Friends Trivia Game

Another week, another Friends game. This one (obviously) is a trivia game. It has a fun, tricksy little way of keeping score, but really it would be just as much fun (or maybe more so) without that. And it would certainly be more fun without the Charades option, which we ditched halfway through. 

I won (no surprise there, since I practically have every episode memorized). What was a surprise was that I didn’t know all the answers! Only most of them. 

I think the best iteration of this game would be for travel (just asking and answering the questions, no scorekeeping or Charades). It would be a great way to pass the time on a long car trip. 

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.)

But we are all Friends fans, and after six months or so of Game Nights we are getting to the point where we are scraping the bottom of the game cabinet, so we gave this one a try. Before we started I was sure we would end up deciding to get rid of it, but I was wrong. We all enjoyed it. We didn’t have much time to play today (I think we only played three rounds) but we all would have been happy to keep going if we’d had the time. 

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. 

Scattergories

Another old familiar favorite, if maybe not quite as old or as familiar or as favorite as Clue. I guess if you have been living under a rock since 1988, you might not know that this is a game with 16 lists of 12 categories each, and a 20-sided die with one letter of the alphabet on each side (mercifully excluding Q, U, V, X, Y and Z). You play by selecting a list (we typically start with List 1), rolling the die to determine what letter to focus on for that round, starting the timer (which has three settings: short, medium and long . . . I totally recommend the long setting!), and then trying to come up with an example for each of the 12 categories on the list before time runs out. This might be easy, except for the fact that your examples must all start with the letter that was rolled on the die. And you're better off if you can come up with original answers (because you only get a point if no one else writes the same thing down), although most of the time if you manage to fill in the blank with anything at all, it's a relief.

Finn found this game difficult, but he still managed to have fun. Actually the adults found it a bit difficult too. Sam said it was a little like being back in school. I'm not sure I ever managed to fill in all 12 blanks. But we all enjoyed it, played 6 rounds (and had more fun with G and W than with O, E L and J) and would definitely play again. My favorites are always the two-pointers (where your answer has two words that start with the correct letter) like Greta Gerwig (category: TV star), William Wallace (category: historical figure), or Where the Wild Things Are (my example for Book) or World War Z (Sam's book). And how did the 12-year-old come up with Water (something in the sky) when the adults came up blank??

In a Pickle

Here's another word game with cards, but this one doesn't have a guessing element. It's more of an association game, specifically in terms of size. You have to link two nouns with one being able to "fit into" another. And you can go as literal or figurative, or as silly or serious, as you like. You could, of course, put a Pickle in a Jar. Or you could put a Brain in a Bucket. (ew!) And maybe Art is bigger than Asia. Or you could draw a Circle around . . . just about anything, so don't waste that Circle card. It's a winner.

I think the possibilities are a little too endless, and that may be this game's downfall. You can challenge the more tenuous links, but this puts you in greater danger of having your own links challenged later on. Or you can let your opponents' more tenuous links slide, and then get annoyed because you reach a point where you can claim to put almost anything into almost anything else, and that's just too silly. 

I actually voted to get rid of this game; not because I hated it, but because I didn't love it, and our Game Cabinet is so full that there's no way we could cram another game in there; if we don't get rid of any games, we'll never be able to get any new ones. But . . . Finn loved it! And we have decided that as long as anyone votes to keep it, we keep it. 

Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?

We all enjoyed playing this game. It's basically a bunch of trivia questions, divided into gradeschool categories: math, science, English, Social Studies, and even PE. They range from easy (first grade) to relatively difficult (fifth grade) and include some true/false and multiple choice questions. 

We all found out that none of us are smarter than a fifth grader. I mean, who would have guessed that the telephone was invented before the radio? (Yeah, we should have known.) Or that the place where Ponce de Leon thought he had discovered the fountain of youth was . . . Florida?? That's not the type of mythical thing one would usually associate with the Sunshine State. Although . . . maybe that is why all the retirees want to move there . . .

Verdict: this game is a keeper.

The Hollow Woods

Here’s a game we have had for several years, but we’d never actually played it before. I think we half-heartedly tried it once, but we must not have been feeling especially creative at the time, or we’d been expecting a more game-y game, or both. 

There are several ways to play this "storytelling card game" (note that the emphasis is on the "storytelling card" portion, not the "card game" portion) but none of them really involve much competition or any point-earning. The game consists of about two dozen large-format cards, decorated on one side with the same green vines and on the other side with dark, gothic artwork in the style of Edward Gorey. Each card is unique and is meant to be used as a prompt in telling a story.

They way we played was to all tell the same story, each taking turns with one card at a time. We didn't play every single card because our table isn't long enough. But it was more fun than I expected it to be, and Finn loved it. 

Verdict: Despite never having successfully played this game before, I was always loath to get rid of it because it's a very nice box and the cards are interesting to look at. Now that we've played (and Finn enjoyed it so much), I think we'll definitely keep it, although I don't imagine we'll play it very frequently.

Taboo

Yet another guessing game (are you sensing a theme here?) but one in which you have one word to describe, and a short list of related words that you must not say. I've had a blast playing this at parties, with one specific memory of a friend starting one round by saying, "It's this thing in Europe," and me immediately shouting out "the Eiffel tower!" and being right, to the amazement of me and my friend and everyone else playing the game (some of whom also accused us of cheating). 

Anyway . . . Finn did not really enjoy this game. He had a hard time with it, whether he was the one guessing or the one giving clues. Again, this game is better with a longer timer (3 minutes instead of 1), but even when we gave Finn 6 minutes it was still a bit difficult and frustrating for him.  

Verdict: I love this game, but we should probably let Finn get a few years older before we try to make him play it again.

Boggle

Bo

Boggle has been a favorite of mine since childhood. (Probably because I'm, ahem, pretty good at it.) I even love the loud noise it makes when you shake up the letter dice (although I simultaneously feel bad subjecting others to it).

The concept of the game: after randomly rearranging the letters on a 4x4 grid, you have three minutes to find as many words as you can. Words can go in any direction, even in crazy zig-zagging patterns, as long as you don't re-use any single die and you don't jump over any letters. If you find a word that no one else finds, you earn a point.

Verdict: Ah well. Finn didn't enjoy it very much, and Sam agreed with him, saying, "It's kind of like Bananagrams with no fun." Guess I'll just have to play by myself from now on . . .

Guess in 10 Animal Planet

This is basically like a 20 Questions type of animal guessing game, but instead of having to think of something for the others to guess, you have a game card that tells you an animal and some hints to give the other players. We changed the rules a bit so we could play a 3-sided game instead of having two teams. We played about half of the cards. Sam got a bit competitive!

Verdict: This is not really a game you can play over and over again (because eventually you'll know which animals are in the deck, along with the hints that go with them), but we should be able to play at least once more. And it might be fun game to play with the grandlings in a few years.