Patent Application
20070018392
This description relates to a game for a hot tub, bath, or pool.
In general, a game (of the kind for which an example is described below) includes a set of pieces. Each piece has a face that adheres temporarily to a wet surface of a hot tub, bath, or pool, can be slid around on the wet surface, and is removable from the wet surface. Each of the pieces bears a token. The tokens (e.g., English words) of the pieces of the set are chosen to enable (interesting) strings to be formed by a user on the wet surface of the hot tub, bath, or pool.
Some implementations of this concept may include one or more of the following features. The pieces are formed of foam sheet that has a smooth surface, for example, ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) foam. The tokens are printed on the pieces using durable ink that is compatible with the smooth surface, for example, 35000 Series EVA & Thermo Plastic Rubber Ink. Different pieces have different colors. Different pieces have different lengths. The pieces share a common thickness and a common height. The tokens may include the ones shown on
Other advantages and features will become apparent from the following description, and from the claims.
As shown in
By placing pieces on a surface of the tub, bath, or pool, a user can create words, phrases, sentences, and other meaningful (or non-sense) sequences. We'll use the general word “strings” to refer to the sequences that are formed by a user. The tokens printed on the pieces of a set are chosen carefully to allow a user to make interesting, funny, amusing, provocative, or educational strings. An example of tokens for a set of pieces is shown in
The material used to make the pieces should have a surface (for example, a smooth surface) that sticks easily but only temporarily to the smooth plastic or painted surface (even a vertical surface) of a hot tub, bath, or pool when the surface is wet, and allows a user to slide the pieces around on the wet surface to make strings and to peel them off easily from the surface. The material should also be durable, attractive, non-toxic, lightweight, flexible, comfortable to the touch, and easily grasped. An example of a good material to use for the pieces is 2 mm thick ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) foam available in rolls or sheets from Remington Products Company, located in Wadsworth, Ohio.
The pieces are made of four different colors of the material: pink, yellow, blue, and green. Tags of a given color may share a common characteristic. For example, all of the green tags may have tokens that are nouns, all of the pink tags may have verbs, and so on.
The words are printed in black ink. The ink should be durable, easily visible, and easy to print on the material An example of a good ink is 35000 Series EVA & Thermo Plastic Rubber Ink brand, available from CRS International Inc. located in Long Island City, N.Y.
In the example shown here, all of the pieces are 1-inch high and have different lengths to fit the tokens that are printed on them. The words are printed in 68 point lower case using a “Sans Plain” font.
The set of tags are held in a clear plastic bucket, shown in
Although specific examples of the game have been described above, other examples are within the scope of the claims.
For example, the tokens need not be printed on the pieces, but could be engraved, incised, cut out (as in a stencil) or applied in other ways to the pieces.
Any other material that performs in the way described for the foam sheet above could be substituted for the foam sheet.
The pieces could have different heights and thicknesses, could be of the same color, or could have patterns of colors.
The ink used to print the tokens could be of different colors for different tokens or could be ink that is visible in the dark. The foam could also be of a material that is visible in the dark or, for example, when illuminated by a typical hot tub light.
Other kinds of containers could be provided.
The pieces can also be used on other smooth surfaces such as a glass window or door.
