"Attack 25"

[RyanLidster]

One of my jobs here in Japan is teaching English in a high school. Every three weeks or so, there is time allotted in the curriculum for an open class, during which either students can catch up, or if they're ahead, do a fun activity. I was able to make a pretty decent approximation of Jeopardy on my computer, and we used the projector to play the game in class. That was a real hit, but explaining the game to people who had never seen Jeopardy took about 5 minutes out of an already short class.

"アタック二十五" or in English "Attack 25" is a Japanese game show that the students all know, and besides being a game more conducive to incorporating the grammar and vocabulary from lessons, wouldn't require any time to explain. The downside, however, is that I have no idea if/how I can do this on a computer, and if so, whether I could do it in PowerPoint.

Basically the gameboard is set up as a 5x5 table of 25 squares (numbered from 1-25) that start out as empty (normally blue, just like in Jeopardy, is the default blank colour.) Trivia questions are asked, and the person/team that answers correctly gets to pick a square to colour with their team's colour. For example, if the red team gets the first question right, they can pick square number 7, and square 7 turns red. If the green team gets the next question right, they can turn square 8 green.

Here's the tricky bit: if the red team gets a later question right, and they pick square number 9, then not only does square 9 turn red, but also square 8, which they have now surrounded, just like in Reversi, Go, or Othello.

The team with the most squares at the end goes on to the final round, which is easier to reproduce.

So, is there a way to make a table whose colours I can change like that?