You've put in your 40 hours for the week -- and it's only Tuesday! You need a break in a big way, but you've already spent so much time in the bathroom, people are beginning to talk. To your rescue comes NetGuide, with the latest way of wasting your boss's time, money, and resources, without even having to go online.

But we also understand that with your boss and that snitch in the next cubicle, work is hardly the place to go for a 20-hour game of Command & Conquer. So we feature only those computer games that are familiar to just about everybody (golf, blackjack, slots) or are simple enough to be quickly learned and quickly played -- between meetings, say. We've also stuck strictly with freeware and demo games figuring that if you're not honest enough to be actually working at work, it's a safe bet you probably won't pay to register any shareware either.

Arcade Classics

If you're a pinball fan, nothing beats the free 3D Pinball, which sports all the features of a real pinball game, including table bumps. Another excellent game is Microsoft Pinball Arcade demo, which offers full use of the classic 1982 Haunted House table that's about as realistic as it gets, despite a liberal tilt setting.

Sure you may have sworn off Tetris, but once you try your hand at VikTris, you'll remember why you spent all those hours playing the original. And for those who want to go back even further in the Way Back machine, there's Pac Guy: Resurrection, a shameless Pac-Man rip-off, but a rip-off with style.

Solitaire

The Net boasts one of the best solitaire games anywhere, and the fact that it's free is an added bonus. 123 Free Solitaire is a collection of solid solitaire card games including Diplomat, Free Cell, Golf, Klondike, Pyramid, and others, with each game having more than nine trillion possible outcomes, so the collection remains fresh no matter how many times you play.

Puzzles

Microsoft Puzzle Collection features three fun puzzles suitable for all ages, Flinty Flush, Rat Poker, and Spring Weekend, as long as you have a quick mind and good coordination.

Moraff offers a couple of excellent and clever freeware puzzle games, namely Phrase Detective and Radiation. In Phrase Detective each round presents a jumbled-up phrase, quotation, or palindrome that you must reconstruct in the fewest moves possible, while keeping an eye on the clock. Moraff's Radiation puts a killer spin on the original concept of Minesweeper. To win, you must use logic and the clue markers to eliminate all tiles without blowing yourself up. This engrossing game features smooth animation, excellent customizable background music, two levels of difficulty, and two mine/marker art motifs.

Sports Games

It's unlikely that you'll be playing anything like NFL Blitz or Triple Play at your office computer, but there are plenty of sports games to be had online.

Office work and computerized golf go together like Tiger Woods and endorsements. For starters you might want to check out the latest golfing sim from Microsoft with the Microsoft Golf 1999 demo. This demo lets you play three holes on The Donald Ross Memorial, but also lets you get a feel for the photo-realistic scenery, motion-capture animations of the players, and sophisticated physics engine.

Once you've tired of just three holes, move on up to Links LS 2000 demo, which takes you to Entrada at Snow Canyon to play nine stunningly rendered holes. The demo even supports network play over the Internet.

But for those who prefer to scoot balls across an 8-foot green instead, there's the brilliant Virtual Pool 2 demo, which allows you to play 9-ball with all the features on.

Freeware Sites

The freeware and demos this article mentions are just the tip of the iceberg. There are several sites on the Internet that offer a host of more games, such as Freeware Files and Moochers.

You'll find that your favorite commercial sites also offer plenty of free gaming downloads and demos, such as The Zone and CMP's own GamePower.