Makers of Mind-Bending Games

Bill Ritchie and Andrea Barthello took the old adage about "all work and no play" literally when they started their game company, ThinkFun ( http://www.thinkfun.com), then called Binary Arts, in 1985. Fleeing the world of real estate investment finance, the Alexandria husband-and-wife team found refuge in an opportunity to develop mind-challenging games for kids.

We recently sat down with the two co-founders, both 52, to play some Rush Hour and Cover Your Tracks, two of their biggest hits, and hear how their toy story began.

What was your first game concept?

Bill: Our first game concept was called the Hexadecimal Puzzle, and the tag line for it was "an advanced mathematical puzzle with 16 variations."

Was there much of a market for it?

Bill:[Laughs.] There was almost no market. [But] that's ancient history.

When you come up with an idea, how do you turn it into reality?

Andrea: Rush Hour is a good example of that. It came to us as a one-dimensional just flat thing on wood . . . it was like that type of puzzle where you slide things around. So Bill really innovated on it and said we need something that has multi-levels of challenges so that the thing gets harder as it goes along.

Bill: Rush Hour was 10 years [after Hexadecimal Puzzle], and by that time we had become quite sophisticated. We knew an awful lot about taking an idea and turning it into something that was colorful and well designed and well presented.

So you don't necessarily come up with an idea -- someone may come to you, and you purchase it from them or license it?

Andrea: And we evolve it. But the simple answer is yes.

What made you think you could compete with the Hasbros of the world? Or do you feel as though you compete with them?