It is a cold, rainy Saturday, and the children are confined indoors. Today there will be no baseball games in the street, no marble tournaments in the backyard, no excursions in the woods to look for buried treasure. I thought of such a day when I conceived Tie Breaker. The boredom of being cooped up inside can sometimes be made easier to bear with a game. The children in Tie Breaker are engaged in a marathon of checkers, each child chalking up wins. You can almost hear the clock ticking away the day as the dog yawns, wishing he were playing fetch, and the boy ponders his next move, hoping he will win this Tie Breaker game. - JD