---
title: "The GamesWorth Method"
description: "Professor Winfree's GamesWorth, taken from his syllabus: a daily uninterrupted hour of focused thought, the rules for the bound notebook and its left-hand pages, daily notebook swaps and emailed comparisons, and how the course was graded."
type: Guide
tags: [course, student-facing, gamesworth, daily-practice, notebook, focused-thinking, grading]
status: stable
generated:
by: "claude/opus-5"
at: "2026-09-16T00:00:00Z"
sources:
- id: winfree-handout
resource: "https://web.archive.org/web/20070214070741/http://eebweb.arizona.edu/faculty/winfree/Handout_479.htm"
title: "The Art of Scientific Discovery (EEB 479): course handout, Web Archive capture of 2007-02-14"
author: "Arthur T. Winfree"
- id: aosd-syllabus
resource: "https://github.com/tyson-swetnam/aosd/blob/main/docs/assets/aosd_syllabus.pdf"
title: "The Art of Scientific Discovery: original course syllabus (PDF)"
author: "Arthur T. Winfree"
- id: winfree-adventures-intro
resource: "https://web.archive.org/web/20030114041921/http://eebweb.arizona.edu/faculty/winfree/SAS/asdIntro.html"
title: "Adventures in Discovery: About This Column (Society for Amateur Scientists E-Bulletin, 2001), Web Archive capture of 2003-01-14"
author: "Arthur T. Winfree"
---
# The GamesWorth Method
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
*A daily hour of focused thought, written down so that you and others can learn from it*
Every rule on this page comes from Professor Winfree's [syllabus](https://tyson-swetnam.github.io/aosd/syllabus/index.md).
## What a GamesWorth is
A **GamesWorth** (Winfree writes "gw") is one sitting of serious, focused thought: about as much thinking as one game of serious chess. The course problems give you something to think about. The daily habit is what Winfree hoped would last.
!!! quote "Winfree, syllabus"
Use these homework puzzles to nucleate a habit of doing a daily 'Game's-Worth' (henceforth, "gw") of focused thought, as in the first hand-out (Platt: *The Art of Creative Thinking*: the allusion is to how much thought it takes to play one game of serious chess). This might be the most important (potentially enduring) effect of the course.
That first handout, John R. Platt's "The Art of Creative Thinking", is a chapter of his book *The Excitement of Science* (1962) and is not freely online (see the [reading list](https://tyson-swetnam.github.io/aosd/readings/index.md#platt-creative-thinking)). A blog post, [a "GamesWorth" of reasoning](https://www.datadeluge.com/2011/10/gamesworth-of-reasoning.html){target=_blank} 🔓, explains the idea; it is not Platt's text.
Winfree practised what he taught. In the [introduction](https://web.archive.org/web/20030114041921/http://eebweb.arizona.edu/faculty/winfree/SAS/asdIntro.html){target=_blank} 🔓 to his column *Adventures in Discovery*, he writes that its puzzles were ones he explored during 2001 in the spirit of Platt's essay, and that he had kept up Platt's daily Gamesworth since reading it.
## The daily hour
The syllabus asks for a gw daily, "or at least 5 times a week, realistically", outside class, ideally at the same hour each day. It also admits that "hardly anyone actually does this, whatever good intentions they may have resolved on the first day".
The hour must be unbroken, because an interruption costs far more than its own minutes:
> Remember that in such efforts an hour's work punctuated with three 5-minute interruptions has lost you not 15 minutes, as might be the case were you shining shoes or digging a ditch: it has instead prevented you getting warmed up to 60-minute heat, replacing that experience by 3 times getting up to 15-minute heat. You can probably think of other experiences like this. Reserve that sacred daily uninterrupted hour to yourself (or self and partner, if you need to talk to think).
Winfree himself worked alone, away from people, TV and music, in "a big open space that becomes littered with drawings and with verbal notes, usually in outline form, and with stacks of worked-out simple examples." But: "Not everyone works best this way. Some people think productively only in dialogue with a partner. Others only in a coffee shop. If you are that kind, do it that way." Try a few ways, find the best, then "log in and out at that place and time each time, many times in a row."
## The notebook
### Physical rules
- **Bound, not loose-leaf.** A wire spiral is enough. No loose pages.
- **Right-hand pages only** for your working. The left-hand pages have other uses (below).
- **Numbered pages**, so you can write "go to page xxx" or "continued from page".
- **Legible**, "like an industrial research notebook, as though to be notarized at intervals: not a collection of scraps", so you can resume after an interruption without rummaging through a jumble.
- **Enough pages.** The semester has 15 weeks of 5 days, or 75 days, so you "will need at least 150 pages (times 2 because there is also a left side)". "Likely this will require two such notebooks."
Readings go in a separate loose-leaf binder, with a page of your own thoughts on each.
### Logging in and out
Winfree insists that you "formally log your brains in and out of each session". For each session, write:
- the date;
- the start and end times;
- where you are working (the idea is to find the place that works best);
- the numbers of the pages used.
### What to write
Write the process: "Write down your approaches, your lucky insights, how you got into and out of blind alleys. This is the main thing, not the 'answers'." The syllabus calls mistakes "often the most available doors to discovery", so false starts belong on the page.
Before you log out, "tidily summarize, as though for notarizing in an industrial research lab (but really so your classmates can read it and glean the same harvest as you did.)"
The syllabus also recommends a checklist of good ideas from the readings: tick an idea when you try it and note the gw page, to see which ones help. Winfree adds that "so far as I am aware, no student has ever done this. I still recommend it."
## The left-hand pages
"Left" means the back of each sheet, on the left when the book lies open. These pages have two uses.
**1. In-class notes.**
**2. Morning-afters.** After the first few weeks, go back to a problem you struggled with weeks earlier, once you have moved on to others (Winfree also calls this "Monday-morning quarterbacking"). Ask:
- Where could I have taken a different approach?
- How well did the methods I tried actually work?
- What did classmates discover that I didn't, and why?
- Why did I get stuck, or how did I avoid the snag that tripped up everyone else?
"We are here not so much to solve the problems as to see how we didn't or see how some quirky habit of thought saved the day, and benefit from those recognitions." And: "A thoughtful thorough morning-after is a perfectly valid substitute for working a new problem in your gw notebook."
## Working with others
**Daily swaps.** At each class meeting students swap gw notebooks to "share in their harvest of insights", which works only if your pages are clear. When you read a neighbour's book, remind them of the logging rules, and leave signed, helpful comments on their work.
**Dual GamesWorths.** You may also work with a partner: "dual GamesWorths often work pretty well, like cutting wood with a long 2-handled band saw." Note your partner's name and contributions along with your log-in and log-out times.
**The emailed comparison.** After each class, email Winfree "a couple lines, no more" on "why either your gw or the one you received in swap during the class meeting was the better of the two." Decide: "do not cop out by reporting a 'tie'". Swap in pairs, with at most one three-way swap on days with an odd number of students, so he can see whether both partners agree on whose work was better.
## How it was graded
In this course "actually solving the practice problems is way less important than learning how to try (and, for grading, demonstrating real effort.)"
- **Blue books.** Each class opened with a warm-up quiz in a blue exam book, collected at the end of class; it doubled as the attendance record. Late arrivals still logged into the blue book, noting the time.
- **The gw books** were collected at the end of term ("On the last class day", says the text; the schedule lists it at session 29, the next-to-last meeting) and skimmed to check them against the swap emails, with "particular attention to stuff on the left-hand sides": morning-afters and comments on classmates' work.
- **The final exam**, in exam week, was "a collection of problems from which you will choose some, exhibit as many distinct approaches as you can, and as many cross-checking distinct solutions as you can." Winfree leaned toward a take-home.
The grade came from a spreadsheet formula combining six inputs:
1. Lively participation every session (absence only in dire emergency, with advance notice by email).
2. Performance on the daily blue-book warm-ups.
3. The daily emails comparing two gw's.
4. His reading of your gw book, stressing morning-afters, and of your comments in others' books.
5. Reading each assignment no later than its class meeting.
6. Extra work for Honors and graduate students.
A daily uninterrupted hour plus vigorous participation "will likely develop an A"; because most students let the habit slip, "about half the class ends up with a B".
## Common difficulties
**"I'm too busy this week."** If you set the course aside "just temporarily", the syllabus warns, "you will find yourself backlogged and despairing", and catching up in a rush fails: "Hurrying under pressure is guaranteed to abort the special opportunities you confront in this course." Protect the hour first.
**"I'm stuck," or "I have nothing to work on."** Write down where and why you are stuck: a recorded blind alley is material for a later morning-after. Or do a morning-after now.
**"My work isn't good enough to swap."** Swap it anyway. The grade rests on "demonstrating real effort", not on answers. Write clearly so your partner can follow what you tried.
---
*"The purpose of making this a formal 'course' is to provide you a legitimate (regularly scheduled, graded) escape from the usual pressures, during which to consciously cultivate skills and personal style in problem solving."*