They had the adult version of Apples to Apples on sale at Target, so we bought it! It is a blast! The kids have been begging to play again, and even my husband joined. That's unusual because he won't normally play games. I ended up just sorting out the celebrities and such that my kids wouldn't know. I had no idea it would be such a good vocabulary game! We also pulled some games out of storage....Cadoo and Up Words (one of my favorites as a kid). Oh, and I found UP for Grabs and Trivial Pursuit Junior at the SA the other day. Haven't played any of them yet....been too busy playing Apples to Apples.
Faythe doesn't do well with Apples to Apples at all, because she's an "socialized homeschool kid". She doesn't know what half of the phrases are, especially if they're from TV! Rachael does just fine, but Faythe tends to live in her own little world!
Favorite Games We love building with Wedgits. Playing Yahtzee, Boggle, Scrabble Jr, Card games, Risk, Monopoly, Spot It, The Ladybug Game, Sorry, Chess, Checkers, Hangman, Blockus (if you don't lose any pieces) etc.
Faves in our house: Monopoly Monopoly Deal (a card version, but requires a completely different strategy to win) Farkel Party Settlers of Catan Carcassone (new favorite) Uno (ALWAYS) DH & I used to play Sequence a lot before the children were born...the children now play it (pretty obviously) only to make me happy...not really a lot of fun in that!
I haven't seen anyone mention Quelf. It's a great off the wall game where everyone gets to be funny, whether they want to be or not.
We have Catch Phrase and Apples to Apples, too. We used to play Boggle quick a bit, and we have a Sherlock Holmes game (I forget what it's called). Among the older ones in the family, we enjoy Diplomacy - except that it takes forever to play. There's no luck, and it's all about negotiating deals. It's quite a valuable teacher, for example, of the benefits of focus and honesty.
This reminds me of something. When I worked years ago in central London, we hired this really smart summer intern from Cambridge University. During lunch every day, the two of us would play Othello. Every day, he would beat me hands down, sometimes as badly as 64-0. Only at the end of his internship did he tell me that he was the world's number 2 player - and the first European in recent years to play in the world championship final (almost always, it was the American versus the Japanese). Today, he's a professor of mathematics and fellow at one of the Cambridge colleges.
Oh shoot, I should have bought that Othello game I saw at the church sale! I bought a nice pile of games yesterday, but ended up passing on Othello because I didn't notice I had put two of the same game in my pile and couldn't carry anything else (same game, in two different style boxes....rats). I picked up some, but don't remember all the names--Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader and an older Connect Four.
My son's favorites: 1. Candy Land. 2. Connect Four. 3. Five Crowns. 4. Phase 10. 5. Apples to Apples.
