Kalooki is the most popular card game in Jamaica, a staple of family and social gatherings. My aunt Ann Marie, who passed away in October, loved the game. I have many, many fond memories of her kicking my butt.

Anna is a kalooki scorecard and leaderboard. Easily add players, enter scores, “bend the board”, and see exactly how far behind first place you are.

My wife and I love word games — crosswords, Boggle, Scrabble (our set is wall-sized). We both grew up in Jamaica, where a common after-school activity is ‘Boy, Girl, Place, Thing’.

Gary is an alliterative game for 2 or more players. Throw up a card, and scribble answers to the 12 categories before time runs out. To score, eliminate duplicate answers and count the rest.

It’s free, open-source, and easily localized, so you don’t have to learn any US state capitals.

I construct crosswords in my spare time. (Read about my first New York Times puzzle.) The industry standard software is Crossword Compiler, which is expensive and Windows-only. Until now, I used CMFC, an iPad app. But while at Recurse Center in NYC, Raph Levien and I built Phil, a free and powerful HTML5 puzzle-maker.

Phil imports and exports .PUZ, uses a high-quality custom dictionary, and generates a solvable PDF or NYT submission with one click.