This is perhaps my favorite vertical Jenga variation. It looks really cool. It’s surprisingly stable. And it gets really tall. Like stand-on-a-chair tall.
You begin by making Vertical 5 groups out of the blocks:
Then you arrange four of these groups into a 4-pointed star, offset by one block-width so it’s snug at the center. On top of that, you place two groups side-by-side, also offset by a block width. And on top of that, you place another two groups, just rotated 90 degrees from the previous group:
Then play begins as always. Pull blocks from any completed rows and add them to the top, following the pattern. This is a little different from normal because the pattern of the base was already broken immediately. You’re going to follow the two-group pattern for a while, rotating 90 degrees with each new layer.
However, as you can see above, you will quickly get to a point where you don’t have enough free blocks to keep making two-group layers. Switch to single-group layers and center them, but continue rotating 90 degrees each time.
It gets crazy tall, but because all the weight is in the center, it’s surprisingly stable. Keep making new layers by gutting the layers below, and build up until you don’t have enough to even make another complete group. At that time, you’ll switch to single blocks, stacked vertically on top of each other.
At this point, the tower looks pretty nuts, but there was still one more free piece to pull.
The tower had a funky lean to it, but it held. Victory!