We played a very competitive game of Quiddler after dinner last night. Quiddler is a word game but with playing cards. The first time I played it– at my mother’s insistence– I did not care for it, but last night was fun. Maybe because we had played so much Oh Hell on our cruise, rather than playing multiple games after completing the 3 cards, 4 cards…up to 10 sequence the games’ rules require, we instead kept going, from ten back down to 3. I had been in last place for almost the entire game, but I managed to pull ahead of my father during the final rounds. This did not sit well with my dad, who fails to recognize that games should be fun. He kept repeating, “I would have won that first game if we played according to the rules.”
We love playing games in our family. We love Scrabble, especially with a timer—Turbo Scrabble—and Justin always wins. We love Bananagrams. Well, everyone but my mom. She is not a fan. Her favorite is Rummikub. I think Rummikub could easily be called the family game. When we used to vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, the box was always out, and a game would start up whenever there were people not occupied with something else. It is similar here now, sometimes after dinner, more often when folks come for holidays or whatever. It’s too bad only four people at a time can play. (Technically that is also true of Scrabble but we often form teams.) Many of us play cribbage. Justin and I are particularly well-matched and one of the first times my children heard me swear was when Justin beat me by one peg and I yelled “GODDAMMIT!” They told total strangers in a Chinese restaurant about it the next night.
When my children were young, we had all the Cranium games. I remember a New Year’s Eve party where about ten adults played a Cranium game that involved challenges like drawing, sculpting, collecting objects around the house, and dissolving into hysterical laughter while my neighbor Mr. Smith looked on, having not a clue what we were doing but happy to be with us.
Taboo is another favorite, again often played in teams. The first time I ever played was with a new friend, the wife of a co-worker, who was the worst Taboo player ever. I still laugh at the memory of her utter inability to NOT say the first word on the list of banned words.
Mom wants us to buy a new game called Farkle. Has anyone heard of it? What other games do you enjoy?