Turns out that this one just keeps on running.

Today's thrilling developments include Olin Coles, Executive Editor of "independent" "reviews" site Benchmark Reviews, being exposed for some fraudulent DMCA claims and for yet more instances of lying to to his innocent, trusting readership. Read on!

But first, let's quickly recap the entire story for those joining us late who don't want to read through the thousands of words of all five previous instalments. (If you HAVE been following it, skip to the part below the dotted line.)

1. Olin Coles, Executive Editor of "independent" reviews site Benchmark Reviews, published a review of the $1200 Herman Miller Embody office chair, which was presented as being solely his own work.

2. Stefan Holmes, a reader of the WoS Forum found the review suspicious, and posted a comment on the Benchmark Reviews forum, expressing the opinion that the "review" sounded more like a Herman Miller press release.

3. Olin Coles deleted the comment, and emailed Stefan personally in a hurt tone, stating that "The Embody chair was paid for out of my own pocket, with absolutely no sample/product coordination with the merchant" (WoSblog's emphasis), going on to request that "If you would please supply examples of how you perceive my eight-page article as an advertisement, it would be helpful".

4. Stefan solicited the views of the WoS Forum on the subject, where the uniform consensus was that the "review" did indeed read very much like a press release. At this point I posted a comment on the Benchmark Reviews site, politely suggesting that the site ought to disclose when text had been written by the manufacturer of the product under review. At which point things started to get interesting.

5. My comment was swiftly deleted, my IP address was banned from the entire site, and I received an abusive email from Olin Coles, calling me a "dim-witted internet troll" with "sub-par reading skills", and asserting that only two passages in the review were penned by Herman Miller Inc, and that this fact had always been made clear on the review.

6. This claim was a lie. Olin Coles had in fact changed the two passages in question to flag them as being PR quotes, something which was easily proved by the use of Google Cache. He also added a comment to the review page under the title "Full disclosure", which insisted that the two passages had always been in their altered form and added that "The remaining 99.9% of the article is a fully independent review of a self-purchased product". (The remaining text in fact comprised 93.6% of the "review", but let's not split hairs.)

7. Another WoS Forum user, Ian Osborne, had by this point located a passage of text in the section of the review Olin Coles still claimed to have written himself which was word-for-word identical to a passage in Herman Miller's brochure for the Embody chair.

8. I wrote an email to Olin Coles, under my own name and identifying myself as a journalist investigating the allegations, requesting clarification on the rest of the "review" and whether it was indeed all Mr Coles' own work – in particular, the passage taken from the brochure.

9. I received no reply to this email, but shortly afterwards found my name, physical address and telephone number published on the Benchmark Reviews forum, accompanied by claims that I had made anonymous personal threats and accusations. (All of which was of course absolutely untrue. I had made no threats, no accusations and used my real name.)

10. I posted the story on my blog, accompanied by copies of the correspondence, illustrative quotes from the "review", and relevant screenshots I'd taken myself.

11. A journalist colleague had by this point located several more large sections of the "review" on the internet, this time on the website of retailer Smart Furniture. He'd contacted Smart Furniture to enquire as to the source of the text, and received a reply from the company stating that it was their own original copy.

12. Olin Coles now once again stealthily edited the text of his "review", without any acknowledgement that it had been changed. Numerous passages found qualifiers and disclaimers added, where previously there had been direct empirical statements about the chair's incredible medical qualities. It was now admitted, by the addition to the "review" of several citations which were not previously present, that the scientific studies proving these qualities had been solely carried out by Herman Miller, Inc.

13. At the same time, intriguingly, all the advertisements embedded in the eight-page "review" were replaced by ones for… Smart Furniture. I continued to detail these developments on my blog.

14. At this point, Olin Coles filed a complaint with my web hosts under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, demanding the removal of several images and quotes from my original blog post. Despite the complaint failing to comply with several of the legal requirements for a DMCA takedown request*, and despite the images concerned being screenshots taken by me rather than files copied from Benchmark Reviews, and despite the quotes being very obviously protected under the "fair use" provisions of the DMCA, my web hosts (justhost.com) immediately complied with the request, taking down not only the allegedly infringing material but the entire WoSblog site.

*(One of at least three such requirements missing from the notice filed by Mr Coles is a statement that the complainant asserts, under penalty of perjury, that he is entitled to act for the copyright owner of the material in question. If only we could somehow determine why Mr Coles didn't feel able to make that particular statement, eh?)

15. Olin Coles also filed several other DMCA complaints, including against the WoS Forum and a mirror of my original blog post on WordPress.com. (The WoS Forum one concerned two images of Olin Coles himself, taken from other sources, which I didn't contest. The WordPress.com one related to the same material as the WoSblog one, and was dismissed by WordPress after I explained the situation, with the material always having remained in place.)

16. WoSblog was eventually reinstated by JustHost with the alleged offending material temporarily removed, pending someone arriving in their offices who knows more about copyright law than a squirrel. In the meantime, the story of the "review" and Olin Coles' hamfisted attempts to suppress the revelations had spread widely across the internet, including stories and mentions on Metafilter, BoingBoing, The Register and Slashdot, as well as numerous other blogs and sites. (WoSblog views alone are well into five figures.)

—————————————————————————–

Today, however, brought yet another fascinating new development in the saga. Stefan Holmes had been continuing his email correspondence with Olin Coles, apparently not having been blamed for the furore despite the fact that Mr Coles was clearly monitoring the WoS Forum (as demonstrated by his DMCA request). Stefan received the following email:

"The other guys, as you put it, are Smart Furniture. I originally purchased the chair from them on 4/16 for $1200, and two weeks after the purchase I decided to write a review. I contacted their marketing department to request assistance with the article I was writing. They offered me high-resolution images, and gave me permission to use the resources found on their website.

The article was published a few months later, after Smart Furniture received a copy. As I said before, all of the text and material sourced from Herman Miller or Smart Furniture was done so with permission beforehand."

This statement raises a whole bunch of intriguing questions and implications.

(i) It seems to disprove Olin Coles' original assertion that the "review" was written "with absolutely no sample/product coordination with the merchant". (Since Herman Miller are the manufacturer and don't sell the chair directly, "the merchant" can only possibly refer to Smart Furniture.)

(ii) It suggests, particularly in the light of Smart Furniture's earlier statement that "All the content was developed in house", that Olin Coles has indeed copied the bulk of the review from Smart Furniture's text – albeit apparently with their permission – rather than it being the case, as he previously asserted, that "99.9% of the article is a fully independent review of a self-purchased product".

(iii) Nevertheless, the timing of the sudden appearance of Smart Furniture advertisements throughout the feature, when prior to WoSblog's investigations there had been none, can't help but raise suspicions. It's not entirely unreasonable to speculate, for example, that Smart Furniture might have originally known nothing about the reappropriation of their text, but settled the matter upon being alerted to it, in return for a lot of free adverts. (WoSblog, of course, emphasises that this IS purely speculation on its part.)

(iv) Oddly, despite having just admitted to being supplied with all the high-resolution images by Smart Furniture, Olin Coles feels able to cover them all in "Benchmark Reviews" watermarks.

I don't know about you, viewers, but I can't wait to find out what happens next in this twisted, tangled tale. You might say, in fact, that I'm sitting on the edge of my seat.

It's called Totally Tiny Arcade, it's for the PC, and it's an extremely cute minigame compendium reliving the 1980s glory days of the video arcade. You take the role of Joystick Johnny, a character so authentically 80s he wears his baseball cap the right way round while he's listening to his Walkman.

JJ finds himself in an arcade that's been infested with the Video Virus, and something something plot something. The only way to achieve whatever your goal is is to play your way through a dozen different games in the arcade in 10 minutes, thereby gaining access to the secret room where the Video Virus can be defeated. And since it's the 80s, they're all 80s classics.

Each arcade (there are three in the game, each with a varying mix of the 27 different basic games that make up TTA) has three "rows" of machines, and you play four games in each row (one is usually occupied by another player).

You can choose the order you tackle the four games in, which is a tactical decision because you only play one level of the first game, two levels of the second, three levels of the third and you can probably work out how many of the fourth.

You have (essentially) infinite lives in each game, but being killed costs you five seconds of your 10-minute overall clock. That seems a very small penalty, but when you work out that you've got to play through 30 stages (1+2+3+4=10 stages, times 3 rows), that only gives you an average of 20 seconds per stage, and losing a quarter of that at a time will deplete the clock surprisingly quickly.

(When you run out of time, you can keep playing until you lose that life, then it's Game Over Fail.)

Get through all 12 games and you get a bonus for your remaining time, then you get to play an "Experimental Prototype" machine, which is located in a secret room of the arcade, bathed in a reverential spotlight and surrounded by spectators including what appears to be your terrifyingly blank-faced girlfriend, who offers you helpful tips while you play.

The Experimental Prototype comprises four more minigames – some of them will be new, others may be reskinned versions of ones you've already played, and quickly recognising those is part of the skill.

Instead of being against the clock, this time you have three lives with which to beat the four minigames, and then you've won. (Beating one arcade unlocks the second, beating that unlocks the third, beating all three unlocks the Mystery Mix mode and finally you can unlock 1-Dollar Dash, a quickfire mode where you play four games of your choice.)

The minigames themselves are obviously the core of TTA, and although initially they seem shallow and a bit dull if you're used to the machine-gun fire of Wario Ware (which is obviously one of TTA's inspirations), the more of them you reveal the more fun things become.

Each stage of each game adds new enemies and features, and there are hidden treasures and bonuses to hunt for, such as picking up extra points for getting through a stage perfectly.

Games to which tribute is paid include Space Invaders, Frogger, Pac-Man, Robotron, 1942, Asteroids, Spy Hunter, Missile Command and Lunar Lander, and many of them are depicted in pleasingly funny ways. I won't spoil all the surprises, but my favourite is probably Moonwalk Patrol, which is Moon Patrol except with a little dancer bloke walking backwards instead of a lunar buggy, jumping over body-poppers instead of boulders.

The presentation is lovely throughout, with fullscreen or windowed display and joystick or keyboard controls. The music varies from inspired to horrible – much like the real 1980s – and the graphics are made of  lovely pixel art complete with scanlines. (Which means these screenshots might look a bit blobby until you click on them for the full-size versions.)

One particularly nice touch is the online leaderboard functionality, whereby you can create your own high score table for your friends to join, or compete on other people's. You just give your leaderboard a name, then anyone who knows the name can access it.

There's a lot more to discover and enjoy in Totally Tiny Arcade than it seems at first glance, and the structure of it means that it's perfectly built for passing a spare 10 minutes at a time. (Or even less.) $16 is perhaps a smidgen optimistic in these days of race-to-the-bottom pricing – it's already been reduced from $20 – but getting it for free is a heck of a bargain.

The blog's suspension for much of yesterday was the result of yet another desperate attempt by Olin Coles, the in-no-way brainless and cowardly owner of the discredited "review" site Benchmark Reviews, to suppress the evidence of his site's not-at-all dishonest practices.

At around 4pm I went to check the progress of the site's rocketing hit counter, which had been spiking skywards ever since the story was passingly mentioned in a footnote to a piece on Reghardware.com. Seeing only the "Suspended" screen, I hurried to my email account and found the following:

Hi Stuart,

We have suspended your account for copyright infringement.
Please find the complaint below:
================================

This is a Digital Millennium Copyright Act compliance complaint.

This message is to inform you that the website podgamer.com located at xx.xxx.xx.xxx has infringed upon the copyright of Performance Computers, Inc, a registered corporation located in Nevada, USA. Several images and copyrighted text has been taken from our original story located at:
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=562&Itemid=58> &task=view&id=562&Itemid=58.

Domain: podgamer.com

Website IP: xx.xxx.xx.xxx

Page containing copyrighted text:
http://wosblog.podgamer.com/2010/07/21/benchmark-reviews-busted-more-like/

Copyrighted image:
http://wosblog.podgamer.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/benchmark.jpg

Copyrighted image:
http://wosblog.podgamer.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/hermanp6-450×235.jpg

We respectfully request that you take immediate action to remove all copyrighted material from the website podgamer.com. Your prompt response will mitigate potential legal costs and prosecution under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1996.

Thank you for your cooperation.
<Digitally signed>
Olin Coles
President, Designated Agent
olin@benchmarkreviews.com
Performance Computers, Inc.
BenchmarkReviews.com
==========================

Thank you.

–
Kind regards,
Naomi Michell
Just Host
www.justhost.com

You've got to admire the friendly "Hi Stuart", haven't you? Despite it, JustHost had locked down the entire site without so much as a warning about the alleged infringing material – which is, of course, not infringing at all, as the use of small extracts for the purposes of news reporting is covered by "fair use" under the DMCA.

I immediately sent off an email, and also phoned the "24/7 live support", to whom my call was very important – so important, in fact, that they answered it in barely over 20 minutes. Taking care not to leave them in any doubt as to the extent of my dissatisfaction, I explained the situation briefly, and was promised that someone would get back to me within no more than two hours.

In the meantime I informed the WoS Forum of developments, whereupon alert viewer "djc" – to whom I'm indebted – provided some very useful information with regard to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, under which Coles had had the site taken down.

Armed with this information, I was able to send off another email to JustHost, in the form of a "DMCA counter-notice", a legal procedure which if done correctly compels JustHost to "expeditiously" put the site back up, while protecting them from liability should Olin Coles be so epically stupid as to try to bring an actual lawsuit in respect of the alleged copyright infringement.

(And hey, judging by his idiot antics so far, you couldn't rule it out.)

Two hours later, I rang JustHost again (21 minutes on hold this time) and spoke to a lady who went off for another few minutes and then came back to tell me the site had been restored, which it had. Hurrah!

I was about halfway through writing this post in celebration when the screen suddenly went very strange, and I could see the "Suspended" screen in the background again. I quickly saved the text and went back to the homepage, and sure enough we were locked down again. Hngh.

Back to the phone, and this time it took 35 minutes for my "very important" call to get through to Customer Support. After a few minutes speaking to someone clearly very far away (I could hear a faint echo of my voice coming back a couple of seconds after I'd spoken) and whose accent I could barely make out, I was told that phone support had basically no power to do anything and I'd have to wait for the "senior technicians" to sort things out and get back to me by email.

However, they did advise me that there was an online live support, which I'd missed before due to it being stuck in the bottom corner of the JustHost homepage, so I got onto that and was connected within a minute or so.

I went through my new-found expert knowledge of the DMCA, and without ever really explaining anything, the online support promised the site would be online again within 30 minutes. An hour later it still wasn't, so I went back to ask, except now the Live Chat window just came up with a blank white page in every browser I tried.

A friend confirmed that it worked fine for them, so I got them to log in and pretend to be me. (Could they really have been blocking my IP for live support chat? It looks like it.) We went through a crazy pantomime via MSN, after which I was eventually told (through my friend) that I'd hear from the billing department – why the billing department? – "In next few hours" (it was already 10pm by then).

And then, astoundingly, this happened:

Darren: Is there anything else I can help you with? [The use of the word 'else' was amusing at least.]

Darren: sorry only they will be able to update regarding this issue

Darren: We are pleased to bring to your attention the following offer.

Darren: Let us take away any worries of accidental deletion or modification of your website or files by backing up your site on a daily basis. If you ever need a previous days backup, just let us know and we will happily restore or upload backups for you – $19.95 per year.

Darren: Thank you for visiting Hosting Support. Should you have any queries or require any further information, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Darren: Have a nice day!! Good Bye.

Chat session has been terminated by the site operator.

That's right, viewers – "Darren" fed me another load of guff, tried to flog me a backup service for my suspended blog (a veiled blackmail threat, maybe?), and then hung up on me. This was rapidly turning into the wackiest day ever.

I was about to give up for the evening when, unexpectedly, an email arrived.

"Hi Stuart

Thanks for your email

Please remove the following image and we will agree to unsuspend unless further allegations are made against us.

http://wosblog.podgamer.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/benchmark.jpg

http://wosblog.podgamer.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/hermanp6-450×235.jpg

and any copy and pasted text:

http://wosblog.podgamer.com/2010/07/21/benchmark-reviews-busted-more-like/

Please let me know if you require any further assistance.

Kind Regards

Nick
–
Nickolas Pearce-Evered
Billing Supervisor
www.Justhost.com"

I emailed straight back, inquiring as to how I was supposed to do anything while my account was suspended and locked, the fucking idiots. (I'd checked, and still had no FTP access.) A few minutes later another email arrived, saying the site had been restored, but if the listed items hadn't been removed within 24 hours it'd be suspended again. Then things got REALLY zany.

While pointing out that JustHost was legally REQUIRED to restore the content once I'd filed the DMCA counter-notice, I agreed to remove the listed items in the meantime to get the site back online. I was in the process of doing so when once again the site was locked up, this time with a 403 Forbidden error. Another email from JustHost revealed why:

"Hi Stuart,

Your account was opened for your IP address only.
Please remove the mentioned content as soon as possible.

Thank you.
__
Kind regards,
Oliver Leach,
Just Host
www.justhost.com"

(Two colleagues had been retrieving files via FTP for backup purposes once access was restored, nobody having said this was not allowed.)

Eventually, in the small hours of the morning, access was restored and the items in question have been temporarily removed pending someone at JustHost who knows their arse from their elbow looking into the matter. In the meantime, Olin Coles has been haring around the web trying desperately to suppress the entire internet.

He's contacted Zetaboards to have two images removed from the WoS Forum. (Luckily, because Zetaboards AREN'T complete dicks they merely removed the images rather than shutting down the entire site, and even helpfully provided a link by which to file a DMCA counter-notice should we wish to get them back.)

He's also raised some kind of complaint with WordPress about the old WoSblog on wp.com – the backup versions of all the Benchmark Reviews posts are all still there in full, but I can't currently make any new posts. And for all I know he's sticking pins in a voodoo doll and doing special dances in the nude in his back garden with his face smeared with mud as well.

Stay tuned for the latest exciting developments!

Since then, further developments have transpired. Read on!

The first is that Benchmark Reviews has gone through the text and hastily edited it in several areas to insert qualifiers and disclaimers. For example, on page 4 there's a passage which on our saved copy of the page from a couple of days ago said this:

"Designed by Bill Stumpf (who pioneered the Aeron Chair) and Jeff Weber, the Herman Miller Embody chair goes a step beyond being merely "heath-neutral". Over time, it can actually improve the health of the person sitting in it.  Scientific studies have shown that Embody users can experience better circulation, reduced resting heart rates, and less tissue damage around the sitting muscles. Embody promotes natural alignment in the spine, relieving stress across the entire back no matter how you twist and turn. "

Now, however, with no acknowledgement of having been altered, it reads like this (emphasis on changed sections added by WoSblog):

"The Herman Miller Embody Chair was designed by Bill Stumpf (Aeron Chair) and Jeff Weber, who developed the Embody chair to go a step beyond being merely "heath-neutral". According to Herman Miller, over time the Embody chair can actually improve the health of the person sitting in it. There have been several scientific studies (cited below) to have shown that Embody users can experience better circulation, reduced resting heart rates, and less tissue damage around the sitting muscles. Embody is intended to promote natural alignment in the spine, and relieve stress across the entire back."

Things which were previously stated as facts coming straight from the personal experience of the reviewer are now merely quotes of Herman Miller's design aims. The bottom of the page now does indeed provide links to all of the scientific studies praising the chair's health-enhancing qualities, which by an astonishing coincidence were all undertaken by the dedicated scientists at… Herman Miller. Wow! Who saw THAT one coming, eh?

(Other parts of the "review" have had similar hurried makeovers, and you can compare the results for yourself against the original version by downloading the retrieved original files from this link.)

Quite where this leaves Olin Coles' angry insistence in the comments thread that "99.9% of the article is a fully independent review of a self-purchased product" is a tricky one to fathom. Clearly, changing those parts would seem to be an unacknowledged admission that they were not impartial, and were in fact stating Herman Miller PR claims as being the opinion of the reviewer. Why, after all, would an independent reviewer make up unsupported and unqualified claims on a company's behalf in the first place?

So that's one interesting thing. The even better one, though, is that the current version of the "review" has a whole different bunch of advertisements inlaid on all the pages to the ones that were there when the page came to WoSblog's attention. And the site they're advertising is another big surprise.

Because at the time of writing, every inlaid ad across the eight pages of Benchmark Reviews' fully independent review is a link enabling readers to go and buy the chair in question from… Smart Furniture.

Now that's properly intriguing. Because it pretty much obliterates any idea that anyone was copying anyone else's text without their permission, and instead provides what you'd have to call fairly comprehensive proof that independent review site Benchmark Reviews and expensive-chair retailer Smart Furniture are working directly together to flog you these $1200 high-tech bum-rests.

But how, exactly? There are three possible explanations:

1. Benchmark Reviews and Smart Furniture have both simply reprinted a Herman Miller press-release with minor editing. This, of course, would mean that they were both lying about having written the text themselves, and that Benchmark Reviews was explicitly lying to its readers about the review being independent.

2. Smart Furniture did – as they've claimed – write the blurb themselves. Benchmark Reviews must logically then have agreed to print it in the guise of a review (presumably in return for payment) and link that review back to Smart Furniture. That would mean that Benchmark Reviews were shilling their readers by recommending a $1200 chair under the pretence that they'd written an honest review of it.

3. Benchmark Reviews wrote a genuine review themselves, and licenced it to Smart Furniture for use on their retail site. That fails to make sense on several levels, however. Firstly, why (as noted above) would a genuine review feature a load of statements that turned out to be Herman Miller PR claims in need of subsequent alteration? Secondly, why would Smart Furniture present a genuine review as merely part of the chair's specification blurb? Obviously if they published it saying "Look how great this independent review says the chair is!", that would carry a lot more weight as an inducement for people to buy the chair.

We will, of course, continue with our efforts to get to the bottom of this fascinating mystery. Stay tuned!

We were a little curious about this, bearing in mind site owner Olin Coles' strident assertion that, apart from the belatedly-acknowledged passages copied from Herman Miller's press release, "the remaining 99.9% of the article is a fully independent review of a self-purchased product."

(Actually it's the remaining 93.6%, but let's not quibble.)

So inestimable Friend Of WoSblog John X dropped Smart Furniture a line.

"Hello. I am trying to find the source material for your information for the Embody Chair [link]. I presume it is based on a press release, and was hoping to get hold of the original document. Many thanks, John X."

A few hours later, Smart Furniture replied:

"Hello John,

Thank you for your interest in Smart Furniture and the copy on our Embody page! We did a great job, we agree. All the content was developed in house and there is no document to share. Best of luck to you.

Regards, Melanie

Melanie Silva | Designer | Smart Furniture
430 Market Street | Chattanooga, TN | 37402"

Let's just read that again. "All the content was developed in house and there is no document to share". In other words, one of two things has happened:

1. Smart Furniture has just told us a big fat lie. That seems doubtful, since they're a retailer making no pretence at anything other than trying to tell us stuff, so they'd have no reason to be ashamed of just printing the press release. (And it doesn't seem very likely that they'd have swiped the copy from Benchmark Reviews, since they do create extensive amounts of "editorial" content for themselves, for example here.)

2. Benchmark Reviews has just lifted Smart Furniture's copy and claimed it as their own. (Of course, if Smart Furniture IS lying and it IS a press release, that still means Benchmark Reviews has just printed a press release and called it "a fully independent review of a self-purchased product". In other words, they're lying either way.)

Option 2 is plainly very much the more plausible of the two. EXCEPT! It surely can't be right, because Benchmark Reviews HATES the idea of copyright infringement. Conveniently, we know this because barely a week ago Benchmark Reviews threw a bit of a legal hissy fit at Guru3d.com for allegedly copying images belonging to Benchmark Reviews without permission.

What could possibly be going on? How could a company that's so clearly committed to the concept of intellectual property accidentally "borrow" 4,000 words of someone else's work and explicitly claim it as its own? What will happen next? WoSblog is on the case, viewers. Stay tuned!

"Like any writer, our work comes under fire from time to time. Most of the criticism is taken to heart and used to improve future work, but occasionally the critic can go overboard and begin making personal threats and accusations. This thread is intended to show our visitors that their accusations and threats do not remain anonymous."

I had of course made no threats whatsoever, made an enquiry rather than an accusation, and had invited them to offer an explanation using my real name, not anonymously. Benchmark Reviews' response to being caught red-handed printing press releases under the guise of a review, however, was to not only ban me from their site, but to publish my name, address, email address and phone number, implicitly inviting people to harass me or worse.

It's hard to imagine a guiltier response, or a more cowardly one. I think we can safely assume  from this deranged outburst  of panic that we've caught Benchmark Reviews with their grubby little hands right in the cookie jar.

"I want to know if I'm going barmy", wrote the clearly-distressed reader, whose cause for doubting his very sanity was – of all things – a review of an incredibly expensive office chair.

The viewer's issue was that they felt the review read more like an advertisement, and from the opening lines alone it was difficult to disagree with their assertion. I'll quote the first three paragraphs in full here, because strange things have been happening to the article since WoSblog started to investigate it, and the way things are going they might not be there by the time you come to read this feature:

"Is a chair's purpose merely to furnish a place for us to sit? There are countless directions to discuss this subjective matter, but suffice it to say that a chair's purpose goes beyond a solid foundation for resting our weight. In an ideal chair, the design would be suitable for hours of comfortable sitting. The chair would accommodate healthy posture, and relieve stress from load-bearing joints. Ideally, this chair would be attractive and feature a look as competent as its ability. There is such a chair.

Herman Miller is a company that engineers function and architects fashion. They've dominated the industry with decades of elite furniture, and influenced our perception of what a chair should be. Herman Miller's Aeron chair, one of the few commercial products added into the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection, was introduced in 1994 and has set the bar immeasurably high for every chair that's come thereafter. It seems fitting then, that Herman Miller, the name behind the world's most admired chair, has returned to improve upon their prestige.

Welcome the Herman Miller Embody chair. Designed specifically for people who work for hours at their computer, Embody is the first work chair that benefits both mind and body. More than just a solution towards minimizing the negative effects of sitting, Herman Miller's Embody chair was also designed to deliver positive effects on the body. In this article Benchmark Reviews takes you on a tour of the Herman Miller Embody ergonomic office chair, and demonstrates how much better sitting all day can feel. "

Originally, the "review" then followed this up with a paragraph of puff about what a super company Herman Miller was. You can see it in the picture below, retrieved from Google Cache (which is the source of all the coloured highlighting, a result of finding the cached page by searching for the text).

Note that the paragraph is presented in exactly the same text formatting as the rest of the review. This will become more interesting shortly.

The entire second page of the "review" read even more like it was lifted straight out of a press release, complete with bullet-point lists of features described in that weird, stilted way that nobody but PR people ever uses – "Creates harmony between people and computers"; "Enables and promotes healthful movement"; "Lets blood and oxygen flow more freely, enhancing ability to stay focused".

There's a very good reason for that, namely that it WAS lifted straight out of a press release. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

It transpired that the WoS Forum user (who we must, through gritted teeth, refer to as "VinylPusher") had raised his concerns about the "review" in the comments section, and had his posts deleted. In an email to VinylPusher explaining this censorship, the Executive Editor of Benchmark Reviews – one Olin Coles – had given him the following explanation:

"Considering how many people visit our website, I’d like to ensure that my article has not led others into believing it’s an advertisement. The Embody chair was paid for out of my own pocket, with absolutely no sample/product coordination with the merchant. If you would please supply examples of how you perceive my eight-page article as an advertisement, it would be helpful."

The WoS Forum, meanwhile – and particularly those members of it who are professional writers – was busy wholeheartedly agreeing with VinylPusher's assessment of the "review". For page after page, it spews out PR-speak that resembles a critical review about as much as Chris Moyles resembles Megan Fox. Page 4, for example, kicks off with the following assertion:

"Designed by Bill Stumpf (who pioneered the Aeron Chair) and Jeff Weber, the Herman Miller Embody chair goes a step beyond being merely "heath-neutral". Over time, it can actually improve the health of the person sitting in it. Scientific studies have shown that Embody users can experience better circulation, reduced resting heart rates, and less tissue damage around the sitting muscles."

Oddly, the "scientific studies" in question are neither named nor linked from the piece, leaving the reader none the wiser as to their methodology, impartiality or validity. The text continues "Through years of research and development, Bill Stumpf and Jeff Weber incorporated health-beneficial features such as the Pixelated Support System – a dynamic mesh of adjoining seat materials that has been proven to increase circulation and reduce strain on cell tissue", but similarly neglects to identify the source of this "proof".

It being almost impossible to read the review without arriving at the same conclusion as our poor troubled viewer had, I posted a couple of comments myself, politely requesting that in the interests of propriety, Benchmark Reviews really ought to identify the member of Herman Miller's PR department who had clearly provided most of the text. These comments too were swiftly deleted. In the intervening time, however, another WoS Forums user, Ian Osborne, had located the smoking gun.

This Google search for one of the more glaringly obvious paragraphs of PR-speak turned up the source of the text – Herman Miller's own brochure for the chair. (Which I've mirrored here, as their website is painfully slow.) One of my deleted comments was a link to the Google search, which was where things started to get really fun.

Having had my original comments deleted, I posted another one remarking very briefly on their deletion, using a disposable email account since what normally happens in these situations is that your original username and/or address get blocked. The post was unsurprisingly also deleted, but this time the disposable address got an emailed reply, from "Benchmark Reviews Administrator".

I was rather hurt by the attack on my reading skills, especially as I was also pretty sure that there had been no such identification of the sources of the text, nor any way of distinguishing it from the rest of the copy. In fact, I knew there hadn't, because I'd looked for it the first time.

So I went to look at the review again to check, and was surprised to find that it was no longer accessible. Or at least, no longer accessible to me. No matter which browser I tried the link in, I got an error message.

Asking some friends to confirm the problem, I discovered that they had no difficulties at all, which was odd. I then hooked up a laptop to a mobile broadband dongle and got into the site first time, while my normal connection still came up blank. The only reasonable conclusion was that my IP address had been blocked. It's now the following day, and I still can't get into any part of the Benchmark Reviews site with my normal PC, while everyone else I know can see it fine.

So I decided to follow Ian Osborne's lead, and searched for some of the text via Google Cache. It first produced the copy of page 1 that's pictured near the top of this feature, with the "About Herman Miller, Inc" paragraph in its original formatting. Google Cache described that version as "the page as it appeared on 14 Jul 2010 08:25:39 GMT".

(The page now italicizes that paragraph, and appends the line "Company Summary Provided by Herman Miller.")

The results for page 2 were more interesting. Google Cache's header, however, noted that this was a version of the page created at 02:43:10 GMT on July 18, four days later than the page 1 cache. This time, the opening two paragraphs were italicized, but still lacked the "Source: Herman Miller" tag described in such hurt and angry tones by Olin Coles in his email. There was no other explanation for the italics, and no quote marks, which are the traditional way of depicting a quote.

(The version of the page that's current at the time of writing has a slightly different prefix to the one claimed by Mr Coles, and does feature the "Source: Herman Miller" line, but the curious thing is the placing of it. It appears directly after the two paragraphs of text but before the bullet-point puff list about "creating harmony between people and computers" etc – which was previously headed "Herman Miller Features" – so we must assume that Mr Coles wrote those himself.)

It seemed that the only way to get to the bottom of this perplexing mystery was to go straight to the horse's mouth. So I've dropped Benchmark Reviews a line, starting from the premise that if they didn't like "anonymous internet trolls" I should introduce myself properly.

Dear Mr Coles,

Hello. I'm a professional freelance journalist of 20 years' standing (an archive of my work can be found at worldofstuart.co.uk), and a number of people have recently drawn my attention to your review of the Herman Miller Embody chair. I'm investigating some allegations about the review, and wondered if you could clear a couple of things up for me.

I notice that the article has in the last 24 hours been amended to identify some sections as being written by Herman Miller, which were previously not identified as such. Interestingly, you appear to be claiming that the current version is the original, something which is easily disproven via Google Cache.

Are these the only sections of the article not written by you personally? Can you confirm, for example, that the following passage is your own work?

"Designed by Bill Stumpf (who pioneered the Aeron Chair) and Jeff Weber, the Herman Miller Embody chair goes a step beyond being merely "heath-neutral". Over time, it can actually improve the health of the person sitting in it. Scientific studies have shown that Embody users can experience better circulation, reduced resting heart rates, and less tissue damage around the sitting muscles. Embody promotes natural alignment in the spine, relieving stress across the entire back no matter how you twist and turn."

If so, can you provide links to these "scientific studies", since presumably you wouldn't have cited them if you didn't read them yourself? Clearly, in the interests of fairness I'd like to have your side of the story before writing my piece. Should I not hear from you, obviously I'll have to proceed on the basis of the evidence available.

Best regards,
Rev. S. Campbell

If I hear anything, I'll be sure to keep you updated. But in the meantime, let's recap the facts that we know for sure:

1. The original "review" did NOT acknowledge that the paragraphs on pages 1 and 2 were provided directly by Herman Miller.

2. The review has been hastily edited to insert some acknowledgements to that effect, but Benchmark Reviews is claiming that they were always there, something which is provably untrue.

3. Anyone voicing doubts about the integrity of the review has – despite the implicit admission that the original version was misleading and didn't acknowledge PR content – had their comments deleted, and received a huffy or openly abusive email.

4. My IP address,  seemingly alone in the world, is no longer able to view the Benchmark Reviews website.

5. Olin Coles really, really loves his $1200 chair, which he definitely paid for himself. He even goes so far as to say that "The Embody chair does not come with arm supports by default, which is a good thing, because most times they'll be unnecessary or unwanted."

The arm supports, instead, are a $100 optional extra. (Other extras include nicer cloth for an extra $200, a shiny silver-coloured base for a further $200, and "premium translucent casters" for another $50, taking the price of the fully-kitted chair comfortably over £1000. And that'd be before VAT.)

6. None of the following quotes are identified in the article as being provided by Herman Miller, even after its editing, so they must have been penned by a professional, "fully independent" reviewer doing his best to write a balanced and critical appraisal of an eye-wateringly expensive piece of top-end office furniture in order to give his readers useful purchasing guidance:

"Herman Miller Embody chair cloth textiles utilize spacer-and-knit constructions used in athletic footwear and geo-textiles. These materials are meant to enhance Embody, not simply cover up the chair. Contemporary colors paired with either of two frame colors and three base colors help to simplify choice* and appeal to universal tastes." [Hmm.]

"The Herman Miller Embody chair's Backfit adjustment and seat conform to your unique shape and distribute weight evenly. Embody's shape mimics the spine, providing subtle support along the entire back that shifts with your movements. The Backfit creates a dynamic surface that reacts to your movements every time you shift"

"To promote the flow of heat away from the body that can build up under the legs and back over time, Herman Miller developed the Pixelated Support system. This 4-layer mesh is filled with negative space** which permits a much greater amount of air flow than traditional fabric and frame chairs. Every square inch reacts under your movements. When you shift, your seat shifts. The extremely responsive nature of the Pixelated Support material means Embody users can sit for hours without experiencing uncomfortable heat-buildup."

"By fitting the body form and reducing seated pressure, Embody increases blood circulation and improves the flow of oxygen to help decreases heart rate." ***

"If there was one Herman Miller piece that goes perfectly with Embody, it's the Envelop desk. Equipped with adjustable features such as a tapered extending desktop with tilt support, the Envelope could be considered one half of the ideal Embody set." ****

7. When asked in November 2008 how he selected which products to review, Olin Coles responded by saying this, on the record:

"I used to take anything that manufacturers would offer, back when BmR was starving for donated products.  These days, we work more closely with proven manufacturers to help launch their upcoming products".

My emphasis, there. Make your own minds up, chums.

(Special thanks to alert WoSblog associate John X – not pictured – for splendid additional sourcing.)

* In terms of those three options alone – that is, discounting the numerous caster types and optional armrests etc – there are a mere 168 combinations to choose from. Thank goodness they simplified it!

** I have no idea what "negative space" in a chair is. Sorry.

*** The source of these medical claims, like the others in the review, is not identified. I suspect it's Herman Miller Laboratories.

**** Buy more Herman Miller products! In the eight-page review, the words "Herman Miller" appear 71 times, or once every 64 words. The word "Embody" makes 104 appearances, or one every 44 words. For reference, this single paragraph you're reading now is 44 words long.

UPDATES TO THIS AWESOME SAGA:

Update 1 – Olin Coles publishes my home address and phone number on the internet.

Update 2 – the original source of most of the text is revealed to be a furniture retailer.

Update 3 – suddenly, all the ads in the "review" are replaced by ads for said retailer. Numerous hasty edits are also made to the text as disclaimers and qualifiers, to make it appear less like sales blurb.

Update 4 – Olin Coles files numerous DMCA reports to try to suppress the story, succeeding in having WoSblog suspended for most of a day by its idiot hosts.

Update 5 – Olin Coles admits to taking the material from Smart Furniture – revealing most of his previous statements to have been lies – but claims to have had permission.

(Respective words up to Juxtapixel and Mr. M. Dale)

It didn't seem fair, though, that WoSblog's beloved viewers should be expected to simply picture it in their minds. So here it is.

It should be noted that the shot above (taken this weekend in the pleasant Cardiff outlet) represents the £3.99 meal with a substantial amount of headway already made into it, and with some HP Sauce added for largely visual effect. It actually started off looking like the shot below, but the later one captures its nature more effectively.

(WosBlog's lunch companion, you'll notice, ate rather more conservatively and will live a lot longer. But more happily? I doubt it.)

The Dirty Dog's Dinner comprises – in generous amounts – slices of sausage and very lean bacon, piled high with chips and beans and served in – as you can plainly see – a proper steel dogbowl. (There's no trickery on show here, either – it's as deep as it looks, and I couldn't make it all the way to the bottom. The side order of garlic bread was probably a mistake.) And the thing is, it's delicious. And I don't normally even eat baked beans.

The universal truth rarely spoken is that an honest reflection of Western society would see all men's food – from greasy spoons to Burger King to the Ritz and Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck – delivered like this.

By all means give the ladies dainty china plates with teeny little moussellines of this, escalopes of that and juliennes of the other, tastefully and artistically arranged on beds of pulses you've never heard of in the shape of the coat of arms of Louis XII, and drizzled with a plume of Bar-le-Duc. They like things pretty and they're forever fretting about diets, bless 'em.

But for men? Smush it all up in a dogdish, pile baked beans on top of it, and don't bother with cutlery. We're tired of holding back.

Because there are also thousands of games which are always free. We're NOT talking about Lite versions or limited demos, but full complete games which, for one reason or another, their developers have decided to make free – WITHOUT stuffing them full of irritating AdMob adverts. (Unless specifically mentioned, all these games are totally ad-free.)

Here, then, in no particular order, are 50 of the best. If you've just bought an iPod Touch or an iPhone or an iPad, start here.

Dropship

Formerly a paid game, this brilliant and gorgeous-looking Thrust derivative has been free for almost a year now. No ads, no restrictions, no in-app purchases, just a fantastic game for no money.

iCopter Classic

There are loads of "Copter" games available, quite a few of them free, but this is my favourite. Fast but fair and with a nice chopper sound, you can play it with original-style graphics or collect coins in "Fun" mode to unlock some rather pretty new themes.

There are ads, but only on the menu screen between games – nothing while you play.

Lux Touch

Terrific lightning-paced Risk game. Plays the boardgame you know and love against CPU opponents, as a taster for a separate £2.99 game (Lux DLX 2) with 80 new maps, multiple difficulty levels and multiplayer. But in itself Lux Touch is a complete game, and perfect if you feel like a Risk session and only have five minutes to spare.

Real Racing GTi

We're making an exception to the rule here, because Real Racing GTi is a Lite version of the proper Real Racing (£2.99). But what a Lite version it is – you get six exclusive Volkswagen cars and three tracks from the full game, with quick-race, time trial and a three-race championship.

Clearing the championship with all gold cups and with driving aids switched off will occupy you for longer than a lot of complete games, and you only have to put up with some very mild and unintrusive menu-screen ads nagging you about buying the full version.

ChickenRun!

I love this unusual entry in the popular running-man genre. The screen scrolls from right to left automatically, and the only control is a giant "RUN" button that makes your otherwise-static chicken peg it in one direction in order to negotiate moving platforms and collect eggs while dodging flame pits and crushers. Cute and highly addictive.

Football U

Plot-heavy American Football-themed fun with clever and punchy minigames moving the narrative along. Great production values, you can zip through the text as fast as you like, and the teen-angst story is funny too.

Driftz

Stopz

Two variants on the same thing here, reminiscent of the prize game you've probably seen in arcades and shopping malls where you have to press a button to stop fast-moving lights in the right place.

Driftz is my favourite of the two, with a clever scoring system that lavishly rewards extra-fine accuracy (and online leaderboards to show it off) and a swift pace that makes for a sky-high "one more go" factor, but Stopz (in which the lights travel in an inward spiral) is an interesting twist on the theme from the same developer.

Gem Ninja

It might look like one of the millions of "Same Game" clones that plague the App Store, but Gem Ninja is in fact an object-finder game. You have to locate the block shown at the top right in the colour grid, a task that gets more and more brain-wounding as the blocks get more complex and your time limit ticks away.

iGoBang Lite

The Chinese game of Five-In-A-Row, also known as Gomuku or Gomoku depending on which spelling you want to believe. Perhaps my favourite classic two-player board game ever, and this is a very nice rendition, entirely complete in itself. The Lite version does everything the 59p full one does (three difficulty levels, three board sizes), with the sole exception of being able to play against another human.

Carnival Shooting Range

Does what it looks like it does. Very nicely-made, and has both touch-shooting and tilt-aiming modes to cater for people who do and don't like to wave their iPod around. One instantly-skippable ad when you load it up, but is pester-free from then on.

Space Deadbeef

Ingenious shoot-'em-up where your finger both targets enemies with your homing missiles and controls your ship. With just one life you can't afford any mistakes as you aim for a new high score, and it's really pleasant to play.

Topple
Topple 2 Plus+

The beautiful block-stacking game Topple and its sequel are both free, though in the latter case you'll have to sign up for a (free) Plus+ highscore account. Both games are slick, nicely-animated likeable tower-builders where your own greed and haste to reach the extra bonus markers before your time runs out are your worst enemies.

Cube Runner

If you're an old Spectrum fan, this game is best described as Deathchase with the visual style of Knot In 3D. Playable in either landscape or portrait mode, it's a simple dodge racer where you fly into the screen and have to navigate an oncoming forest of blocks, but it's smooth and hypnotic and accompanied by the sort of music you'd expect from an episode of Micro Live in 1983. You can also download free user-created level packs.

MadDodge

The iPod version of the immortal Crazygame. Dodge the bullets by tilting your iPod, get a highscore, compare it with the global leaderboards. There's a little ad in the corner of the between-games screen, but none during play.

Valistroke

Terrific co-ordination and mental agility tester where you have to draw a line from the start to the exit going through all the numbers onscreen in sequence. The time limits are increasingly tight but there are big bonuses for going through extra squares, so if you want to make an impression on the global leaderboards it's a question of how much you trust your own skill. Ads on the title screen, but none ingame.

You Cruise

Lovely time-trial racing game, covered in detail here.

Noiz2sa Free

Despite the title, this isn't a demo or Lite version – it's the full and complete officially-approved iPod port of Kenta Cho's classic PC freeware bullet-hell shooter, named to distinguish it from another completely different iPod version. One static ad on the title screen, but none during the game.

rRootage Online

Another Kenta Cho port, and while rRootage looks initially like another Noiz2sa-style shooting game (and is styled in that manner), it's really more of a racer under the skin, since your only task is to avoid all the oncoming obstacles until your laser has destroyed the boss.

With 40 stages, each playable in one of four modes (which are based on classic shmups like Ikaruga and Giga Wing), and separate online leaderboards for every variant, you'll get many hours out of this without even having to play the same level twice.

Dactyl

On a platform full of really simple games, Dactyl is about as simple as it gets. Bombs flash on the screen and you have to tap on them to defuse them. It's all about speed and memory and finding a rhythm, sort of like a version of Simon that has a single infinite level and isn't completely tedious.

BaDaBoo

Object-colliding game that reminded me of one of the minigames from Super Mario DS which I spent hours and hours playing. The fun of just smashing things into other things is obvious, but there's some subtlety in the scoring, especially at the end, that makes it very replayable.

Froggy Jump

Probably the pick of the free Doodle Jump clones that litter every corner of the App Store, and certainly the one that's kept my attention for longest, thanks in large part to the fact that it's brimming with character. Strictly speaking it's a "freemium" release, with the chance to buy upgrades for real money, but if you get high enough scores or play the game for long enough you can earn gems and get them all for free, and the basic game is more fun anyway. (Since the upgrades are basically just cheats.)

If you don't pay for the upgrade there's one little ad banner at the bottom of the screen when you start a new game – which you'll only see for about a second – and nothing else.

PicoPicoGames

Not happy getting just one game for free at a time? How about seven? PicoPicoGames offers a whole collection of miniature NES-style games, ranging from racing to maze-running to logic-puzzles to three random mini-RPGs. (You can also buy two larger ones via in-app purchases.)  My favourite is the dirt-simple Crystal Boy, but most of these would stand up on their own at 59p a pop, so seven for nothing is quite the bargain.

Tapword

Boggle, basically. Packed with options (including two sizes of grid and different time limits), and online connectivity, such as leaderboards and special challenges you have to earn points to enter. One small ad on the between-games screen.

Paint It Black

Pure addictive genius, this one. You start with a white square, and a black line moving along the inside edge. Hit the Turn button and the line makes a 90-degree clockwise turn. Your job is to paint the entire square black, but if you turn too early you'll leave part of it unpainted, and if you turn too late you'll crash into the wall or your own trail and die. Online leaderboards provide extra motivation. One ad on the title screen, none in play.

DizzyRoids

Straightforward Asteroids clone, which would have been ruined by the update which replaced the retro graphics with ugly new ones, except that they left the old ones in as an option. Phew!

Cell Splat

Looks like a match-three game but isn't – in fact, Cell Splat is more closely related to the spot-the-difference genre. Blocks appear at the top and you have to swiftly tap however many identical ones you can find in the grid below. The pace is fast, the production values are lovely, and in Hard mode you'll do well to last a minute.

2 Minute RPG

See if you can work it out from the title.

Glaurung Chess

A very comprehensive and challenging chess game with loads of options including playing by email. Um, it's chess. Nothing more to see here. Move along.

Tic Tac Ultimate

Four variants on noughts-and-crosses here – normal, 4×4 (four in a row to win), 3x3x3 and 4x4x4, each available in four graphical themes. You get three levels of CPU opponent, two-player games, and "Standard" and "Scored" modes, the latter of which gives you bonus points for fast moves and keeps on throwing opponents at you until you lose. Without a doubt the most comprehensive noughts-and-crosses game I've ever seen.

Mr. Space!!

Hugely stylish action game where you have to make your little man scamper left and right to find the safe spots as a jagged roof crashes down onto an uneven floor. It's all about speed and lightning visual judgement, and you'll always be certain you could do better next time.

Jump Maze

Ingenious logic puzzle, in which levels appear bafflingly impossible until you alight on the solution. Very basic, with infinite randomly-generated stages, this isn't a game you work through to complete, but one you fire up when you've got two minutes to kill and you want a bit of mental exercise.

iCrossOut

Another pure-logic puzzler, where you have to eliminate all the bricks by drawing straight lines through groups of them according to the instructions (eg three at a time). Four difficulty levels and lots of stages make for hours of challenge, and you'll need all your forward-planning skills.

Traffic Rush

Donut Games have a reputation for perfectly-crafted little arcade minigames, and Traffic Rush is one of their most stripped-down and elegant. Vehicles approach a crossroads from four directions and you have to get them across without collisions, by either swiping to speed them up, or tapping to stop them (until drivers behind them honk them back into life). It seems so easy that every time you fail you can't help but start again.

Zepi: Free

There are eight different versions of unusual object-matching game Zepi available, all of them identical except for their graphical themes. Each release has three different graphic sets, and the free version offers the "Graveyard" theme from Zepi: Dark. The game itself is complete in every way, and the only reason to upgrade is if you'd rather play with pretty butterflies or flowers than eyeballs and skulls.

LightBike 2

A light-cycles game where you're equipped with the ability to jump sounds like it should be easy, but LightBike 2 is anything but, even with the benefit of a very accurate radar screen as well as the beautiful 3D main environment. Plenty challenging against CPU racers, but also offers online deathmatch.

No ads, but stupidly you'll need internet access to sign in even for offline play, although all you're asked for is a username (no tiresome typing email addresses on the iThing's keypad).

Match Match Plus

A match-three with a bit more to it than most, and a rather different play mechanic. Here you're not limited to swapping adjacent blocks, but can shunt entire rows and columns around to get one to the desired location, opening up a lot more scope for tactical play. (Especially as you're not restricted to connecting blocks in a straight line, but can join them in any formation vertically and/or horizontally.) Much more demanding than the average match-three too, most of which can take hours for a single game.

invaderR

Slightly reminiscent of brilliant Xbox Indie game Decimation X, this is a great little micro-Invaders. Tilt to move, tap to fire, one hit means Game Over. At least the invaders don't actually invade, though – they're happy to just stay in the sky and rain down bombs until you succumb, rather than fight it out toe-to-tentacle with you like men.

Card Dealer

More closely related to Paper Toss than anything to do with gambling, this is a neat little game where you have to flick cards into static or moving targets in the fastest possible time. Comes in the form of a Lite version with in-app purchasing, but you can actually unlock all the DLC levels for free just by playing the game, and it should only take you a few minutes.

3D Checkers

It's in 3D! It's Checkers! It's in 3D and it's Checkers! You know how this joke goes, right? Lovely graphics, traditional and modern graphics options, Bluetooth or pass-the-iPod multiplayer, and three levels of CPU difficulty. In other words, everything you could reasonably ask for from a Checkers game.

Bouncedown

One of the many things the App Store is well blessed with is games where you have to fall down a series of platforms. Bouncedown is one of the more professional efforts, with Yoshi's Island-esque graphics (except for the main character being Amiga hero Blob), several control options and a decent level of challenge as you jump down various platforms to escape a descending spiked roof, encountering springs and conveyor belts and all the sorts of things you'd expect in these circumstances. One small advert on menu screen, nothing ingame.

Rocket Bird

Your basic bird-with-rocket-strapped-to-back-hurtles-through-farmland sort of affair. Levels seem to be the same every time, so you can learn them, but you can also take radically different routes through them to see which is best. Tiny ads on title screen and high-score screen, none during gameplay.

Parachute Madness

Squirrel on parachute plummets from high orbit, avoids toxic waste barrels sitting on grassy platforms inexplicably hanging in the sky, destroys UFOs and Zeppelins by throwing acorns. And yet, I can guarantee you not a single videogame player ever looked at it and so much as paused for a second to think "Hang on, that's a bit of an implausible plot, isn't it?"

Ice Tycoon

One of a million (approx) Diner Dash-inspired time-management games on the App Store, this is one of the most enjoyable, and not just because it involves making delicious-looking ice creams. No, it's because it involves making delicious-looking ice creams and selling them to bears.

Unkichi

Basically a variant on the well-known "Lights Out" type of game, where you tap on a square (or in this case a circle) to toggle its binary state and those of the directly adjacent positions.

Unkichi stands out thanks to its lovely visual style and a ferociously unforgiving Arcade mode in which a single misplaced flip means death, and is the first time I've ever found a Lights Out game enjoyable.

Route-Rageous!

Talking of ferocious, Route-Rageous! (which is essentially a simplified version of Chu Chu Rocket) is one of the toughest logic puzzlers I've ever come across. I haven't even managed a perfect completion of the first level yet, but fortunately you can play and replay the 10 stages in any order you like as you search for better and better solutions to get higher and higher scores.

Tournament Reversi Free

"Free" in a title normally means a full version strewn with ads, but TR Free seems to be identical to the Pro Edition other than the warm feeling of giving the author money for a job well done.

In addition to the standard VS CPU game (with five difficulty levels) and a pass-the-iPod two-player game, Tournament Reversi Free even offers live internet play, where you can have a game against random opponents or arrange to meet a friend. What more do you want, blood?

Volkswagen Think Blue

Part of a whole suite of free VW-based driving games covered in fuller detail here, Think Blue is my pick of the bunch for its compelling just-a-bit-further design and unique atmosphere of a pleasant, leisurely afternoon cruise through the countryside.

Coin Dozer

And a little indulgence to finish on. Coin Dozer has constant in-play adverts (rather cheekily not shown in screenshots – they appear in the prize chute area), and barely counts as a game at all, given that it has no final victory and also no way to fail. When you run out of coins, all you have to do it wait a while (or sell some of your prizes) and you'll get more, forever. There's no high-score, and while you can earn bonuses by collecting complete sets of prizes, they make very little difference to anything.

And yet, once you start dropping the nicely-rendered gold coins onto the playfield, see if you can stop. It's the ultimate in completely pointless timewasting, and that probably makes it some sort of art statement. (Particularly as there's also a version available with biscuits instead of coins.) You should have it. Over 2 million people can't be wrong, can they?