• Days of Wonder teases a forthcoming Ticket to Ride iPad app. Update: Less than 48 hours later, the Ticket to Ride app was live on iTunes. I tried out the app that same evening and was surprised to discover that the app is integrated with Days of Wonder's online version of TtR. Very nice!
• Winsome Games is reprinting Han Heidema's Wooden Shoes & Iron Monsters as a $25 game kit that gives you the bits for cutting and assembling at home. Details in the Winsome Games Yahoo group (log in required). Update: In less than a day, all of the kits had been claimed, and Winsome's John Bohrer is compiling a waitlist for interested parties. As compensation, however, or merely coincidentally, Bohrer has uploaded complete files – "map, rules, Rail Link cards, stocks, stickers and consortium markers" – for the 1997 Winsome release Veld Spoorweg.
Okay, that's the old/new news out of the way. The items below should be fresher...
• Twenty writers for Opinionated Gamers have pooled their knowledge/half-assed guesses to take a stab at which games will be nominated for the 2011 Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres, the nominees for which will be revealed on Monday, May 23. Their choices: 7 Wonders and Die Burgen von Burgund. Yours?
• In an editorial titled "Ockham's Razor", designer Bruno Faidutti reminds wannabe game designers to keep it simple.
• Designer Ignacy Trzewiczek unpacks the thematic elements of his 51st State.
• Speaking of which, Wired's GeekDad reviews 51st State, giving the game a lot of space and pics.
• Alf Seegert's The Road to Canterbury gets a write-up in The Chronicle of Higher Education, a trade journal for college and university faculty members and administrators.
• Mayfair Games has a card editor for The Rivals for Catan that allows you to upload images and create your own cards.
• Newsletter #2 from the International Dungeon Twister League is now available in English and French from DungeonTwister.org.
• Purple Pawn reports that the Texas House of Representatives has approved a bill that would designate the partnership domino game 42 "the official State Game of Texas".
• Thomas McDonald at the blog State of Play spotlights a sculpture series of female nudes by artist David Mach, including Myslexic (composed of Scrabble tiles) and Dominatrix (composed of dominoes). Disappointingly, the Scrabble tiles do not seem to spell anything.