Dabble

I was a little leery of playing this game (I think I only played it once before, about thirteen years ago, and it did not end well that time) but it turned out to be fun. It's kind of a cross between Boggle and Scrabble. (Why do so many of my favorite games involve words or spelling??) Everyone gets 20 random letter tiles, and the aim is to use them all to make 5 words that you place on a special display rack. You've got to have one two-letter word, one three-letter word, one four . . . you get the idea. 

We didn't play with all the details in the rules (counting points, etc). We just started with a trial run (not using a timer, which meant it ended up going on for too long), then three timed rounds (stopping a round at five minutes is a much better system)--and we each won one! Although before the end, we discovered that Finn had cheated when he won. (There are a few blank tiles that can be used as any letter, and we thought he had drawn one of these, when in reality he had just turned a lettered tile back-to-front so that it looked blank and fit with the word he wanted to make.) But really--not that I want to encourage my son to be a cheater--I think that made the game more memorable. And it was quite a (slyly) clever idea!

I would not mind Dabbling on a semi-regular basis.

SORRY!

It was a lovely day today: sunny, balmy, just a light breeze. I didn't get to spend much of it outdoors, but then we had the great idea of doing Game Night on the patio!

SORRY! is a game that I played as a kid, but that was a while ago; I had to refresh my memory on the rules. Plus, this version has Fire power and Ice freeze, which didn't exist in the 70s. At first glance, gameplay seemed too complicated; this game is quite similar to Trouble, just not as simple. But in the end, I'm pretty sure the extra complexity made it more fun. Everyone enjoyed this one! It's a bit cutthroat at times, but everyone was a good sport. 

Cranium Cadoo

This game is very similar to the original Cranium game (in terms of sculpting with clay, acting out words, drawing pictures, etc) but it's geared more towards kids (which is good for Finn--he really liked this game--but not as good for Sam, who thought it was too easy). It also can be played more quickly. Even though we missed our usual 5pm start time by quite a lot this evening, we still finished playing by 6pm. 

I don't think this game would be much fun to play in an all-adult group, but it's a great game for an adult or two to play with school-aged kids. It's definitely a keeper! I really love these Cranium games, and luckily Sam didn't hate this one like he hated the original version.