Codito is the development group behind Tikal, Puerto Rico, Medici, and Ra, solid offerings but none earning top marks from me. Their latest offering, Reiner Knizia’s Tigris & Euphrates, is their best boardgame app yet, adapting a classic 1997 boardgame from Knizia in an attractive format with a strong tutorial and (I think) very solid AI opponents. It went on sale today for $5.99.
I haven’t played the physical version of the game or reviewed it here, so if you haven’t played it, here’s an overview of the game, ranked 13th overall on Boardgamegeek. Tigris & Euphrates uses an unusual tile system where players are represented on the board by icon rather than color – that is, every player has a red leader, but each player’s red leader has his unique symbol on it. Players build “kingdoms” of adjacent tiles in each of four colors (red, green, blue, black) on a board that includes land spaces and river spaces, the latter along two rivers representing those of the game’s title. Players acquire points by placing leaders on the board and then placing regular tiles in those colors in the same kingdom as their leader(s). For example, if you have a black leader in a kingdom and place a black tile anywhere within that kingdom – contiguous with the leader tile – you earn a point in black. Players earn points in each of the four colors, and the winner is the player with the highest low score. In other words, the score that matters most is your worst score across the four colors.
You can also earn points by making a 2×2 square of tiles of the same color and converting it into a two-color “monument” that produces one point per turn in each of those two colors, awarded to the leaders in the same kingdom. And you can earn “treasures,” wild-card points that can be added to your score in any of the four colors, which the app automatically assigns to your current worst color.
On each turn, a player has two actions, which can include placing a tile, placing a leader, swapping any of the tiles from his hand for new ones, or placing one of two “catastrophe” tiles that destroy the tiles (not leaders) on which they’re placed.
Of course, there’s conflict as players compete to control various kingdoms with their leader tokens. You can place one of your leaders on a kingdom with another player’s leader in that same color, triggering a “revolt” that is resolved by the use of red tiles on the board and from your hand, regardless of the color at stake. Conflicts also arise when kingdoms are merged through tile placement; the leader with the most tiles of the same color currently in its kingdom, supplemented with tiles from that player’s hand, wins the conflict. The loser of either kind of battle removes his leader from the board.
I’ve glossed over a few details, but the key takeaway if you’ve never played the game is that each player has to balance a number of different variables: boost your lowest score, protect your existing leaders, build your hand tiles (you get six at any time) to attack an opponent, watch opponents’ lowest scores and try to sabotage them, and so on. It’s very rich, and once you play a game or two, actually quite simple to play despite the seemingly long list of rules. Knizia’s games are often subtly complex yet very intuitive on the surface, and Tigris & Euphrates qualifies as well.
The app is outstanding. The board is extremely clear and easy to navigate on the iPad; the icons on tiles are very clear, and it’s easy to see what you have available to you at any given time, as well as the percentage of the tile stack remaining. Leaders are labeled with a number indicating their current strength. Conflict resolution is straightforward and the game includes optional confirmation dialog boxes for any move, which prevents you from accidentally tanking the game through an incorrect move. You can undo either or both of your previous moves before you end your turn, unless the move was a conflict that has now been resolved. (One quibble: When playing only AI opponents, you still can’t undo a resolved conflict; since playing AI players is more like training or an extended tutorial, this might be a nice feature to have so you can get a feel for the success rates of conflicts.) Most importantly, your point totals are clear and obvious, with your current low score highlight, and the app handles the treasures for you.
I’ve found the AI players to be strong enough to keep the game challenging. There are five difficulty levels, and after waxing two low-level AIs in my first game I dialed both up to four … and then lost seven straight times. (At least.) The eventual victory, followed by a victory against two level-five AIs, were quite satisfying. There’s some predictability even in the harder AIs, especially early in the game, but their strength is that they don’t miss obvious moves and don’t hesitate to attack via all three methods (revolt, merging kingdoms, catastrophes). I’d like to try this online, but as a standalone app it’s very strong because the AI players are so well-designed. The game also comes with one of the longest, most detailed tutorials I’ve come across, reminiscent of the one in Samurai, which would be my previous gold standard for app tutorials. It takes a while, but it’s worth it.
I’ve ranked boardgame apps without grading them, but I’d say the inner circle of apps – where the underlying game is strong; the app runs well, looks good, and plays easily; the AI players are strong; and online multiplayer works – would now include five games (links go to reviews): Carcassonne, Samurai, Battle Line, Ticket to Ride, and Tigris & Euphrates. This most recent addition is the most complex of the five for those of you looking for a more hardcore experience, but plays reasonably quickly, with three-player games against two AI opponents taking me 15-17 minutes. I highly recommend it if you’re slightly obsessed with these games, as I am.
Full disclosure: I received a free version of this app from the developers prior to its release. Also, would anyone object to me including T&E on the forthcoming updated board game rankings, even though I haven’t played the physical game?
is the best-known of his works after he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1930 (making him the first American author so honored, although they resumed their habit of giving the award to western Europeans the following year). It’s a protest novel, less purely literary than his classic novels of the 1920s (led by Arrowsmith, Babbitt, and Main Street), while angrier and livelier and a faster read.
, the story of the history and solution to another one of mathematics’ most famous problems, which lay unsolved for a hundred years (despite many attempts) until an eccentric Russian came up with a proof, only to decline the accolades that came with it. It’s a “bargain book” right now on Amazon at $6.38 new.
, an absolute must-own (I say that having owned it for inside of 24 hours). It’s a cookbook, but it’s more like an instruction manual for your kitchen, emphasizing fundamental techniques that will make everyone a better cook.
, which I 
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, the latter of which is the book Michael mentioned on the show that had him shadowing students at the Culinary Institute of America and eventually cooking alongside them.
. I’ve never seen this book myself, although there are several recipes from it in the back of Soul of a Chef that look amazing and intimidating all at once.
.” I have ridiculed them for being too quiet and verging on boring, and I do stand by that – their Mercury Prize-winning debut album couldn’t hold my attention except for two songs, “Crystallized” and this one, which features 
.” A 
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.” It does kind of figure that the only TV on the Radio song I like is far and away their most conventional song; their more typical, experimental stuff leaves me cold. Maybe I’d be a lousy music critic as a result, but this is the song I want on my iPod.
.” I am supposed to love these guys because I like Mumford and Sons, but the only tracks of theirs I’ve liked are this and “I And Love and You.” However, if you do like the Avett Brothers, let me again recommend 
.” If the Arctic Monkeys wrote an upbeat song with depressing lyrics about the archetype of the depressing band, you’d get this.
.” A good song about a great novel. Elefant lead singer Diego Garcia put out 
of Argentine-influenced music this spring.
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.” Named for a famous motorcycle, the VBS still exist but without the lead singer, Cassandra Snow, who made this song what it is with her double-time staccato delivery, telling the story in mock-comic tones of a mental breakdown over a punk-ska backdrop. 
.” Not their best effort, but the best of their efforts after 
, the album that put them on the map.
.” Yes, the theme to Veronica Mars, although I never did like that show (not for lack of trying it).
.” The lyrics struck me as mostly nonsense, but I love the menacing feel to the sparse music, especially the bass line that introduces the song.
.” Hook-laden as usual, with lines like “leave this academic factory,” how could you lose?
.” I’m not quite sure what to call Air – “Radio #1” was sort of alternative rock-ish, but “Girl” is this soft, ethereal ballad that might fit on adult contemporary radio. I give them credit for making 
.” Almost a grudging inclusion – I have never understood the critical fuss over these guys, although I understand their popularity given how watered-down their pop-rock is. Remember their (likely fake) feud with the Bravery? It was the alternative equivalent to the Backstreet Boys versus N*SYNC. Anyway, this was their first and biggest hit and, to my ears, the least saccharine.
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.” The decade saw plenty of output from these guys, nearly all of it disappointing, neither as original as Definitely Maybe and What’s the Story, Morning Glory nor as over-the-top as Be Here Now. This song was the closest to the formula of their first two albums as they have come since the century ended.
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.” Still the most dead-on Joy Division imitation I’ve ever heard – and I mean that in the best way possible. I’ve liked plenty of Interpol singles, but the competing guitar lines behind the bridge of leading into the driving, muted chorus give “PDA” a melancholy tone few other rock songs match.
.” The whole album – recorded between jail stints for Scott Weiland – was solid, including the heavy opening track “Down,” but the psychedelic “Glide” and the somber ballad “Atlanta” were the two that broke the group out of their narrow box of 70s-infused alternative rock.
.” The alternative rock equivalent of Johnny Damon or Javier Vazquez – a song without a peak (this was never something I was skipping through my iPod playlist to hear) but that has held its value for years after release.
.” Another ’70s-influenced band – that huge guitar riff just fills your ears, and I think the lack of a singable chorus hurt their chances on this side of the pond. “
” gets an honorable mention, but that flopped here as well, and they have possibly the least radio-friendly band name since Pussy Galore.
.” The triumphant return of Del tha Funkee Homosapien.
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.” Just barely qualifies, as it was released in the final weeks of 2009, and didn’t really come to my attention until it won the Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance this past February. (I still wonder if the song won because it deserved the award, or because it had the requisite old guy on board in John Paul Jones.) Them Crooked Vultures is what Masters of Reality were supposed to be when they brought Ginger Baker on board for their second album; the two groups are connected by M.O.R.’s singer, Chris Goss, who co-produced Queens of the Stone Age’s Era Vulgaris.
.” Talented, yes. Troubled, yes. But the fact that she died young shouldn’t affect anyone’s assessment of her music. I think her best work was likely ahead of her, if she’d stayed sober enough to produce it. What we’re left with is a Brien Taylor career and theories on what might have been.
.” Not sure if they’ll fully break out of the college-music niche where they’ve found so much success, as the looseness of their sound may not play well with the mass audience, but the singer’s lackadaisical storytelling vibe and the stoner-rock influences in the music offered us something different, at least for one album.
.” This was Reed Johnson’s walkup music from when he came up with Toronto at least until I left the club, which didn’t help him hit right-handed pitching but made it easier to watch him try.
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, as well as the song I thought most likely to find an audience on U.S. radio stations at the time. That didn’t work out as planned.
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.” Wikipedia, which is never wrong, says that this was the most-played track off Kid A, which is easy to believe as it’s the most accessible song on the album and one of the few with a hint of a guitar. I’m an early Radiohead fan, meaning the moment they switched off the guitars, I mostly switched off of them. I may be the only person on the Internet who didn’t lose his shit over 
(“Bodysnatchers” is solid, but didn’t make this list). They may remain critical darlings, but OK Computer was their peak.
.” The 
.” I’ll give it to Damon Albarn – he has pretty good taste in rappers, going for De la Soul here for the lead single off 
. As I type this, the album is on sale for just $5 on amazon.
.” And the first track on their next album, “
,” was great and much more uptempo, which deked me into buying the entire thing only to discover that it sucked. They seem to have drifted into critical and hipster revile; I don’t love this song the way I did when it first came out, mostly because the more you listen to the lyrics the more trite they seem, but it’s the rare piano-without-guitar song I do like and will find stuck in my head for hours.
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.” One of their goofier songs, but with the typical Jack White twist (“I don’t need any of your pity, I’ve got plenty of my own friends/They’re all above me”).
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.” One of the DJs on XMU loves these guys, which is how I came across this melodic, guitar-heavy track three or four years after it came out. The first time I watched 
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.” Great song, but overplayed to the point where I can still only take it in limited doses. One of the top intro bass lines in rock history … which is apparently not played on a bass guitar. Clever.
.” The 
” was recorded in the 1990s but wasn’t released until 2001, so it qualifies through the back door, although it’s a little too folky for me to put on this list.
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.” Done right, rock tinged with Irish folk music is among my favorite styles of music. Talk about an odd connection, though: a not-yet-famous Katy Perry stars in 
.” I admit it – hearing this for the first time, I went right back to ’87 and the first time I heard Appetite for Destruction. Of course, back in ’87 it blew my ears off, while in 2004 it was a little quaint. 
.” Too clever by half? Mute Math seems to have a reputation as a brilliant band, and the whole playing-backwards trick was pretty cool, but “I know there’s got to be another level/Somewhere closer to the other side” might as well be a Backstreet Boys lyric. Good thing the hook in the chorus is so catchy.
.” A slower, folkier song than most of their output, based on the cliched provincial cab driver met by the band – this one in San Francisco, as the story goes – but I’ll give Kelly Jones credit for a more detailed picture of the driver’s attitude and for putting such a unique stamp on the song with his raspy vocals. It’s mostly on this list for its hook, though.
.” So I really don’t get the distaste for these guys. Too popular? Too much ’70s soft-rock influence? Overreaction to the abysmal XY album? Antipathy towards Gwyneth? This song has faded for me the more I listened to it – and it was overplayed, big time, to the point where I needed an escape hatch – but it’s a well-written, ambitious pop song, on an ambitious and rather complete album; even NME, among the most sneering of hipster publications (and I admire them for it), gave the album an 
.” So last time around, I called these guys one-hit wonders, and a few readers responded by telling me where “Panic Switch” placed on the charts. Not only was that song just riding the coattails of “Lazy Eye,” I think now with more time since those songs were released, we can agree this is the one still receiving airplay, and this is the only one worth remembering. (Let’s not even talk about “The Royal We.”) Anyway, am I the only one who wasn’t sure if the lead singer was male or female? Great song in the single edit, but the outro to the album track is just late-60s wanking, and I doubt there’s been a bigger letdown for me when learning the actual lyrics to any song. “That same old decent lazy-eye?” Uh, okay.
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.” I understand that “Clocks” is The Hit for these guys, but I was burned out on that song within a year, even before the Jays used it in a video montage at the end of the 2003 season to pay tribute to Roy Halladay’s (presumed, at the time) Cy Young-winning performance. I heard this song at a Coldplay concert from their first tour, and that opening riff made it the most memorable song of the night, even though I’d never heard it before. A reader pointed out the similarity between this song and Ride’s “
.” The best White Stripes song not written or recorded by the White Stripes. The 
.” I’m not sure I would have even discovered this if it wasn’t by the former lead singer of the Stone Roses, since it garnered no airplay that I know of in the U.S. and is probably the most bizarre song on the list, with no percussion and an incongruous trumpet solo. Then again, Brown’s solo stuff has all been weird and compelling, so while this isn’t as good as “
,” it’s his best song of the decade.
.” The skinny ties and matching outfits were stupid, but they churned out a few memorable bone-crunchers, including this song and “Walk Idiot Walk.”
.” If you’re into old-school guitar rock at all, you had to like this song, right? The opening lick was hypnotic, and the producer tweaked every bit for maximum bombast. Sort of a guy’s guy song. I would have been surprised if they’d ever cooked up anything close to this good again.
.” I didn’t like this album (Neon Bible) save this one song, which will probably remind you a little of Eddie and the Cruisers but in a good way.
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. The whole album, Haughty Melodic (an anagram of “Michael Doughty”), was excellent, although this was clearly the best track. I still miss Soul Coughing.
.” Cee-Lo’s “
,” from his 2002 solo debut, gets an honorable mention here, too. He can sing, but I think subsequent events made it clear Danger Mouse was the real artistic force behind this collaboration, while Cee-Lo provides the voice and the charisma.
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.” And let me just state for the record that I was all over this song a year before Budweiser stuck it on their commercials. There really is no justification for using a song this good to advertise a beer that bad.
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album would cross over, but their sound was probably 25 years late and five years early, as ’70s guitar rock seemed to make a comeback at the end of the decade with songs like Wolfmother’s entry on the list. The lead singer does look rather like a hobbit, though.
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.” The 
.” I don’t generally get excited about politically-themed lyrics, but these were spot-on, in large part because Jack White picked a topic you could actually address in three minutes of words. Oh, and the song rocks.
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,” which also backs up Kool G Rap & DJ Polo’s “Streets of New York.”
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.” The best Prince song by an artist other than Prince – but not the top Prince homage on this list.
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.” Requires no explanation, I assume.
.” Not their usual straight-ahead rocker, but they manage to update a Motown-esque sound into their minimalist musical style with plenty of wordplay in the lyrics. I probably could have put another half-dozen White Stripes songs on this list without much of a stretch.
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.” Yet another Prince homage, reimagined through an alternative-rock lens. I liked Muse’s first album, Showbiz, released in 1999, but after that found them increasingly pop-oriented even as their music became more bloated with layers of instrumentation. But “Supermassive Black Hole” was such a departure from their usual material, a rare example where their over-the-top showmanship helped the song play up instead of down, with a funk-tinged groove behind the requisite falsetto vocal. This song is the most egregious omission from the first list; I simply hadn’t heard it, not when it came out, not until late in 2010. That period from late 2005 till the fall of 2006 was just a void for me, between changing jobs, becoming a father, and enduring probably the longest period of depression of my life; I shut down and missed out not just on art but on an incredibly important time for my family. And, worst of all, I wasn’t even aware I was depressed – my memories of the period are simply shrouded in fog. Um, anyway, this is a great song.
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) is an angry, biting, brilliant, but slow-moving novel about writers grappling with a changing literary environment in late 19th-century England, faced with a growing dichotomy between serious literary work and lowbrow work that is more commercially viable. It appears on the 
and is an honorable mention in 
. Its title refers to the defunct Grub Street in London, which had become synonymous with hack writing by the time of this novel’s publication.
, poor (although not quite starving), with two published novels, neither of which sold well, the latter of which was less well-received by critics than the former, now facing reduced circumstances if he can’t complete and sell another work. His wife, Amy, loves him but grows exasperated with his self-defeating attitude; as their money troubles grow, their bickering becomes a quarrel that leads to separation, while Edwin convinces himself that Amy is withholding affection and also finds himself without love for their son, Willie.
)?
– the 2008 baseball movie, as there are a few films by that tile – saved up on the DVR for months before finally getting around to watching it last night, since I was distracted by The Wire when I had some free time to sit and watch a show. Sugar might be the best pure baseball movie I’ve seen, except that at heart it’s not really a baseball movie, but a movie about being the ultimate fish out of water, and how baseball exploits one of its most dedicated underclasses.
, a Brazilian film that also used local kids from the dangerous barrio of that name in Rio de Janeiro in what remains one of the best movies I’ve seen. In both movies, which couldn’t be more different in tone or subject matter, there’s a lack of polish to the central characters that makes them look and sound more real.
is the first board game from German designer Matthias Cramer, who was subsequently nominated for the Kennerspiel des Jahres award in 2011 for his next game, 
(losing out to one of our all-time favorites, 
is the most successful novel by Finnish author/poet, more a novella than a full-length novel, telling the story of a journalist who walks away from his life after his car hits and wounds a hare in the forest outside of Helsinki. He spends the next year wandering through the country, headed generally north, encountering eccentric locals and trying to reestablish the priorities in his life.
is probably the best collection of fables I’ve found. The blurb for The Year of the Hare compares it to 
, but the latter book is far superior whether read as a fable or merely for entertainment, with plenty of room for differing interpretations of its meaning and its endnig. As for the comparison offered to 
, putting a a bunny in your book does not make you Richard Adams.