GAMES : Putting Crime-Stoppers on the Map
The good news: In a nine-country comparison of geography knowledge among 13-year-olds released last year by the International Assessment of Educational Progress, the United States didn’t finish last. In fact, it ranked fifth.
The bad news: As competent geographers, American kids still stink.
About 44% of the U.S. kids could find the Philippines on an unmarked map; 60.7% were able to tell from an unlabeled map that an arrow from Finland to Saudi Arabia marked a climatic change from cold to hot, and 64.3% were able to tell that the Equator runs through a tropical zone.
Wow.
If you aren’t particularly impressed with those stats, and if you have kids, consider investing in a good atlas and maybe springing for “Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?”
Play this game enough and your kids’ geography grades not only have a good chance of rising, but you also might be able to get them jobs as navigators for TWA.
“Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?” is based on a well-praised PBS television game show of the same name that combines sleuthing with a knowledge of the world. Carmen Sandiego is a fictional thief and the leader of a gang of henchmen known as VILE (Villains’ International League of Evil) who steal international landmarks such as the Golden Gate Bridge and Mt. Everest. Kids acting as detectives track them around the world using geographic clues.
The board-game version, manufactured by Menlo Park-based University Games, transfers many of the elements of the TV show.
Each player controls two pieces: a detective and a henchman. Movement of both is determined by whether players answer geography questions correctly during their turns (a correct unprompted answer is worth a move of five spaces in any direction; a correct answer prompted by a reading of three multiple choices is worth a move of two spaces).
The idea is to move around the board and collect clues to the identity of the mystery henchman who stole a particular world landmark. This is done by landing one’s detective piece on the same square as another player’s henchman piece, causing that player to relinquish a clue card.
When you’ve finally figured out who the mystery henchman is, you head your detective piece toward a police station, announce your solution and pick up a warrant. The winner is the first person holding a warrant to move a detective piece to the henchman’s hide-out (the hide-out is a landmark determined by using a spinner attached to the board).
Some of the questions are lobs (“If Carmen Sandiego told her gang to steal San Francisco’s best-known suspension bridge, what bridge are they after?”); others are more brain-bending (“Within 20,000, by approximately how many people does the world’s population increase every day?”) Answers: the Golden Gate Bridge and 220,000.
University Games’ suggested retail price for the game is $19.95. Not a bad price for the entire world.