It's March. Do you know what that means? It means springtime, Daylight Savings Time and college basketball. Lots and lots of college basketball. In fact, this sport so dominates American athletics at this time of the year that several new terms have joined the American lexicon in celebration of the upcoming NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. For instance, when do you ever use the word "bracket" except during March, when the NCAA tries to figure out which teams should be invited to the "dance" and much arguing ensues when your favorite team doesn't get into the easiest bracket or doesn't make a bracket at all? The term "bracketology" was derived from the incessant studying and analyzing of the four brackets that comprise the 64 teams that play in the NCAA tourney. And, of course, there's "March Madness," which defines the near 24/7 playing of games throughout the month until the "Sweet Sixteen," then the "Elite Eight" and finally the "Final Four" are decided.

Basketball fans live and breathe this tournament. My husband and I were once invited to a wedding that happened to land on the day of the Final Four. We went to the wedding (with him grousing all the way) and during dinner, he disappeared for a very long time. When I asked him where he had been, he admitted he found a bar in the facility that was showing the evening game. I excused myself to go to the ladies room and sought out the bar; inside were dozens of male wedding guests cheering on their favorite team! Even my son's high school - a place known for its high academic standards - turns on television sets in the gym and the student lounge so kids can watch these March Madness games during their free periods.

It's been said that companies annually lose billions of dollars in productivity during the weeks of March Madness as American workers become distracted by the tournament, pore over their brackets, exchange money on betting pools and watch games online during the day. CBS annually broadcasts the tournament and recently has begun airing every game online. To help workers keep up the ruse that they're working rather than watching basketball, CBSSportsline.com, the site where the games are shown, has created what it calls the "boss button." If you're watching a game and you see your boss approaching, you hit the button; the basketball game you're watching disappears and in its place a spread sheet pops up.

Well, now you don't need March Madness, brackets, Elite Eights or Final Fours in order to waste time at work! Four clever developers from the Netherlands have concocted a way for you to waste time at work all year long! They have created a Web site called CantYouSeeImBusy.com. Located on this site are three computer games that look like any other office productivity software that's loaded onto any computer in any office anywhere in the world. Once you click on one of the game titles, you are taken to a new screen that makes it look like you're working on a document or a spread sheet when, in fact, you're actually playing a game. If the boss comes ambling toward you, just hit the spacebar and the game elements disappear, transforming the game board into what looks like an actual document file or spread sheet. When the coast is clear, hit the spacebar again and continue playing!

Currently, there are three games available on the site but the developers assure you they're working on a new one which they expect to upload in October. The games are free, although you have to sit through a commercial for a few seconds before an option comes up allowing you to skip through to the game. In my mind, that's a small price to pay for the ability to waste productive time during the day.

The first game is called Breakdown. Modeled after Breakout, this game is played on what looks like a normal Word document, complete with grey background and (nonfunctional) menu options at the top. At the bottom of the screen is the all-important scroll bar that tells you which level you're on, how many lives you have left in this level and how to pause the game. Once you hit play, the game works sort of like Pong. There's a little ball that appears in the center of the screen and it bounces off a bar at the bottom that you control with your mouse. Once the ball hits the bar, it ricochets back up and wipes off words that have been preloaded onto the page. Once all the words are erased, you move to the next level. Each level offers a smaller bar but more words to hit, upping the level of difficulty. If your cubicle mate decides to rat you out but needs proof of your game-playing, he'll have a hard time getting it: a quick tap on the spacebar and the ball disappears, making it look like you really are working on that document you've been complaining about for weeks.

The second game is called Leadership. Similar to Lunar Landing, this game loads onto a standard two-color line graph. It's your mission to pilot a ship between the two lines of the graph from the left side of the spread sheet to the flat "landing spot" on the right side of the page without hitting either line. You pilot this from the number pad of your keyboard. When your supervisor swings past your cubicle, you need only hit the spacebar and the little ship disappears, making it look like you're hard at work charting your company's latest price comparisons.

The third game is Cost Cutter. Like Leadership, this also loads onto a fake Excel-type spread sheet, only this one is a vertical bar graph as opposed to the line graph of Leadership. On the bar graph are colored segments and as the bars move from left to right, you have to knock off pairs of same-colored segments before the graph reaches the end, sort of like a horizontal version of Tetris. Cleverly, there is a key below the graph that indicates what each color segment represents (i.e., yellow = pens, lavender = staples; purple = paper, etc.), so if you have to hit the spacebar when a suspicious coworker comes snooping around, it looks like you're actually charting the cost of office supplies.

Each game allows you to insert your "company name" and high scores are posted. From the look of the high scores page, there are lots of people all over the world who are frittering away time at the office by playing these clever games.

So, who needs March Madness? If you don't like sports but love being unproductive, these clever games will allow you to waste time all year long!