The 2017 Good Gift Games
Our resident board-game expert picks the best new games released this year.
Opinions
A collection of 197 issues
The 2016 Good Gift Games
Board games are always the answer. After a dinner party, when conversation dwindles. At family gatherings, when politics loom. When you want to give a good gift, but aren't sure where to start. Begin here, with 10 of the best from 2016.
The 2015 Good Gift Games
Give someone the right board game, and you're offering easy access to endless fun. Choose incorrectly, and you're giving misery in a box. Start here instead, with the best board games of 2015.
Alienated
UFO sightings are common in America. So is a lack of political transparency.
Playboy at War
With no more nudes in Playboy, an intimate approach toward sex is being lost—one longed for by soldiers in war zones.
A Heritage of Hate
Why it’s the duty of every white American to burn a Confederate flag.
Our Dino Love Will Never Die
Dinosaurs haven’t been super-popular for 65 million years—it only feels that way. Fans and experts explain our obsession with dead monsters.
What Think-Piece Writers Get Wrong About Lobotomies
The web is full of pundits looking to turn every topic into think-bait. One writer commits himself to thinking much, much deeper.
Against the Clock
The invasion of the Apple Watch is imminent. While the technology future it heralds is exciting, some of our wrists are already spoken for.
Cities Don’t ♥ Us
Our urban future is upon us, city planners tell us, but residents’ on-again, off-again relationship with their surroundings makes them want to say goodbye to all that.
They Are Charlie
An American in Dijon, France, brings his country’s grasp of recent terrorism to a nation enthralled by theory, traumatized by attack.
The 2014 Good Gift Games
Board games are a gift that keeps on giving—the best of the bunch provide hours of fun for years on end. But when a new crop of great games arrives every year, how can you choose? This is how.
Catching Up With the Mp3 Bloggers
A decade ago, and then again five years later, we gathered a set of music bloggers who pioneered online music discovery—often to the chagrin of record labels. Now we reconvene to discuss the current state of listening to and reading about music online.
The Jungle Look
The rear ends of black women appear to be pop culture’s current favorite commodity. But Nicki Minaj’s new video is anything but so simple.
Our Better Shelves
After visiting more than 2,000 independent bookstores—at least virtually—the Amazon annihilation, Orwell misquotes and all, doesn't seem quite so inescapable.
Let It Stop
Disney’s “Frozen” juggernaut has been criticized for “sexy walking.” But the roots of what’s wrong lie in Midwestern pageants, not hip-hop videos.
League Loves All Women
For decades, the NFL has been supported by ads that degrade women. But something changed in 2013—and it’s got everything to do with concussions. Prepare for the battle of mama-friendly beer spots.
The 2013 Good Gift Games
During holiday family get-togethers, don't risk bringing up a topic everyone's hoping to avoid. Instead, bring a board game and circumvent all conversation. Here are 10 of the best from 2013.
A Few Brief Remarks
Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg was short: only three minutes long, following a moving, two-hour performance by famed orator Edward Everett. It also was nearly meaningless.
Cool Colors
This summer in Manhattan, it was important to wait in line for an hour to see light designed by James Turrell. Many bought the hype. Many were angry afterward.
A Good Angle Is Hard to Find
The spread of the selfie produces daily turmoil, from columnist doom-mongering to celebrity scandals. Meanwhile, the world just took a billion more. Defense of a misunderstood phenomenon.
Go Your Own Way
The recent ho-hum reaction to the purchase and ensuing buyback of Frommer’s obscures one key fact: Guidebooks are creators of social change. A defense of their place in the canon.
CrazyBike
New York's new bicycle-share program is a big success. Since May, bikers have taken 646,000 trips. But the initiative has also caused many rational people to explode with rage. Why? Because humans are hardwired to hate cheaters.
Bad Land
America is full of guns—one gun for every citizen—and Americans often use them to shoot one another. It’s not enough anymore to say we love our guns. The question is: Why do we kill?
A Spot for Tea
It’s easy to hate Starbucks until you admit it’s responsible for nearly everything good in today’s coffee culture. Now the behemoth is poised, with a recent acquisition, to introduce America to hundreds of years of tea culture. A tea maker is grateful.
The 2012 Good Gift Games
Oh look, it's the holidays and time to interact with humans again. Thankfully, there are board games to facilitate or replace conversation. Here are 10 of the year's best to get you started.
The Master and Moviemaking
Once again, we convene our film scholars, plus critic Michelle Orange, to discuss a major movie: “The Master,” by Paul Thomas Anderson—a masterpiece of craftsmanship, or merely an exercise of cinema and violence with no story in the center?
Dark Material
There is a brand of humor with an inherent meaning so dark that, even though we may wish we hadn’t laughed, we’re programmed to think it’s funny. An explanation of a joke about a pedophile.
A Coalition of Dunces
Last week, the Pulitzer Prize board refused to give its prestigious award to any novel published in 2011. Something is clearly broken. We roused our commentators from the Tournament of Books, Kevin Guilfoile and John Warner, for their remarks.
Enjoy the Silence
Just because no one uses payphones doesn’t mean the phone booth needs to go the way of the dodo. One man’s plea for preserving society’s greatest unused invention.
The 2011 Good Gift Games
The problem with a trip down memory lane is that it might strand you in Candyland. Here are 10 new games well worth remembering.
Rising Up at Ground Zero
Construction continues at the new World Trade Center—as does criticism of the approved designs. But a look deep inside the new structure shows the progress so far has proven to be in exactly the right direction.
Special Topics in Mindboggling Physics
Popular science books are all well and good until they ask you to picture a hundred cats playing volleyball in the fourteenth dimension. Writing lessons for astrophysicists.
Poetry for the Age of American Decline
Poetry can provide solace. It can also remind people to quit freaking out. Poems selected for Congress, nervous shoppers, Maureen Dowd, and the President of the United States.
Beirut, Texas
Political candidates who want to burn down Washington, DC, perhaps should see what a country looks like with no effective government.
Your Third Nipple
All your life, you thought you just had an odd-looking little mole. From 2011, what it’s like when a doctor says that you belong in the ranks of Marky Mark, centuries of witches, and Krusty the Clown.
Here Is Everything I Learned in New York City
Five years in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Several violent attacks—in other cities. A daily attempt to be the best, which is never a good idea. Nine lessons from a mini-lifetime in the Big Apple.
Les Bêtes Fromages
America adores its clichés about French culture—skinny women, hot sex, and "surrender monkeys." But the Mali intervention shows France in a different light. From 2011, an appreciation for France's history of conquering and oppressing the world.
Erogenous Gaps
Humor happens when an audience fills in the gaps--at its best, those gaps are packed layers deep with meaning. An explanation of an 18-word Mitch Hedberg joke.
Hedgestrong
Accused of fraud and perjury, Lance Armstrong is under fire from federal prosecutors. But, well, Wall Street got off. Options for the cyclist from a banker’s point of view.
What Your Salute Says About You
How you start an email reveals a lot more about your intentions than you know. Common e-greetings for etiquette voodoo.
Mary Poppins Has a Tumblr
Children easily comprehend the web—almost as easily as new parents grasp fear. Exploring his computer's "parental controls" for the first time, our writer tries to preserve his innocence a little longer.
Looking for Murder in His Eyes
A decade after Osama bin Laden's face achieved iconic status, one writer still can't help thinking, it's a handsome one—this definitive "face of evil."
Who You Are and Who You Say You Are
The internet’s been tamed, social media’s a food court, and everyone is positive, full of likes. But that’s only if you buy the algorithm of conformity.
Tippler, Traitor, Fumbler, Fool
America endlessly honors its best presidents. Enough with that. A demand for a federal holiday to glorify the five who rose so high, only to fail so shamefully.
Houston, We Have Contractions
A baby may be a tiny step for mankind, but it’s a giant one for new parents, especially the adult diapers part.
The Ghost in the Machine Is a Jerk
Everyone has computer problems--only a chosen few are driven insane by them. A defense of daily paranoia.
The Year of Practical Thinking
You learn something new every day, or so they say. In 2010, our writer decided to keep track. Revelations, lessons, and the wisdom of dishwashers in 365 parts.
The 2010 Good Gift Games
Presenting the year's best board games, all of which must be easy to learn, quick to play, and exciting for non-gamers.
A Question of Bandwidth
Walk across the office, or send an email? A look at how much time we save—or not—when we opt for the technological solution.
Get High or Die Trying
If you read Outside, stay home. When we celebrate a hiker who sawed off his hand, we pay tribute to an idiot and ignore countless smarter climbers.
Movement for a Standstill
Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity is bad for America, except for the America that buys or sells advertising time on Comedy Central.
Hope Over Experience
For America’s Democrats, the past two decades were a blur of saxophones, chads, and John Kerry’s sloped withers. Then came hope. A dip into the acid puddle to find faith.
Just Criminalize It
California looks to legalize pot in November--and that, in many ways, would be a crime. An argument against political causes involving dreadlocked alien masks.
Planet Zoo
More than a generation of Americans have been urged to save the Earth. A survey of the current climate and every H.G. Wells-inspired geoengineering project shows it’s time to pray for Homo sapiens.
Bret Easton Ellis, Author Célèbre
Four digressions about obsession, venom, and life in a famous author’s orbit.
The Unbearable Lightness of Declaring a Liberal Arts Major
Faced with a deadline to choose her major, our writer hunts down interview subjects to learn where their studies got them, no matter her mother's loathing of the liberal arts.
The Snoring Proviso
Sharing a bed requires rules. An important addendum comes along well after the blanket allowances and closet zombies have been settled.
Paper Tigers
Sports are stupid. Beautiful. Dull. Transcendent. Most of all, they're more than just games. We assembled sports writers, critics, freaks, and authors to tell us why.
My Country, My Train, My K-Hole
There are plenty of good reasons to ride a train cross-country, but for our correspondent and his attention index, hitting the rails has one purpose: to escape the merciless internet.
Marching in June
What is it about summer that attracts both Eisenhower and the recently engaged? A consideration of the striking similarities between weddings and wars.
About Time
Britain’s national superhero has alternately worn a scarf, a leather jacket, and lots of question marks. No longer.
Standard & Poor
Accountability in education is here to stay--but you try creating tests that equally suit Texans and Hawaiians.
Carolina Blues
A year after winning the championship, the University of North Carolina's men's basketball team is suffering its worst season in recent history. A New York-based Tar Heel laments.
Twitter and the Void
What kind of sound does a single tweet make? Our writer considers the reasons she left Twitter, and what it would take to bring other lapsed Tweeters back online.
The 2009 Good Gift Games
This holiday season, your loved ones could play Operation: "Death Panel" Edition, or you could give them a game where somebody besides the government wins.
A Common Nomenclature for Lego Families
Thousands of different Lego exist, yet when your seven-year-old asks for “a clippy bit,” you know exactly what to hand him. A breakdown of the atoms of a Lego universe.
The Pleasures of Saudade
A year in Lisbon teaches you more than how to select a decent vinho verde. An ode to the uniquely hopeful, desperate music that’s missing from the usual American fare.
OK Genius
Apple’s iTunes software claims to be a Genius at making mixes. We beg to differ, knowing how mixes should be made, and propose a duel of “Fingertips.”
Queens of the Scatological Age
Next month, one book will be crowned America’s funniest. Reviewing this year’s candidates for the Thurber Prize for American Humor, and tiptoeing through the doo-doo.
The Author and the Wonderful, Horrible, No Fun, Very Good Day
Nothing is finer than getting your book published. Nothing is worse than the day it comes out. Our food writer documents the misadventures, highs, and woes of publishing (recipe included).
2009 Editors' Awards for Online Excellence
We maintain a list throughout the year of our favorite new websites--the ones that entertain and inform our wired lives. Presenting the 2009 Eddys, celebrating the best of a fleeting medium.
You Are Not Cool
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is known for writing colorful decisions, full of “gobbledegook” and even John Lennon quotes. But whatever his legal philosophy, one thing he isn’t is cool.
The 2008 Good Gift Games
This holiday season, rather than hock what's left of your 401(k) for Starbucks gift cards, gather friends and family around a cozy, non-energy-dependent board game.
2008 Editors' Awards for Online Excellence
The internet: There sure is a lot of stuff on it. In the course of a year of browsing, we've discovered some favorites that deserve some sort of award--in fact, this sort of award. Presenting the 2008 Eddys.
The 2007 Good Gift Games
As long as you've got two to four friends, that's all you need for a fun afternoon of playing board games. Oh, except for a board game that's actually fun. Presenting this year's crop of games even sore losers will enjoy.
2007 Editors' Awards for Online Excellence
We read and see a lot of websites, and though most are terrible, some are extraordinary.
The 2006 Good Gift Games
Around the holidays there are always two to four players within earshot. Every year dozens of board games are marketed into existence, but some are so fun they stand alone.
2006 Editors' Awards for Online Excellence
Web Geeks Unite! was the original slogan when The Morning News launched in 1999, and though our mission has changed, the spirit is undiminished.
The 2005 Good Gift Games
Being with friends and loved ones is what makes the holidays special--and once you're fed up with that, it's time to humiliate them over a board game. Here are this year's best tabletop entertainments.
Fifteen Prudent Gifts for the Budget-Minded
You enjoy the lights, you're fond of the cocktails; you loathe the stores. Our shopping expert offers her online picks for under $30, so you can focus on making merry.
Culture Shake
Americans find certain things familiar on these shores to be challenged overseas: love for peanut butter, Republican politics, and particularly the good old American handshake. A report from abroad on the challenge of kissing Margaret Thatcher.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Toyota Prius
Tired of that gas-guzzler you've got parked in the driveway? Perhaps it's time you drank the antifreeze and experienced the future of the universe, and your reality too.
Mr. Ugli Fruit or: How I Stopped Being Nice and Learned to Hate Fairway
The Grocery Wars have made Manhattan a battlefield strewn with fallen asparagus, and no turf is more contested than the Upper West Side, where battered heavyweight Fairway fends off competitors.
2005 Editors' Awards for Online Excellence
Web Geeks Unite! was our original slogan when we launched this site in 1999, and while the tagline has changed, the spirit is undiminished.
Tempting but Ill-Advised Email Auto-Responses
Email can be a time-saving, productive tool; that is, except when your friends and family are the ones behind it.
The Tour, Chapter Three
A national book tour means many cars, planes, handlers and book-signings. It also means a table of elderly Southern women with specific questions about fertility clinics.
The Tour, Chapter Two
If you make an ass of yourself on the Dennis Miller show, will anyone notice? If you don't acknowledge that Beyoncé is Beyoncé, will she care?
The Tour, Chapter One
Ever imagine reading to a cheering stadium of millions? How about a single, disinterested Barnes & Noble customer? It's one thing to write a book; it's another to publicize it.
MiniDisco
Portable audio used to be strictly for joggers and the kids who smoked under the bleachers, but these days everybody and their guidance counselor has an iPod. So how did headphones become fashionable, and MiniDisc devotees get left by the wayside?
For Spring 2005
The stuff we're into right now--including what we're reading, hearing, watching, finding, eating, using, installing, applying, and, yes, even scratching this season.
Juiced
Can Congress get baseball to go cold turkey off steroids? And how many passionate pleas will it take? Our representative speaks, passionately and otherwise, rooting out those who seek enhancements of every kind.
I’m Not Gay, but My Boyfriend Sure Is
It’s hard to be an average American male when all the guys around you are extremely hot. A report from inside the chambers of the Men in Love With Gay Men support group.
Questions Frequently Asked About TiVo, Answered by Someone Who Loves TiVo Too Much
What's that? You still don't have a TiVo? Ahh, you must have some questions about the technology before you take the plunge.
Valentine's Gift Guide
The heart-shaped box of chocolates was sweet and the bouquet of roses was lovely, but your Valentine deserves a surprise this year.
New Ways to Lose Your Lunch
Everybody barfs. But it’s an altogether different product depending on if you’re an infant or the last one standing at tequila happy hour.
Twenty Gifts That Go Easy on Your Budget
You're a generous sort, but you don't have much time (or cash). Ideas for gifts that won't leave you paying off your credit cards through July.
40 Watts Later
Men buy cars, boats, and watches to make up for their shortcomings; some even purchase stoves. Our food writer looks back on the path that led him to 15,000 BTUs, and consults the Queer Eye staff for advice: What kind of boy goes nuts over an Easy-Bake Oven?
The 2004 Good Gift Games Guide
The last time you played a board game you got the Adam's apple caught in the funny-bone slot and then you couldn't pass GO or collect $200. These days, however, board games are a lot more enticing and fun.
A Dallas, Texas, of the Mind
A new computer game lets players compete to reenact the assassination of President Kennedy--from the vantage point of Lee Harvey Oswald.