Ode to Triominoes

Triominoes, the go-to family game. Preferred when Mathew was not around.

This weekend I had the opportunity to help one of the Cady kids move.  It was all hands on deck and none of the Cady siblings in attendance disappointed.  Dad would’ve been proud!

As we sifted through countless boxes, and decades of memories, we stumbled upon several Cady family treasures, which I’m sure we’ll be blogging about in future CCS episodes. You’re welcome.

If you take a look at the Triominoes pictured above, you’ll notice many things.

First, brand new Triominoes are all black. All that white stuff on the faces of our Triominoes? Paint. Why is it there? To make it easier to see the numbers in a timely manner.  There’s some strategy involved here.  Of course there is. We’re Cadys.

If the faces are all black, it takes longer to differentiate the numbers, thus giving other players more time to sift through their tiles to find the highest value piece to play when it’s their turn.  However, if you can manage to play your tile quickly, that shortens the time the other players have to find their best tiles.  This is especially important because we implemented a time limit.

The box says 30 seconds to a minute. Uh, NO. That’s equivalent to taking a nap while Mathew, Super Duper Triominoes Master of the Universe hems and haws over each number until he has his next four tiles planned out to set him up for bonus point, and the win! Yeah, not gonna happen.

Instead, we had a 15 or 20 second time limit.  Of course, Mom used every stinking bit of her 20 seconds. Every. Freaking. Time.  I think she did it to drive us crazy. Some sort of torturous psychological mind game to break our wills to live and break our concentration. Sometimes it worked.  On the younger kids, it wasn’t unusual for them to take a potty break during Mom’s turn and forget to come back to the game. No matter, that just increased the odds of winning for the rest of us. If you go back to the picture, you’ll see several etchings or Triominoes completely black after being painted. That’s from waiting for Mom. Sigh.

Inevitably, there’d be creative smack-talk, and death threats as one player pulled further and further away from the rest of the family.  The truly exciting games occurred when two or three players stayed neck-and-neck until the final count. Then, numbers would be tallied and re-tallied.  The scorekeeper (usually Dad) would be called a dirty rotten liar, then quickly apologized to once the child pulled out of their anger-induced fog and realized who they’d spouted off to.

For the truly spectacular wins, Matt would find the Cady Family Journal and insist the scores were entered in ink (so nobody could change it later) for posterity to read, with awe, about his amazing Triominoes prowess.

Siblings would retreat, hollering threats and insults over their shoulders as they stomped out of the living room. Matt would grin and ask them if they wanted to play another game. No? Maybe tomorrow then. He’d dodge a few shoes, or nearby objects, and bound down the stairs hollering, “I am the all-time Triominoes champion! No one can beat me!”