8 min read
It doesn’t take long to realize why Lily Brown and Tait Hansen clicked as friends and co-collaborators. The two 13-year-olds don’t finish each other’s thoughts so much as round them out. Neither jumps at talking just to be heard; they both take a beat and bat around a question in their head, searching for the truest and most thoughtful answer. They are, in essence, natural conversationalists, which perhaps demonstrates how they successfully completed a years-long — and, for a chunk of that time, long-distance — start-and-stop process of creating and designing their own board game.
The result of their efforts, Betcha Can’t! (originally called Bet You Can’t in earlier iterations), did more than merely entertain friends and relatives. The game of wits invites players into a good-natured gauntlet of one-upmanship to see who can call to mind the most trivial information on a subject (e.g. the various types of vegetables or modes of transport) in a finite amount of time. It won a share of the grand prize for “Most Marketable Concept” at 2018’s Young Inventor Challenge, part of the annual Chicago Toy and Game Week.
Contest sponsor Pressman Toy Corporation quickly picked up