With midterm week going on, I have had a lot of downtime in many of my classes that leaves me with plenty of time to kill. In response, I have begun to become very invested in a few games, Google Snake being a top choice for me currently. I would definitely say people get really into certain games for a while. For me it was chess and Tetris sophomore year, Gravitus my junior year, and now snake my senior year.

Google snake is definitely a top tier game right now. In my opinion, there is only one right way to play it however: to go into settings and select walls, multi-ball, turtle, and small map. Introduced to me by my friends, I quickly realized that no other mode remotely compared as these particular settings were dialed in to be the most challenging and rewarding as possible. If you were to take a walk through any senior class, you will probably see a number of people playing snake, all with these settings. That said, it has become an intense competition as to who can score the best. Myself, I have a record of 67, with the highest score that I am aware of belonging to Pierson Tran with 73. Here are the current rankings for highest snake score:

1. Pierson Tran: 73
2. AJ Silber (Tie): 69
3. Pierson Tobin (Tie): 69
4. Boris Pekar: 68
5. Ransome Hudson: 60
6. Ty Osmond: 45

Chess is always another classic that is a timeless game. Chess.com is definitely the easiest way to play and has many different styles that make it so accessible. If you want to play against an AI opponent of nearly any rating, play some speed chess (blitz or bullet), or play some puzzles, chess.com is usually the preferred platform and is always something you can do. Even more than Google snake, I would definitely argue that chess has the biggest impact on the school and by far the longest staying power. 10 years before I write this and 10 years after, it will probably always be the biggest game at Magnet. The Netflix show “The Queen’s Gambit” made it really popular my sophomore year and served as a good opportunity to get a lot of people back into it. This is by far the biggest competition of the school as each person rallies to get the highest rating. Magnet has a chess club as well which only makes this competition even tighter as they play often. While my knowledge of current chess ratings is limited, here is the leaderboard of chess ratings as far as I know.

1. Lincoln Boucher: 1756 online and 1508 over the board (83rd in SC all ages)
2. Nicholas Edwards: 1717
3. Samuel Twine: 1575
4. Jeffrey Song: 1413
5. Sean OBrien: 1334
6. Justin Womble: 1243

Another classic Coolmath game, Block the Pig got pretty popular for a while. If you haven’t played it before, it’s a strategy game where you try to stop the pig from escaping and beginning with 3 blocks, you get to place an additional block each time the pig moves. As the name suggests, the goal is to block the pig in. It’s pretty hard to be honest and gets harder each time that you successfully block in the pig as you try to accumulate a streak, like the Coolmath hangman game. Very much focused on strategy, it’s pretty hard to get a high score and I would definitely say it includes a lot of luck too so that you can get a lucky map. That said, the top player at our school has a score of 87 which is absolutely unbelievable and really impressive. Another top tier player is Mary Blake Hand who played Block the Pig often. She said she hasn’t played in a while however because

1. Joey Benich: 83
2. Pierson Tobin: 38
3. Mary Blake Hand: 28

Another huge trend sweeping across Magnet is Coolmath Hangman which is another fun option to turn to to kill some time. Essentially traditional hangman, it’s actually pretty fun to play, and you can choose easy, medium, or hard mode. Generally most people play on hard mode and it is a competition to see who can have the longest streak of getting the words correctly. This, along with Google snake, is a big game right now as everyone tries to maintain their streaks. Here is the current list of front runners for the longest streaks in Coolmath Hangman:

Hard Mode

1. Hammond Unger: 145
2. Cooper Mitchell, Tate Brown, and Alan Zhang: 100
3. JB ONeil: 62

Medium Mode

1. Nicholas Edwards: 1640
2. Jacob Olinger: 1033
3. Sean OBrien: 640
4. Talia Barsness: 513

Similarly to Snake, Minesweeper is another game that is part of the games offered by Google. It too is immensely popular and is a game that has remained steadily commonplace all four years of highschool in my opinion. In any given classroom, there is probably one person playing Minesweeper. To those unfamiliar with the game, it is very fun and the goal is to complete it with the lowest time possible, while on hard mode of course. At Magnet, there is definitely a tough competition over who can complete it the fastest, especially as it is something that is pretty time requiring, and it so easy to make a mistake that will completely reset you. While it is tough to compare medium and hard modes, I have guessed that there is about a 90 second difference between the two. As a result, the times are somewhat skewed but the original times are listed below without any additional evening out. Here is a leaderboard of the top 2 minesweeper times in the school (lowest times).

1. Ransome Hudson: 206 (hard mode)
2. Ty Osmond (medium mode): 137

Note: While many people responded to the request to get these ratings and high scores, many didn’t as well so these results may be skewed by those who wished to go without credit. Also, it is likely that some results were affected by people choosing medium or hard modes so that also should be taken into account when looking at some of the games like Minesweeper and Coomath hangman.