57-Piece Giant Tumbling Tower, stacks past 4.2 ft

The long version

Fifty-seven planed pine blocks, a stack that reaches past four and a half feet once you have pulled a dozen rows, and a bag you can carry out with one hand. This is the set we built first and the one we still hand to anyone who asks where to begin. It fits a small back lawn, it fits the strip of grass behind a rented hall, and it fits in a car boot next to the cooler.

Each block is sanded on all six faces before it leaves the bench. We check the corners by hand because a burr on a giant block is the thing that ends an afternoon early — someone catches a thumb, the tower comes down, and nobody wants to pick it up again. Nothing here is varnished. Bare pine grips bare pine, and that grip is what lets the tower lean without falling.

Set up takes about four minutes once you have found level ground. Three blocks a row, turn ninety degrees, three more, keep going until the bag is empty. The starting tower comes out around two and a half feet; past the twelfth pull it is taller than most of the people playing.

The carry case is a flat-bottomed zip bag with webbing handles. It swallows the whole set, and the blocks go back in faster than they came out — a loose stack, not a careful one.