Come Play Our January Brain Games

Hey folks,

Our Brain Games Challenge has been a lot of fun. We've had thousands of students from all over the planet matching their wits with our monthly trivia quiz and the excitement I've seen on Facebook and Twitter has been terrific. We've now launched our third quiz and this time around the subject is Games! Ancient games, puzzle games, children's games, video games, and more. I think these are some of our best and toughest questions yet and I can't wait to see how you all do.

The winner of our November quiz on the subject of Innovation was Wasin from Thailand. He's the president of his school computer club and says he'll use the $1,000 prize to help his club with equipment and materials. And today I'm happy to announce the winner of our December quiz, on the subject of World Citizenship: Himal from Nepal! Congratulations to Himal and thanks to all the students who competed in the December quiz.

Remember that while one student each month wins $1,000, everyone who plays is entered to win our grand prize sweepstakes of a free trip to St. Petersburg, Russia, in July of 2013 to see the Imagine Cup World Finals firsthand!

With our January quiz underway, I wanted to take a moment to spotlight our very own quiz-master, Mike Selinker. Mike and his team of puzzle designers at Lone Shark Games created all the questions for our December and January quizzes and will handle the rest of our quizzes through April as well. Mike is the puzzle editor for Wired magazine and a regular contributor to Games magazine, the New York Times , and the Chicago Tribune . His Puzzlecraft column in Games magazine will become a book from Sterling Publications in April. His games include the word games Unspeakable Words and AlphaBlitz, and the hobby games Risk Godstorm, Lords of Vegas, and the upcoming Pathfinder Adventure Card Game. I love the questions Mike and his team have come up with and I bet you'll love to hate them before you're done! :) You can follow Mike and his puzzle adventures on Twitter.

Our new Games quiz ends January 18. If you haven't tried Brain Games yet and you're a student 16 or older, login or register here at our site and then visit your Dashboard to sign up for Brain Games and take the current quiz.

John Scott Tynes
Imagine Cup Competition Manager
Microsoft Academic Programs