Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Tic Tac Lego

The building where I work has several "closed areas" where cellphones aren't allowed in. But of course people still bring their cells to work, plus there are visitors, random construction workers, etc and these people need a place to put their phones while they are inside. So they recently installed a cellphone cubby outside the door to the closed area. The cubby isn't just outside the door, it is also directly across from the main stairwell door that leads to it. It has a very prominent placement, is what I'm saying.

The cubby is a 3x3 array of squares. Every single time I pass it I think of tic-tac-toe. Surely I can't be the only one that thinks of this, so I thought it would be funny to put Xs and Os in there for everyone else to enjoy. But how to make them? Eventually my officemate thought of Lego. Of course!

We actually went through a few designs that were rejected because of strength issues or ugliness or size. Finally I hit on a pretty strong design for both pieces that, if I do say so myself, looks very nice.

Don't these look great? They look like very font-like, I think. Or maybe I'm overthinking it. Anyway, they are exactly the same height and width, which is also exactly the right size to fit the cubbies.

Unfortunately, cameras are even less allowed than cellphones, so I can't take a picture in situ. However, I'm posting this a while after putting it up, so here's a sample of coworker reactions:

  • nothing
  • small, confused smile
  • swapping of X for O to change outcome of illustrated game (happened many times)
  • "Niiiiiice" (in a Korean cleaning lady accent)
  • "Are you the LegoMeister? Nicely done."
  • From my boss's boss: something whispered about tic tac toe I guess he was trying to keep my identity secret?
  • I've noticed many games in progress, with one move played by each passer-by. Also, I've heard reports of some people just standing in front of the cubbies to play a whole game.

6 comments:

  1. Those look awesome! Nice work. I love that people are participating by moving them around.

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  2. Yeah, they seem to have "taken ownership" of the concept. Which was at least partly my plan--I'd like to leave them up for a while and let people play out games or whatevs.

    (There's space on top of the cubby to hold all the pieces.)

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  3. Now I want there to be a little * lego structure so I could win even if the X or O I needed was covered in cell phones.

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  4. That is an odd remark even by the standards of the Internet.

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  5. Oh dear. I was just picturing a game of tic-tac-toe, where I wanted to change up the order of the Xs and Os, except maybe they were covered in cell phones because people have to put their cell phones in the cubbies with the Xs and Os, and you can't just MOVE someone else's cell phone, so what to do, what to do, and...OH NEVER MIND.

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  6. No, it's fine. Odd comments are better than no comments NOT THAT I'M REFERRING TO ANYONE, SUCH AS MRS DU, WHO SUPPOSEDLY LOVES ME AND WHO APPARENTLY HAS ME LOWER THAN HITLER ON HER OWN BLOG PRIORITY LIST.

    Not that I'm bitter.

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