Tiffin: a boardgame based on Mumbai's miraculous lunch-delivery network

Cory Doctorow 7:56 am Fri Jul 8, 2016

More than 250,000 of Mumbai's workers enjoy a home-cooked lunch every day thanks to the dabbawallas, who bring tiffins — stacking lunchpails — filled at each worker's family kitchen directly to their workplace, in a miracle of coordinated logistics that consistently beats Mumbai's legendary traffic jams and attains unheard-of accuracy despite the low levels of literacy among dabbawallas.

Tiffin is a new tabletop game from Rael Dornfest — RSS pioneer; creator of the Blosxom blogging tool; technologist for Charity:Water; former chair of the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conferences; and husband of Asha "Parent Hacks" Dornfest — that challenges you to match the dabbawallas' logistical skill by building delivery routes that minimize waste and maximize delivery efficiency.

Players compete to build more-efficient routes, while contending with slowdowns and flat tires, edging out the competition with short-cuts.

Tiffin gets high marks from reviewers on Boardgame Geek, and their forums are full of happy players.

Tiffin [Rio Grande Games]

Tiffin [Boardgame Geek]

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