Words

 Originally Written Between 2016-2017                                                          

You may recall that a couple of weeks ago, I talked about my inability to play cards – you know – 500, Bridge, Cribbage, and all those that involve strategic moves, adding numbers and teamwork.

 

Well, how about:

Boggle

Scattergories

Clue

Word on the Street

Apples to Apples

Taboo

Pictionary

Probe

 

Now, those are my kinds of games.  They all are games about WORDS – not numbers.  Strategy is involved and maybe a little bit of counting – but mostly, coming up with words.  I was going to place “Scrabble” on this list because it is a game of words.  And that’s how I play it.  Looking for the word among my letters.  I just want to form a real word.  Little did I know that even the smallest two-letter word may gather more points than a six-letter word – all because of where one would place the letters.   So, even though I like the challenge of coming up with a word, Scrabble does not make my “favorite game list” because of the need to count numbers.

 

I love “Clue.”  And “Boggle” – challenging games.  At least to me.  Balderdash contains several cards with real words nobody has heard of.  After one of those words has been read aloud, players try to come up with definitions that at least sound plausible.  Love that game!  Makes one think out of the box.  I like that. 

 

Have you ever played “Word on the Street?”  It’s actually quite educational in that it’s a board game that forces players to not only come up with words that fit a category, but makes them spell it correctly too.  In this day and age of technology such as Twitter that accepts the letter “U” for the word Y O U and the letter “R” for the word A R E, this is a good game for children and teens to learn to spell harder words.

 

Our daughter, Rebecca, and grandson, Dean – almost 13, visited us from Duluth this past weekend.  After spending Saturday afternoon at the TWINS game where they lost terribly, we decided to stay home for the evening and play some games.  We played “Cranium.”  This game involves having drawing skills – like Pictionary – along with vocabulary and spelling.  Also – knowing how to play charades sure helps along with a knowledge of a lot of miscellaneous data and facts.  No counting!  So, of course, I thought I would be good at this game.

 

Wrong!  I found I couldn’t draw.  Wait – maybe it was my teammate (Norm) just didn’t know how to interpret my artwork.  Yeah, that must be it.  Anyway, I was good at the spelling and word activities.  

 

One of the activities Norm had to do was “hum a particular popular song.”  So, he hummed.  Very nicely, I might add.  But, I didn’t have a clue as to the name of the song.  Rebecca and Dean didn’t either.  We finally said, “We give up,” and asked for the name of the song.  Norm said….. “I don’t know.  I’ve never heard of it!”  He was just humming whatever he wanted.  After that, we all went to bed.  I guess I can take “Cranium” off my list of favorite word games.