My seven-year-old son, Peter, has turned into a force on the plastic savannah. He has claimed four different Guinness World Records titles for Hungry Hungry Hippos.
After taking the two-person game, we had too much muscle memory to quit. The next challenge was obvious: put on blindfolds.
Playing blind turned out to be both easier and harder than doing it with open eyes.
It was easier because sight is a distraction; without eyes tracking erratic marbles, there’s no hesitation. You just hammer the lever and pray the jaws snap shut on target.
The brutal part was everything else.
Guinness rules require your active hand to start flat on the table, your other hand behind your back, andno contact before “GO.” Snapping blindly across empty space onto a tiny plastic lever takes the muscle memory we built up.
With four hippos and two players, covering the whole board meant dividing the work: Peter locked onto one hippo, while I pivoted between 2 of the others. That left intuition. Without sight, you have to read the clatter of plastic to sense where the balls are congregating.
We missed repeatedly. Rogue marbles bounced away, and on one record-breaking run, Peter got so excited he pulled his blindfold off before the final blindfold check – an immediate disqualification.
We reset, locked in, and tried again.
On our final run, hands snapped to the levers. Stopwatches clicked, blindfolds stayed on, and we cleared the board in 7.03 seconds, obliterating the 20-second benchmark. (Later I discovered someone else had already broken the record at 15.57 seconds but it hadn’t been validated at the time of our attempt, but we still obliterated it). Another title in the books, and another lesson in grit.