To start off the blog in the right mood, here's Eric Schmiedl's photographic evidence of a December 10 MIT hack that transformed highly visible parts of campus into an enormous game table.
On the morning of December 10th, hackers put up references to various board games around MIT. The Stata Center's Student Street got the cheese, mousetrap, and mouse (the latter, formerly known as the Hilltop Steakhouse Cow) from Mousetrap. Building 46 and the 34 atrium got the logo, cards, and dice from Cranium. The Media Lab (Building E15) got Scrabble -- a complete game played out on the gridded surface of the walls. The black and white paving stones in the MIT Medical / Media Lab courtyard were converted into a game of chess: with students playing black and the administration playing white. The grassy 'Dot' in front of the Green Building (54) gained a Settlers of Catan board, complete with MIT Campus Police officer as the 'robber' character standing watch with a can of A&W (root) beer in his pocket and a doughnut in his hand. And the campus maps that so helpfully guide tourists with their color-coded areas of MIT were turned into games of Risk, complete with plastic soldiers. Paper forms of the RISK maps were posted around campus as well, complete with proper markings to play a game of RISK a la MIT.
