Flip Words, a board game created by Santa Rosa’s Evan Koch, honored by Mensa

Evan Koch, almost certainly Sonoma County’s most prolific creator of board games, has good news.

His Flip Words, akin to Scrabble but more colorful and complex, has earned a runners-up nod from Mensa, the high-IQ group that each year awards Mensa Select honors to five brainy board games.

Koch, who lives with autism and the fallout of having lost his apartment and everything in it to the Tubbs fire, sells his game at Montgomery Village’s Kaleidoscope Toys and Made Local Marketplace, at Corrick’s in downtown Santa Rosa, at Fundemonium in Rohnert Park and at Gryphon's Nest in Sebastopol.

Koch, 48, has invented a variety of board games: Zurround, Hexicon, Yin, Sixy, Mandala, 9 Square, Blob, Temple. He received help from Pam Dale, co-founder and former owner of Made Local Marketplace, to produce and market Flip Words, which wears the clever tag line, “It’s your word against mine!”

Koch credits Asperger’s Syndrome with allowing him to “focus like a laser” on his passion for dreaming up and refining board games.

He also loves working in the kitchen in pursuit of the perfect pesto sauce.