Balderdash is based on a parlor game called “The Dictionary Game” or “Fictionary” which was around long before big bangs, even bell-bottoms.  The premise is simple, choose a word from the dictionary that isn’t in anyone’s vocabulary and ask everyone to make up a definition.  Then one person reads all of the made up definitions as well as the real one.  Players then guess which one they think is the real definition.  In Balderdash, if someone votes for your made-up answer, you get a point.  If you guess the correct definition you get two points.  Three points are awarded to the reader if no one guesses the real answer OR to a player if their made up definition is really close to the real definition, but with words like “sniggle” (to catch eels by throwing bait into their hiding places) and “fackeltanz” (a torchlight parade), that never really happens.

In the past couple decades, Balderdash has been with multiple companies including Parker Brothers and Mattel, who currently has the license.  Over that time Balderdash went from being just words, to having an expansion called “Beyond Bladerdash” that included people’s names, movie titles, funny laws and initials/acronyms in addition to the weird words.  This apparently was a success, because the current game of Balderdash includes all the fun bits from “Beyond Bladerdash.” Personally, I’m glad because the initials/acronyms are my favorites.  And just FYI, N.P.P.A. does not stand for “Nudist Petunia Planters Alliance” it actually is the “National Pickle Packers Association” but both of them make me laugh!

Anyway, if you haven’t played Balderdash find someone who has it and force them to host a game night.  It’s best to play with 4 or more people and it does make you think – I’d almost say “be creative” — but don’t let this scare you, some of the stupidest answers are the funniest.  There was one about a tabby cat alliance that caused tears there was so much laughing last time I played.

Balderdash Stats:
~$25 at Amazon, Target, Toys”R”Us, and many more
4 to 6 (it says 2 or more, but it’s not great unless you have 4 and you can add more movers to play with 8.)
30-45 Minutes or more (but you can easily shorten the game – pick a new “finish” on the board)
Ages 12 and up

This review of Word on the Street is SERIOUSLY over due and it’s all because one of my favorite playtesters doesn’t like the game.  Why?  Because I always annihilate him when the two of us play.  Heh heh heh.  Seriously though, Word on the Street is a great game for word game geeks.  In fact, it just won a Mensa award this year!  (congrats!)

The game is essentially a “tug of war” with letters.  There are 17 consonant tiles placed in a line down the center of the board, which is the “median” of the street.  On a turn you flip a category card and have 30 seconds to think of a word within that category that includes consonant tiles still on the board.  (Vowels are freebies)  For each letter in your word, you move that consonant tile one space closer to your “curb.”  Once a tile is moved off the board it’s yours to keep.  The first team to collect eight tiles wins the game.  It’s really an easy concept to grasp after playing one round.  I even helped the wonderful folks at Out of the Box demo the game to a buyer during Toy Fair.

Also at Toy Fair got to have dinner with a bunch of brilliant inventors, including the inventor of Word on the Street, Jack Degnan.  He was nice enough to send me a photo of his prototype (always cool to see) and tell me how he came up with the game.  In his own words…

Word on the Street was a game idea I had about five years ago.  The original thought was for this to be a card game.  Players would turn over a category and try to use the letter-cards in their hand to try to spell a word that fit the category. It was a little tough and not quite as fun as I thought it would be…but I knew the concept had some potential.  About three years later I pulled it off the shelf and decided to make a board game out of it. The first version was pushing letters toward a finish line and then the idea of tug-of-war ACROSS the board rather than DOWN the board came to me. I wanted to call it Tug-of-Words, but the name was taken so I came up with the street idea. The rest is history.

In truth Jack’s just moonlighting as game inventor, his real job is working at a clinic for HIV research in San Diego.  So success couldn’t have come to a nicer guy.  And to sweeten the deal, this year Out of the Box has introduced a Junior version of the game.  It is a little bit smaller and includes vowels too.   I was a little worried about this at first — what happens when someone captures the E and the A?!  But it wasn’t really an issue (except when some snot played “FREEZER” – and this time it wasn’t me.)

Word on the Street Stats:
~$25 at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and Borders
2-10 Players
20-30 Minutes
Ages 12 and up

Word on the Street JUNIOR Stats:
~$20 at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble
2-8 Players
20-30 Minutes (we omitted the use of the timer for this version game – too much pressure on the young ones)
Ages 8 and up

When you have a hallway full of games there are often ones that you know you like but they just never get pulled out and played.  I really have no idea why this happens but I think it’s like certain movies.  You love them but you need to be in the right mood to watch them.  And then when you finally are in that mood you’re like I LOVE THIS MOVIE!  Well, that recently happened with TriBond.  We played a little bit at the bar during the Toy and Game Inventor’s Expo (TAGIE) and it put me in the mood to pull out the TriBond box and make an evening of it.  Who doesn’t like trying to find out how three items or images are related? It’s a great mental workout.

TriBond has been out for quite a while; in fact it was invented by college buddies Dave Yearick, Ed Muccini and Tim Walsh (inventor of BLURT!) more than two decades ago.  In 1983 they decided to invent a game after they saw the success of Trivial Pursuit, but it wasn’t until 1989 that Ed came up with the idea of a “Threezer” riddle.  Could they make a game based on the question “what do these three have in common?”  They could and they would.  Within weeks they created a prototype, named it TriBond and started a company called Big Fun a Go Go, Inc.

Now I wish I could say that it was an easy ride to success from there, but it rarely is for people starting up in the game industry.  For TriBond to become a success took a bit of time and a ton of effort.  In 1990, after publishing 48 copies of TriBond Dave, Ed and Tim showed it at New York Toy Fair and by the end of the show they had only sold 30 games.  Obviously, not the success they were looking for.  Stunned that their AMAZING game got so few orders they knew they had to do something to promote it.  So they entered TriBond into every game competition they could find and lo and behold – it won some of them!  Mensa chose it as “One of the top three new board games for 1990” and “One of the top five best new mind games for 1990.”  Slowly they got new orders, reorders and a couple more awards but they still weren’t making any money – in fact they were deeply in debt to a bunch of investors including Ed’s dad.  But in 1992 everything changed.  They got Patch to license the product and Tim joined the company as their Marketing Director to help them promote the game.  By 1993, you could find TriBond in mass-market stores everywhere and they sold almost 150,000 games before December 1 — a huge increase from less than 15,000 the year before.  Since then, TriBond has been translated into 9 languages, sold in 14 countries and in 2000 it was inducted into the Games Magazine Hall of Fame.

Fast forward to 2010, which is right around the corner.  TriBond will be celebrating its 20th anniversary.  Very impressive and congrats to Dave, Ed and Tim!

TriBond is great for large groups and can be played in teams.  I also like snagging the box of questions and taking it with me on long car rides and we play until our brains hurt!

TriBond Stats:
~$25 and up at Amazon.com
2 or More Players (large groups play in teams)
45-60 Minutes (I know this is a LONG game for me to be recommending but you can always figure out ways to shorten the game or just play with the cards – still fun!)
Ages 12 and up

You don’t really need to have a huge vocabulary to win – you just need to be quick.  You get 1 point for 3-4 letter words and more for longer words.  So if you come up with zillion 3-letter words, you can beat the person who found only a couple of crazy long ones.  And I must admit, my favorite part (besides winning) is when you get to the end of the round it’s really satisfying to see how many great words you have that no one else found.

I like Boggle so much that in the past I’ve been known to have paper, pencils and a mini dictionary crammed into the Boggle box so I could take it with me on trips.  But the bad thing was, the old Boggle game was designed so if you put the clear plastic cover on top of the dice tray, it wouldn’t fit in the box.  Annoying right?  Then Hasbro fixed that problem by giving the lid a new odd shape, but the dice didn’t shake as well in that one (and it felt kind of cheap) so I didn’t even bother purchasing it.  Well now they’ve completely redesigned the dice holder and it’s a very cool travel-friendly solution.  You twist it to shake the dice, then twist back to lock them in place.  So now, with the absence of a removable lid, you don’t have to worry about losing one of the dice.  And then to make it an all-in-one game, it’s got a timer built in.  Now all you have to do is hunt down some pencils and paper and you’re ready to roll!

Boggle’s been around since 1972 although it failed and was relaunched in 1976 after some revisions – including the addition of a shaker.  It was invented by Alan Turoff and as a fun bit of trivia the longest words that can be made are 17 letters long because the Q and U are on the same tile.  They are: inconsequentially, quadricentennials, and sesquicentennials.  Personally, I’ve never been able to get any of them.

Boggle Stats:
~ $15 at Wal-Mart, Target, Toys ‘R Us and pretty much everywhere that sells games
2 or More Players
~5 Minutes per round (including scoring) so it’s up to you
Ages 8 and up

Earlier this month I was at Richard Gottlieb’s “Future of the Industry” conference and someone brought up the issue of packaging.  Given that “green” is a trend; the absence of throwaway packaging is definitely an a-peel-ing part of Bananagrams.  (Couldn’t resist a good pun!)  While this game feels familiar to other crossword games like Pick Two, we all agreed that the adorable zippered banana sack and the hanging merchandiser helped make this item a standout.

The game itself?  I think it’s great!  (FYI – I really like quick word games.)  The only real negative is that it’s not heavy on the player interaction because you’re working on your own mini-crossword while everyone else is working on theirs.  The other players essentially set the pace of the game.  When they need a new piece, you have to draw one too.  If you need a piece, they select one as well and this continues until all the pieces are gone.

Keeping up is key in this game.  You also need to be flexible; quickly morphing your words to include an unfortunate letter tile is essential.  It’s not easy to squeeze an X or Z into an existing crossword but the faster you can, the less likely you will fall behind.  It’s also advantageous to have a couple open spots to create quick short words like “it” and “am” towards the end of the game.

Bananagrams was first introduced at London Toy Fair in 2006 and has swiftly become a big success.  It’s hard to ignore their booth at toy shows because it is filled with tons of fabric bananas so you just have to stop to find out what’s going on!  And apparently the deluge of bananas has worked because Bananagrams is now stocked in Target, Barnes and Noble and a wide variety of retailers.  So maybe the next time you stop at the store you’ll pick up some bananas – from the game aisle.

Bananagrams Stats:
~$15 at Target, Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, local Mom & Pop stores
2- Players
2-5 Minutes
Ages 5 and up

One thing that is absolutely essential for a successful game-night offering is easy to communicate directions and it took about a minute to explain how to play BLURT! before we dove in.  The premise is so easy – in fact, it almost seems too easy.  A player reads a definition and the first person to guess the word moves forward a certain number of spaces.  Well, even with quick definitions like “a person living in total solitude by choice” there was a flood of answers – right and wrong – all within a half second of each other.  (The correct answer is “hermit.”)   The quick, all-play nature of the game really went over well and I can only imagine it plays just as nicely with a group of kids and teens.  BLURT! includes directions for a more advanced play but also words for junior players ages 7-9.

Getting back to the inventor for a minute, Tim has been in the game industry for almost twenty years and you may know one of his previous hits, TriBond (love this puzzle game; it provides hours of good brain food.)  And a new Will Shortz edition of TriBond is out this fall.  He also is the author of Timeless Toys and WHAM-O Super·Book, which was released last year.  I’m looking forward to Tim’s upcoming documentary about the inventors and legends that made the toy industry what it is today.  It should provide a nice window into the very secretive “inventor community.”  And then of course, BLURT!  This is the 15th anniversary of the game that, funny enough, he invented with his girlfriend (now wife), a children’s dictionary and a classroom full of third graders.  Just goes to prove, you never know when great ideas will roll your way.

BLURT! stats:

• ~$20-25 at Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com
• 3-12 players (really, the more the merrier)
• ~15-20 min. (depending on the number of players)
• Ages 7 and up

You know what’s great about being in the game industry?  Free games.

Of course, there are a zillion other reasons I could have given but free games are definitely a perk.  As with anything free you’re stuck with what you get and sometimes I get games I already have but more often it’s a game I don’t own so it requires some further investigation.

Recently, I got really lucky and a couple of free games came my way (this will be a 2 part entry).  One was a fun party game from Buffalo Games called Last Word, which is a free-for-all category game.  You get a letter and a category, like “Cartoon Characters,” and you and your opponents yell out answers that start with the given letter — “Spiderman” “Sideshow Bob”  “Stimpy” “Samurai Jack” — until the timer buzzes and the last player to say something wins the round.  What makes it really exciting is the timer is random so not only do you have to come up with a lot of answers, you also have to be strategic about WHEN you yell them out.  You don’t want to run out of cartoon characters too early but if you wait to long, you’re outta luck!  Simple, great game that I enjoy playing with a group.  And a great game to play with a variety of ages.

Last Word stats:

• ~$20 at Target, Barnes and Noble, online retailers
• 2-8 players (but I say at least 3 players to make it fun, 4+ for best outcome)
• ~30 minutes
• Ages 10 and up

Typically, all it takes to get a game lover interested in a new game is a glowing review from another game junkie – that’s it, they’re sold!  Earlier this year, I raved about Apples to Apples to my sister so she bought a copy and when it came time for her to buy a gift for my party game-loving aunt, she bought her a copy too.  Normally, I would expect excitement since this game was coming to her so highly recommended, but she didn’t seem excited.  Now, maybe it was the young sounding name or the bright red box that she didn’t immediately embrace, but we assured her it was a great game and awaited her review.

I love games and recommend a lot of games to friends and family, but it’s not like I’ve never met a game I didn’t like.  Sadly, I’ve come across far too many that I found painfully dull.  I give a pretty fair shake to any game that crosses my path; ones with weird names, dry themes, strange artwork – it’s all out there, but it’s the essence of the game that counts.  I have to WANT to play it – and once I’ve finished, I have to want to play it again.  And in that area, Apples to Apples gets very high marks.

So a couple months after Apples to Apples traveled from the Chicago birthday party back to my aunt’s home in Madison, I received a glowing review of the game in my inbox.  While I wondered why it had taken so long for her to play it, it was apparent it had immediately gained an important position on her game shelf.

For an adult with a circle of friends who love party games, I was astonished to hear that no one in the group had ever played it before.  For just about $25, it really is a party in a box – and a heavy box at that since the game is made up of pounds and pounds of cards.  Most of the cards are random words ranging from “Sunday Drivers” to “Angry Hornets” to “Televangelists” to “Loan Sharks” but a smaller number of cards are adjectives like “Industrious” and “Explosive.”

The game is simple: one player reads an adjective card like “Cuddly” and then players toss a word card from their hand that best fits the description into a pile.  Cards like “Napoleon Bonaparte,” “Meat Cleavers,” “Leeches” and “Firefighters” will be lobbed into the pile and then it’s up to the adjective reader to determine which card best fits the round’s adjective.  Personally, I don’t find meat cleavers cuddly at all, I wouldn’t want to cuddle with the diminutive military leader Napoleon Bonaparte and while leeches do cuddle up to you, my vote is still for firefighters since I’m dating one.

Part of the humor comes from the limited number of cards in your hand.  Because you’re only allowed five word cards at a time, you may have to decide whether to play “James Bond,” “Root Beer Floats” or “Stonehenge” for the adjective card “Legendary.”  Overall, it ends up being a hilarious mish mash of very literal to extremely funny interpretations of the adjective.  In the end, the winner is the player who has their word cards chosen the most times.

Forget strategy, calculating odds or an enormous lexicon, this game is easy for anyone to play – even those “non-game” friends.   And believe it or not, this game has been on the market long enough to sell over a million copies and proving that great games never die, Mattel just purchased it from the company that made it what it is today, Out of the Box games.  So this gem of a game will be on all mass market shelves for hopefully years to come, but definitely through this next holiday season.

And for all of you who want to know what took my aunt so long to play it – I asked – she said she was terrified by the number of cards.  Apparently, there was a bit of mental scarring after a five hour Trivial Pursuit marathon she experience just before she received the game.  Just goes to show you should never judge a game by its piece count!

Apples to Apples stats:

• ~$25 at any major retailer
• 4-10 players
• ~20-35 min. (depending on the number of players)
• Ages 12 and up (I say some smart 10 year olds can play too)