Jahanshah Javid

Facebook is so huge you can't ignore the damn thing. So our team at iranian.com discussed ways of having a presence there. We thought it would be great to offer a game.

Enter Saied Bozorgi-Nesbat. Saied is one of the nicest and smartest people you'll ever meet. I first got to know him through his publication of famous pre-revolution songs and TV advertising jingles almost a decade ago. He's a pop culture "khoreh" in every sense of the word.

Saied recently developed a brilliantly addictive game and immediately attracted our interest. Iran IQ is the fruit of this collaboration. I have no doubt you'll be hooked. (Although I've had no luck with it so far. According to my pathetic score, my IQ is 84, about as smart as a puppy!)

Here's more in Saied's own words:

Iran IQ is a simple game of matching icons and pictures. I created it as a substitute to online games like solitaire that people often play to pass the time.

Yet, this game I think, has many positive side-effects. For one, it sharpens your visual memory. Playing the game pushes you to remember fleeting pictures and their locations. Your score will be kept and compared with the score of your friends as well as the score of others playing it on Facebook. (See Hall of Fame and Friends’ Scores tabs!)

Iran IQ game essentially requires you to click and flip two of 25 cards to find a matching pair. In each round of game, there are 12 hidden pairs to find and match and one single “Haji Firooz” to avoid!

The game works on many levels: First, the pure challenge of finding all the matching pairs before the timer expires. But notice that the more you mistakenly flip the same card over, the faster the timer decreases! So to get the highest score, you should try to remember the cards without having to flip them several times

The game is further made challenging by the presence of the “Haji Firooz” icon that you must avoid, for if you click on it, not only you will be penalized, it will also switch itself with another card. The more you click on this character, the higher the penalty will be!

On another level, I hope that playing with the familiar pictures and icons of Iran will be pleasantly memorable and nostalgic.

Furthermore, the plan is to provide incentives, maybe in the form of prizes, for the people who rank high in each category of this game. These rankings, from time to time will be reset, providing renewed motivation for people to play and score high.