I'm a good twenty-five minutes into the game without a clue gathered when I jump into a birthday card ("Blue skidoo and so can you!"). We enter a kid-lovely place of cakes and cupcakes and candy and, oh glory of glories ... present trees! When, Click! after a cherry, and Click! after a strawberry, finally, Click! a pineapple lands on top of a cupcake, I concede Monty Python was conceived from the nonsense of childhood. Or is it the other way around?

I suddenly have a new mission: to find the key to unlock a chocolate and smartie covered treasure chest. And aren't I proud of myself when I notice, by happenstance, three keys hanging on the kitchen wall! And aren't my instincts finely honed when I choose the diamond shaped key, leap back through the birthday card, hurry toward the chocolate chest and discover that my key works! Never mind what's inside is a disappointment ... a bunch of toys that need fixing?! What the heck? However, my stoic repair work is rewarded with -- finally -- my first (and only as it happens) Blue's Clue imprinted on the lock of the chest when it closes again. Yipee yaiyo yai yay!

Well, I'm forty-five minutes into the game with but one clue and it's time to go. Luckily I can easily save my "work" and restart another time where I left off.

Blue's 1,2,3 Time Activities
I am shockingly reminded of a problem I've had since childhood ... I tune out to instructions. I continue to find my self staring at the characters on the screen who are patiently waiting for my response. But I had daydreamed through their request! Thankfully for me and all the other mind-wandering children of the world, if we just start clicking, eventually we discover what's expected of us.

It's during the weighing of the souvenirs that I recognize how the skill level adapts to the player (an option you can also control manually). I'm breezing though the game when slyly, the friendly little critters present me with four souvenirs to be weighed on but three weighing scales! And when I make a mistake (only on purpose you understand), I'm easily directed to re-trying without ever being told I was wrong. Suddenly, as a result, the game gets a bit easier. Four objects reduce again to three, with no fanfare.

I make socks of money from sorting snacks with Mr. and Mrs. Salt and Pepper. Everybody is on my side as I sort sprinkled cookies from unsprinkled, three snacks on a plate from two, and here if I make a mistake, everybody scratches their head as if they, too, are confounded by the oddity of having chosen something that just won't go into its allotted space. Not until I make the right choice that is.

I play a matching card game with Bear and win a dollar just for losing. It makes not getting the $3 for winning okay. And when I beat Shovel in a game of Mother-May-I, she jumps up and down, excited for my good fortune. How very sportswomanlike of her!

With my backpack now loaded with Blue's Dollars, I hurry to the prize tent. Here I learn to subtract as I purchase prizes, a ritual not unlike choosing the tacky little winnings from tickets won at DC Discovery Zone, Chuckie Cheese's or carnivals. After buying enough little prizes, I'll have won a Big Surprise for Blue, but having a whopping $18 to spend I don't take the time to winnow it down to my last dollar to discover what that big surprise may be.

The great news is, I get to keep the CDs. I'll come back tomorrow (if my daughter hasn't grabbed the games first) and danged if I won't find some more Blue's Clues and buy Blue that big prize. And -- hot damn! -- one of these days I'm going to make it to her birthday party!


Blue's Clues CD-Rom's are the creative result of a collaboration between Nickelodeon and the award-winning creator of children's software, Humongous Entertainment.

Blue's Birthday Adventure is available for $29.99 on hybrid CD-Rom for Windows 98/95 and Macintosh. Blue's ABC Time Activities and 1,2,3 Time Activities are available for $19.99 on hybrid CD-Rom for Windows 98/95 and Macintosh as well.

Judith Cockman is a freelance journalist, playwright and award-winning documentary writer. Her articles and reviews have been featured in such publications as The Toronto Star, The Sunday Sun, Creative Planet, Kidscreen Magazine and Playback. The mother of four, she has been surfing kid's CD-Roms with her brood for fifteen years.