet on what cards they think are going to be rolled. Each player takes turns rolling the dice. The “Shooter” pays any player placing a winning chip on any card rolled and collects any losing bets. If the jokers are rolled red or black the players bets are safe on the corresponding color. For instance black joker,  K of spades. The “Shooter” would not be allowed to collect the players chip. The players can leave their chips or place it on another card if they choose. The “Shooter” does not place bets when it’s his turn to roll.

Family and friends response to the game was overwhelmingly positive. The first sets of dice I made where painted blocks of wood. I can tell you they rolled the paint right off, because they played hours on end with those dice. I had the opportunity to meet Jonah White the CEO of Billy-Bob teeth. He lives locally and has successfully marketed his teeth world-wide. He helped me find a manufacturer and get started.

I’m very excited about the contest. I always envisioned people taking the dice and making up their own games. In fact right from the beginning people wrote in to the web-site telling us about various games they made up. So why not have a contest?!!  Heartland is offering a $2,000 cash prize along with a promise to publish the winning game!  Entries will be accepted from October 1 – October 25.  Information will be posted at www.thatshowirolldice.com and the contest will be run on our game design forum at forums.squareshooters.com.

Yes! I have other games, favorites of my grandchildren. When I first told them that I was going to produce Square Shooters they were actually disappointed that it wasn’t their favorite. We call it the Christmas game. Well maybe some day!?