The world will miss you. A very talented actor, a superb comedian and from all accounts a very nice guy, you touched all of us!
Category Archives: bum thoughts
Grandchildren love Bumfoozle
Recently I had a chance to watch my grandchildren (ages 3 – 10) as they tried to find solutions in Bumfoozle. I was surprised that even the 3 year old was able to do it. He was able to see a space then see the piece in a different orientation that would fit. It confirmed to me that this was more than just a way to occupy their time, it was a way to exercise their young brains as they learned problem solving, spatial relationships, eye-hand coordination and many other skills. I asked my six year old grandson why he liked Bumfoozle and he said that it was because it made him think. Kids love to learn and Bumfoozle is a great tool to help them develop their thinking skills.
Turning off the sound
For those who are like me and don’t read directions, you probably won’t read this either, but there is a way to turn off the sound. On the startup view (the one where you choose the level), in the lower right corner, there is an info button (a round dot with an “i” in the middle). If you press that button, it will take you to a view where you can turn the sound off. There are two buttons. One turns off the background music that plays continuously, and the other one turns off the sounds like the “click” and the happy dance.
Fudging
Bum Guy says:
If you are an avid Bumfoozler you soon realize that you can simply reverse the whole puzzle board or rotate it 180 degrees (90, 180 and 270 degrees on the 5×5 grid of Level 3) and it will count as a new solution. When I thought of checking for this, I decided that the only person that you would be fudging would be yourself. So I suggest that you avoid doing it. Of course as you get hundreds solutions, you might inadvertently find such a solution. That’s ok because you’ve still had the fun and mental exercise of finding a solution. My 6 year old grandson discovered this and actually I was pretty proud of him to recognize that you could reflect or rotate the entire puzzle board and have it counted.
Another form of fudging would be to write a computer program to find all the solutions. If you decide to do that, then more power to you. It isn’t an easy task and you deserve credit for the hard work and thought process that you have to go through. You will find that it soon becomes very complex. Unless you also invent an iPad robot, you will still have to enter all the solutions in manually to have them counted.