Mindy invented a new game while we were visiting the Whitney last fall in New York. All you need: one or more players and a large Jackson Pollock canvas.

Take the painting above, for example. (It’s a 1952 work called Convergence. Click on it for a much larger version.) The game is simply an Abstract Expressionist version of Pick-Up Stix: try to figure out in what order Pollock applied the colors. The canvas linked here is a pretty easy one: in this print, at least, it looks like it only uses four different colors, and I don’t think Pollock applied any color in two passes (though I’m not 100% sure about the black) which would make the game considerably harder.

Best part of playing the game: you get to stand in front of inscrutable paintings and squint and nod, just like the people you see at galleries and museums! Everyone will think you understand modern art!