Except for the Challenge cards. Some of these were okay, but some of them we all heartily agreed to skip. A prime example: smell everyone’s feet and rank them from best-smelling to worst-smelling. Um, no thank you! I want to be neither the smeller nor the smellee.
Game Night!
Tuesday, July 1, 2025
Do You Really Know Your Family?
Sunday, June 29, 2025
Trivial Pursuit DVD: Pop Culture Edition
As with most trivia games, I feel like the best iteration of this one would be to bring the deck of cards on a long car trip.
Tuesday, June 17, 2025
Rummy (with a Harry Potter deck of cards)
Halfway through, we paused to read the Wikipedia entry for Rummy and ended up with a clearer idea of how to play. We restarted the game and it went much more smoothly after that--and it was much more fun.
A quick rundown of the rules: Deal 7 cards to each player. Take the top card from the remaining pile of cards ("stock") and lay it face up; this becomes the discard pile. When it's your turn, choose either the face-up card from the discard pile or the face-down one that's on the stock pile. (You can take multiple cards from the discard pile, but having extra cards not only makes it harder for you to win--it also gives your opponent more points when s/he wins.) At the end of your turn, you must leave one of your cards face-up on the discard pile. The aim is to make two melds (three or four of a kind, or three or four cards in one suit that are in sequence). Whoever makes two melds first wins, and you score points by counting up the value of the cards remaining in your opponents' hands.
Verdict? We're obviously going to keep this deck of cards (the face card art is so cool! And cards are so versatile) and we'll probably play Rummy again at some point, if not on a regular basis.
Tuesday, June 10, 2025
Monopoly
We played the short version (everyone starts with two random properties, and we set a timer) because ain’t nobody got time for the long version, especially on a Tuesday evening. But Sam is already dreaming about playing the long version at Christmas, with drinks.
I get bored very quicky, playing Monopoly, unless my opponents keep it moving. No lollygagging!! Make it snappy, folks! Sam was brought to blissful reminiscence and nostalgia because apparently he played a lot of this game as a child (albeit the British version). Like, he played it enough that he has a lot of the (British) board memorized. It also brought out the ruthless side in both of us (although we kept it civil, so it remained fun) whereas Finn may be too easygoing and soft-hearted to ever claw his way to victory.
Tuesday, May 27, 2025
The Big Bang Theory Fact or Fiction Trivia Game, fan edition
This game would have worked much better for us if the questions had multiple choice answers! As it's decidedly not multiple choice, I suggested getting rid of this game, but Finn was strongly against that idea. So my next suggestion was to give lots of hints (which we basically did this time around, but we could make it official next time) except Sam was strongly against that idea, basically saying "where's the fun in that?" Then Finn suggested that we could each have a super power while playing. His ideas (one person can keep asking until they get it right, one person can have two turns every time...) may not be the ones we go with, but maybe the general idea does have some merit. Anyway, if we do ever play this game again, it will only be with modifications (because the only other option is to watch all the episodes about a half dozen more times, and THAT'S not gonna happen--I mean, sure, we like BBT, but there are other things in life).
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
Friends Trivia Game
Tuesday, April 15, 2025
The One With All The Cards
I wasn’t sure we were going to enjoy this game. It’s an off-brand, Friends-themed Cards Against Humanity, which is kind of like naughty Mad Libs, which is fine for a group of (naughty) adults to play, but not great with a middle-school child. (We once had a Harry Potter-themed Cards Against Humanity deck, and we only ever tried playing it one time. It was a bad combo: it ruined both the sweet goodness of the magical theme at the same time as it ruined the terrible hilarity of a terrible game for terrible people.)