Candyland Redux

Lilly got Candyland for Christmas this year. I used to love Candyland when I was a kid. Really, really loved it. Seemingly much more than any other human being alive in the ’70s and ’80s because I could never find someone to play it with me. So I was excited when Lilly got it because my inner child has been waiting decades for this day.

I recall Candyland being a simple game. Draw a card. Move your chosen gingerbread man to the appropriate color square. Maybe, if you’re lucky, take a shortcut through Gum Drop Mountain. The goal: Be the first to get to The Candy Castle.

Things have changed. First, our Candyland is sponsored by Dora the Explorer, which means Dora, Diego, Boots the Monkey or Backpack are now cutting through Señor Tucán’s Gumdrops on their way to the Fiesta. The other thing that has changed is me. Now I’m the grown-up and Lilly is the child wanting to play and I now realize why it wasn’t so fun for my parents or older siblings to play with me. It’s because kids play by totally different rules.

Although they appear to be in constant flux, these are Lilly’s rules for Candyland, from what I can gather:

1. Lilly takes Dora and assigns me and some other random people, who are not playing, a character pawn.
2. Lilly draws a card and moves to the appropriate color square. I do the same.
3. Lilly draws another card, looks at her color, gets mad that it’s not a “food card” and starts digging through the deck for a more acceptable card. I convince her to just move to her color square.
4. I draw a card that happens to be a food card, secretly plant it in the deck for Lilly’s turn and draw a color.
5. Lilly draws her food card, gets very excited and moves my character pawn to the food space.
6. I point out that she is Dora and should move that pawn. Lilly declares that we are switching pawns.
7. After several turns, Lilly announces she will be playing only food cards.
8. We spread out the remaining cards in the deck, Lilly draws and discards until she gets a food card. I continue playing colors.
9. I gather and shuffle the cards several times to keep enough food cards in play.
10. Lilly declares several more times that we are switching pawns, designates some pawns as spectators and moves all pawns in play at random.
11. When Lilly’s not looking I move one or more pawns closer to the Fiesta so that we can finish this game in less than 45 minutes.
12. Lilly starts to lose interest.
13. I quickly draw cards to move Lilly to the Fiesta.
14. Lilly shows absolutely no interest in the game.
15. I start to clean up and Lilly gets upset because she wants to play again.

I really hope Chutes and Ladders goes a little smoother.

The Candyland Redux by MushBrain, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Terms and conditions beyond the scope of this license may be available at mushbrain.net.