playing battleship with j, age six.

We're sitting on the floor in the living room.  He's very carefully sorted all the pieces, and explained to me the rules, including the "rule" where if the other player scores a hit, you have to tell them which ship got hit.  "So if you hit my submarine, I tell you that you hit the submarine.  Who do you think is going to win?"

"Hmm?"

"Who do you think is going to win?  I think, I think you might sink all the rest of my ships before you find the battleship."

"Really?"

"I'm going to hide the battleship."

When we start playing, he says that he thinks he should go first, and I say okay.  We've had two false starts already, one because he wanted to switch boards, and one because he looked at where my ships were placed.   "I forgot.  If you forget, it's okay, you can start over.  But if you don't forget, and you do it on purpose, that's bad."

His first guess lands right in the middle of my destroyer. 

My first guess doesn't hit anything.  "E-5," I say, and he leans over and squints at his board, counting out five spaces.  "It's a miss!  But it's almost a hit.  You almost hit my patrol boat.  You only missed it by one."

"Oh!  Maybe next time, then."

"That's a hint!  That you almost hit my boat.  I have another hint.  I don't have any ships in, uhm, in A or B.  Or C.  Or ten!  But you were just one off from my patrol boat."

"Thank you!  That's a good hint."

"I have one hit so far," he says, "and no misses.  How many do you have?"

"I have one miss."

"No hits?"

"No, but I'm just one off from your patrol boat."

Comments

[Kelli]

Oh man, that's precious. I had the extreme joy last weekend of babysitting the kids of two of my professors, one of whom is totally my idol. The oldest is nine, and she's incredibly smart and quick. (I taught her to play Set in about 30 seconds, which is impressive by any standard. We'll see how much she likes it.) Then there are the twins, who are almost four. They're incredibly shy and don't speak much English yet (mostly Finnish), but I think they understood basically everything I said to them. By the end of the afternoon, they'd totally warmed up to me, and it was the sweetest thing ever. I'm so tickled by little kids lately; they're completely something else.

[Karen]

He's a very generous player!

[Dan Percival]

Cute!

Reminds me of playing Sorry with b., also age six. She kept giving me very helpful -- if totally inaccurate -- advice on how to play and the special circumstances that might arise.

Hey, do you have any good developmental psychology stories about the ability to adhere structured games with win conditions? Playing tic-tac-toe with b. a year ago was a (very fun! but) non-linear experience in multiple senses of the phrase.

[Jackie M.]

I have to admit, I was more excited to meet j. in the flesh than anybody else.

I just wish I'd remembered to bring something for him to sign...