This game has been easy to implement at the dinner table for a group of 5 people aged 12 to 84. We like to play a game at the table while eating. We have been playing The Metagame and Trophies for the past 2 months, which are both card games, but we've seen all the cards already and some of the answers are becoming redundant. I wasn't convinced of the trivia games out there, based on my family interests, so I took a gamble with this game. My parents are a lot older so it has to be a game that would be easy for them to play and also a game that they would not get frustrated by. I was worried that having the easels and markers at the table would be a hassle, and it is compared with the other card games, but it seems to be working out O.K. You might need to let go of any OCD tendencies if you want to play this at the dinner table and be O.K. with cards stained by spaghetti sauce. Compared with the other two mentioned games, the Metagame was way more funny, but my dad wouldn't put much effort into it. There is also the problem of voting for the best answer and there can be clear biases. The Trophies game is by far the easiest to implement. Just One, which is currently the #1 rated party game on BGG.com, is easily picked up after the first demo round. For set up, everyone is given an easel and marker. 13 cards are drawn from the box, then one person goes first as the guesser. The guesser displays the card on their easel so they can't see the answers and shows it to the group. Then the guesser picks a number randomly from 1-5 which corresponds to a number and word on the card. The rest of the group then comes up with just one word clues following some simple rules, then reveal simultaneously to everyone but the guesser. Illegal clues are put face down and the valid clues are revealed to the guesser who now has just one shot to guess the clue. Then the next player goes and so on until all 13 cards have been used. There's scoring on the back of the rulebook to see how you as a group performed. My mom will sometimes break the rules and will often say things out loud (like the answer) or will tell the guesser which clues are most helpful (usually her own), but the important thing is to have fun. There is one clue, however, that we get tripped over often and that's the "same family" rule: If two words are in the "same family" they are eliminated. The rulebook example is "prince" and "princess". On BGG, there was overall consensus that "allergic" and "allergy" (or some equivalents) were in the same family, but "spork" and "fork" or "spoon" were not, even though clearly spork is born from the marriage fork and spoon and physically is a mix between a spoon and a fork. On the other hand, according to the Oxford Advanced American Dictionary, Word Family is defined as "1. A group of related words that are formed from the same word a word family consisting of 'help,' 'helper,' and 'helpful' 2. a group of words with particular features in common 'Cat' and 'hat' are in the same word family." So, I am more convinced spork and fork and spoon are in the same family. This game is a little slower than the other games, because people sit write down their answer, but for me, I find that I have more time to do things since I can write my clue quickly and start loading the dishwasher or warming up cookies while others are still thinking. For us, sometimes the guesser says which clue that clinched the guess and that's sort of a "win" for that individual. There is a rule that says, "Mystery word written in a foreign language", which if you're skimming might be mistaken as you can't use foreign language words, and I had to clarify that rule. It has also been interesting to see the different types of clues given and and get a peek at how other minds think. We've gotten good laughs and at least for us, it has been easy to implement at the dinner table for 5 people aged 12 to 84 and I can recommend this game if you have large age ranges, people who are interested in light fun, and people who enjoy cooperative games.
