Loaded Questions

We all really enjoyed Game Night tonight. Loaded Questions isn't the best game to play with only three people (though they admit this right on the box), but if you make the questions and answers the focus rather than concentrating on winning, it's a great game for laughs and interesting conversation.

The star of the show is the deck of cards, each with four--you guessed it--loaded questions on them. The questions fall into one of four categories: hypotheticals ("what would you do if...?"), Anything Goes (random questions like "what are three words you think of when you hear the word 'white'?"), no-brainers ("what is your favorite...?") and personals ("what is the most common compliment people give you?"). Each player takes turns being the one to read out the question, and the other players all write down their answer; then the asker has to guess who wrote which answer. (It's this last part that makes a three-person game less than ideal. It's a bit too easy to make it a competition.)

We haven't played the actual board game very often, but we used to take the deck of cards on car trips. We haven't done that for a while--I guess we’ve been doing fewer car trips recently--but we should definitely bring these cards with us next time. Meanwhile, for posterity, I'd like to record the type of car that Finn would want to own if money were no object ("flying") and the three words he associates with "white": color, marshmallows, grandad. 

Kwizniac (people, places, things)

How’s Your Brain Working Today? The trivia countdown game, noun version. 

I bought this for my 2nd child years ago—I think I intended for it to be a stocking stuffer, but it turned out to be too big for her stocking. And then… I don’t think anyone ever played it! Until now.

It's a simple game--just a deck of cards, each one with 10 clues that direct you to one answer at the bottom of the card. Theoretically, the clue at the top of the card (#10) is the hardest, and the clue at the bottom of the card (#1) is the easiest (although sometimes that certainly did not seem to be true). Each player takes turns being The Reader, who starts reading clues at the top of the card and slowly reads more and more clues, giving the other players time to guess in between. The sooner another player guesses the answer, the more points they receive.

This was not an ideal game for Finn, who got zero points. Even if he hadn't had such stiff competition, I'm not sure he would have done very well at guessing answers like Julia Roberts, the UN, and the ozone layer. But I think he still had fun. I enjoyed it too! Once again I'm going to say this is a game that would be fun on a car trip, with one modification--instead of tracking points based on how many clues were needed to guess the answer (which really needs pen and paper, or at least a phone with a Notes app), it would be easier to just track number of correct guesses.

Warning: not to be played if Sam is in a grumpy mood.

Quiddler

I could have sworn we’d played this game before, but I was wrong. I also thought we’d reached the end of the game cabinet—wrong again! Though we are nearing the end. 

I wish I could remember where we got this game—mainly because I suspect it may have been gifted to us by our friend RME, in which case I feel bad that it took us so long to get around to playing it. But hopefully either 1) we purchased it ourselves and it wasn’t a gift, or 2) RME will be happy that we enjoyed it, and not sad that we didn’t enjoy it sooner. 

Because this is a fun game! Of course, like most of our favorite games, it involves words and spelling. It’s a deck of cards, most of which have one letter (but some have two, like QU or CL; fun note: the decorative letters in the center of each card are "inspired by Celtic manuscripts from 500 - 800 AD such as the Book of Kells and the Book of Durrow"). The game is played in several rounds: in the first round, everyone is dealt three cards, and the goal is to use all three cards to spell a word. The next round is with four cards, then five, and so on up to ten. Points are scored based on the number value (displayed on the card) of each letter you use, and the points for letters you don’t use get subtracted from your score. 

Verdict: Fun! Another keeper. (And I say this despite the fact that I came in third place . . . out of three . . . in other words, I am known as The Loser.)

Yahtzee Frenzy

I haven't played Yahtzee for years, but I remember enjoying it as a child. It wasn't one of my absolute favorites like Boggle or Clue, but it was a good second-tier game.

Yahtzee Frenzy is a faster-paced version, where everyone has their own set of five dice (and no noisy cup to shake it in). Rather than having to wait your turn, everyone is rolling dice at the same time. 

This struck me as an improvement, but unfortunately Sam hated this game. He says it brought out the worst in him (which is basically his competitive side) and he wants to get rid of it. I'm a bit averse to that idea (especially because, if I remember right, this was a birthday gift to Finn from his sweet friend M) but if we do keep this game I'll try to remember not to make Sam play it again.

Do You Really Know Your Family?

This is a personal trivia game. Cards prompt you to think of your favorite [fill in the blank] and your family members have to guess your answer. Like my favorite outdoor activity (snorkeling!) or the place Finn would most like to go on vacation (Hawaii!) or how old Milo was when he learned to ride a bike (5!) or what makes Sam the most sad (when Liverpool loses) or what I would most like to build in the backyard (a tiny house for Stacia). We really enjoyed it!

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. 

Trivial Pursuit DVD: Pop Culture Edition

In my memory, Trivial Pursuit is Really, Really Difficult. Then again . . . have I even played it since I was a kid? Trivia is the sort of thing that tends to get easier as you get older (read: the more you learn), at least to an extent (and that extent would be the age where you start to forget stuff). 

Anyway, this Pop Culture version was a little easier than I remembered. It's possible this was mostly because I lucked out and got easy questions. It's also possible because of the subject matter--sadly, I probably know more about pop culture than about history. But I'm pretty sure Finn found it very difficult. It didn't help that this is definitely not a current pop culture game; I'd say it's at least ten years old, if not more like twenty, which means it's really from before Finn's time.  

But I had fun playing! (Maybe because I won?) I'm glad the whole thing wasn't on DVD, as this seems to slow down gameplay. Most of the game is from a deck of cards, and you only go to the DVD when you're on one of the spaces where you can earn a wedge. Weirdly, the DVD questions seemed easier than the card questions. At least this made it easier to earn wedges!

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. 

Rummy (with a Harry Potter deck of cards)

Our options for board games that we own but haven't played yet are really dwindling by this point. But there are all kinds of games that can be played with a deck of cards! And we have a really cool Gryffindor deck that we've hardly ever used. So Sam decided we should settle on a card game instead of a board game for Game Night tonight. 

It took a little bit to decide, since we needed a game that three people can play and that doesn't have super-complicated rules (both to keep from overwhelming Finn, and because we don't have unlimited time to play), but we didn't want to go with one of the more childish games that we've played before, like Go Fish or Memory. I suggested Hearts or Spades, then remembered that Spades has to be played in pairs (not great for 3 people), and Sam thought Hearts sounded too elaborate. We finally settled on Rummy.

We got off to a bad start, since neither Sam nor I could remember the rules, and we were too impatient to thoroughly Google it, so after a too-brief online review we jumped in. But so many things seemed off. We were discarding before we were drawing, the discard pile wasn't face up . . . it was just all kinds of wrong. 

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.