toybox

WIZZIM Glynn Williams

The ideal toy is something that one likes to 
play with and play with and play with and 
play with and play with and play with and...

Once taken up, everything must be against it 
being put down; therefore there must be:

Nothing to achieve ... 
         So you never achieve it 
Nothing to comprehend ... 
         So you never tire of it 
Nothing to learn ... 
         So you never master it 
Nothing helpful ... 
         So you never progress 
Nowhere to start ... 
         So you never finish 
Nothing involving others ...
         So you don't make enemies 
No top or bottom ... 
         So you don't know how to leave it 

Mindless/Crazy/Nonsensical/Aimless/Timewasting/Compulsive
         (Such toys are rare)

John Williams wins the MANIFOLD toy competition with a set of non-transitive dice in plastic

Lionel M. Confucius casts Chinese horoscopes for the years of the cock, lion...

FOXRAB looks set to be the first game that's really differentiable!

Ten South London schoolboys learn symbolic logic while playing WFF n PROOF

In MANIFOLD-8, we announced the MANIFOLD Toy Competition, inspired by the question posed in the introduction to PLAY ORBIT (Studio Vista: 42/~) by Jasia Reichardt: - are the toys invented and made by artists better or more interesting than, say,. those invented by engineers or mathematicians or architects? The entry to this competition was the largest yet received, but regrettably most of the entrants confused toys with games. The two best entries are reproduced later, together with MANIFOLD's own Chinese horoscope - cast by Lionel M. Hawkins and the I Ching - and a review of the MANIFOLD field trials of the logic-learning game of WFF n' PROOF.

WIZZIM is reprinted from the PLAY ORBIT catalogue by permission of STUDIO VISTA and remains copyright: 1969.