My favorite types of games are the ones that make me laugh uncontrollably – – you know the laugh, it’s almost embarrassing that you’re making such a racket for something not very funny if it were taken out of context. Here are a few games that I always try to get going when we have the adult kids together, but there are more that I like.
When I was a kid, my favorite games were Payday, Life and Trouble. Kind of ironic names, come to think of it. Trivial Pursuit was released when I was about 10, in 1981. I remember my father had bought the game to bring to our cousins’ house in Connecticut, and on the way there we talked about how basic it was that they’ve made a game out of random questions, trivia. Now, every bar around is hosting weekly trivia.
I’ve had a lot of fun over the years going to the occasional trivia night at Blueprint in Westminster or the Columbia Tavern in Leominster. I like it because it makes me laugh–which might be more the people around me than the actual games. Whenever we have a group at trivia, the knowledge-base is all over the place.
For instance, our occasional Blueprint group back in the day consisted of myself and my husband Jay, my daughter Erin who was +/- 15 at the time, my friend Nick who is a millennial, and then my friend Timea, who moved to the United States from Hungary during middle school. Any trivia questions that centered around a specific year could be easily dialed in to a recognizable decade–for me: did I have my drivers license yet? If yes, that would have been after 1986. More recent dates were based on how many kids I had or who I was pregnant with. Then, we would add Timea‘s layer of did this event happen when she lived in Hungary or Ashburnham/Westminster? Throw in Jay and Nick’s random sports, history and government, then Nick and Erin’s ability to come up with song titles and artists, and we would just crack up on our ability to sometimes get questions right based on our diverse age range and life experiences.
I don’t go to trivia often–maybe because it’s tough to coordinate everyone’s schedules, also because we’d get home and because I had three people in my family’s contribution to the group, we’d leave and I’d be like ‘that didn’t feel like it was worth $150’.
At home, we tend to play board games around holidays, because then we’ve got a large enough group of people for the games we like. Sometimes we keep a couple Scrabble boards on the dining room table for a quick pick up game during dinner. We also like Upwords, which is similar to Scrabble, but you can change other players’ words by adding tiles on top of their letters.
Upwords more info: BoardGameGeek
Buy it: Amazon |Target |Walmart
Taboo
We played my favorite game on Christmas. We had some brand new players, and this game is easy enough to pick up if you’ve never played before. It’s really funny, and clues and descriptions result in answers that vary wildly, depending on who your players are. This game is Taboo. The concept is you have two teams and the reader, which alternates through everyone. When it’s your team’s turn, your reader is looking at a card with a keyword at the top. This person needs to get her own team to guess the word, but there are four other words on the card that would make it super easy for them to guess – – and those words are forbidden (get it, Taboo?). The reader has someone from the other team sitting next to her with a buzzer, to call her out if she says a forbidden word.
One recent example: I was the reader, and the word was feathers. My grandfather, Bubba, was known to have such an odd collection of large quantities of random things. My clue, stated aloud to the family, was Bubba had a lot of these (because he did have a lot of feathers). The answers yelled out were arrowheads, sheds full of clutter, and crazy ideas. The answer was feathers. C’mon people. I had to quickly move to a different way to describe feathers, but of course I couldn’t use the word pillow or bird or tooth fairy or anything easy to get my point across so someone would guess feathers. Each time it’s your team’s turn, you’re also on a one minute timer, and the goal is to guess as many correct words as you can, so it’s very fast paced, sometimes loud, and always funny. If you walk into my dining room right now and ask me to grab a board game, it would most always be Taboo.
Taboo more info: BoardGameGeek
Buy it: Amazon |Target |Walmart
Pictionary
I’ve also always really liked Pictionary. Maybe it’s validating to me to see how artistic some of the kids are, where I am entirely deficient. You’ve probably heard of Pictionary, or played it. If you’re like our family, somewhere in the Pictionary game box are some classic drawings that just couldn’t be thrown away–like the time when grandpa was trying to draw the word pepperoni, and in his entire turn, couldn’t get past the proper perspective on the drawing on the pizza box. Poor guy took a lot of heat over the years for not starting by drawing the actual circle of pepperoni.
Pictionary more info: Mattel Shop
Buy it: Amazon |Target |Walmart
Telestrations
A few years ago, we got invited to a game night at my cousin Brian‘s house. A family we had just met brought a game called Telestrations, and that brought Pictionary to a whole new level. Imagine the game of telephone when you were a kid, where we all whisper something to the next guy, and then they pass it on, and then they pass it on, and the message at the end is very different from where it started. Add that to Pictionary and it’s hilarious. This game really makes me laugh.
Telestrations more info: The Op Games
Buy it: Amazon |Target |Walmart
Apples To Apples
I also like, but we haven’t played it forever, Apples To Apples – – for which there is also a children’s version. In this game, players are dealt several descriptive noun cards when it’s your turn to be the judge, you pick up a different color card and read the word on that card out loud. All the other players choose the best card from their selection that they think will get you, the judge, to choose their word. For instance, if the word the judge was looking for was delicious and let’s say I was the judge, someone would be more likely to fly a card over that said one week off than lobster, but if my daughter was the judge, and I had the word lobster as an option, I’d be sending my lobster card her way because that might get picked.
Apples To Apples more info: BoardGameGeek |Mattel Shop
Buy it: Amazon |Target |Walmart
Cards Against Humanity
An adult version that’s next level from Apple To Apples is Cards Against Humanity. It’s a terrible game, extremely inappropriate. However, I was at a client’s house recently, and she was decluttering her games and sent me home with Cards Against Humanity Family Edition. I put it in our game closet and forgot about it. Then my daughter in New Zealand told me that she got the Family Edition for her daughters, aged 7 and 9. We haven’t played yet, but she assures me it’s appropriate, and we will soon be having a video call where we have our cards in the U.S. and the girls have their cards in New Zealand.
Cards Against Humanity more info: Official Site
Buy it: Amazon |Target |Walmart
Here are some more games below, some of which I’ve tried, and others I’ll skip. If you want to know, for the record, what types of games I don’t like – – Risk. Risk is the worst. It is so boring. The kids have played Settlers of Catan, and I disappear from that room because I don’t want to be asked to participate. It’s funny how different everyone is as far as what they like and don’t like.
Now, knowing what you now do about the types of board games I like and have strong opinions against, what else do you recommend?
