Have You Got Game?

JENN MCKINLAY: We recently had a cold snap here in AZ, and by cold I mean the highs were in the low fifties. Yes, yes, I know, this is nothing for you northern folks, why, it’s practically T-shirt weather. Whatever. Because we live in the land of sun, when we hit our third day straight of rain, we were perplexed. What do people do when they can’t be outside all day? I even work outside on a cushy lounge chair on the patio most of the time. We were boggled.

Speaking of boggle, it occurred to us that this was the perfect time to dust off the old board games. I mean you can Netflix stream yourself into a coma to pass the time, but every now and again it’s nice to connect with your people over haggling for rent, the correct spelling of a word, or some queen to rook trash talk, am I right? Of course, finding myself on the losing end of a chess match was not how I pictured my day going, but hey, at least there were snacks. 

So, upon review, here are my top three board games - the big daddy of them all -- Monopoly! Honestly, I knew I had reached a new level of maturity when going to jail (three squares and a bed!) was a relief from being shaken down by a hooligan for rent. Next, is Scrabble. I have a friend who vets potential boyfriends by their ability with a Scrabble board. If they can’t give her decent competition, they’re outta there! And lastly, chess. It’s a fave, primarily because it fascinated me forever as something only really smart people could play, so when the hooligans came along, I put them in chess club in elementary school so they could teach me. Our favorite to play  is a wizard chess set from Harry Potter, natch.

Of course, dusting off our old games like Sorry (should be called Sorry, Not Sorry), Rummikub, and Sequence brought back a million memories of times spent together playing, learning how to be gracious winners and losers, and some epic marathons that lasted for days. Curious, I had to look up what the most popular board games are. See: The 10 Most Popular Board Games and How They Made Gaming Better Spoiler alert: chess is number one. Also are board games even still a thing? They are. A new trend that’s happening is board game cafes like Snakes and Lattes in Toronto. See more: Board Games Are Getting Really, Really Popular and their popularity is expected to continue to surge through 2023. 

So, apparently the gloomy weather, turned us onto something. So, what about you, Reds? Do you like board games and, if so, what are your favorites?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I love board games, I am SO guilty of it!  We played Risk , endlessly, through my 20s at dinner parties. (We were wild and crazy, RISK and fondue and Tavola Red. :-) ) 

I also love TRIVIAL PURSUIT, and um, what’s it called? Something where you have to recognize songs and lyrics.  Also FACTS IN FIVE where you have a grid of five across and five down, and each player picks a topic like rivers, song titles, Italian foods, politicians, dead architects, or whatever and you write those down the side.  And then the moderator picks five letters of the alphabet that you write across the top of the grid. Then you have five minutes to get each box filled. (Does that make sense?) A dead architect that begins with W, for instance.  I also adore Scrabble, until I played with Jonathan-- but he is too good, so, sadly, we had an earthquake (how did it happen?) and that was the end of Scrabble. I am a terrible loser. 

Oh--my grandkids love Settlers of Kataan (is that what it is?) and some game about trains where you have to build train tracks. SO complicated, and they all seem to be about economics. They also taught me how to play Magic, which is INCREDIBLY hard, and I swear to you they are making up the roles as they go to fool Grammy.

LUCY BURDETTE: We also played Risk and Monopoly and Chutes and Ladders endlessly as kids. And how about Life? Loved that one too--and multi-person wild games of Pounce aka Solitaire with friends. Nowadays my favorites are Bananagrams and Boggle. Though like Hank, and I suspect most of you, I do prefer to win:).

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Monopoly! Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit, I love all of those. Gosh, Hank, I remember playing RISK in my twenties, it must have been a thing. My daughter and I both love board games but we have a hard time getting anyone else to play. And jigsaw puzzles--I even bought us one to do on Christmas, but of course we didn’t get to it. (Note for next year, I am really, really not going to spend the entire day standing up in the kitchen…)

Last year I pulled out our old backgammon board, thinking it would be fun to play, but I need a teacher!

HALLIE EPHRON:  I used to love board games - especially RISK, CAREERS, MONOPOLY, TRIVIAL PURSUIT. The truth? These days I will do just about anything (dishes, anyone?) to get out of playing a board game (though my daughter got us to play APPLES TO APPLES not too long ago and that was a lot of fun). I’m afraid my frame of reference has aged out of Trivial Pursuit. 

The games I still like don’t have boards. Charades! Bridge! Hearts! And anyone remember how to play I Doubt It?  Great for a tipsilated crowd.

RHYS BOWEN: I’ve just had the whole family here and we play endless games. Favorites among them are Taboo, Reverse Charades and Boggle. A new game this year was What’s on Your Mind? Everyone puts down a word association and if any match you get points. Grandson Sam and I were absolutely on the same wavelength. But my daughter bought a new game called Ridiculous Expositions. It was supposed to be mildly naughty but OMG it was DISGUSTING! Things you’d never want a teenager to hear. Needless to say it was not played again

Our standard is The Name Game. No board needed. Everyone writes down a famous person/character and we have to guess who wrote what. Always hilarious in my family when various teenagers come up with outlandish names.

All right, Readers, your turn! What's your go to board game?

On games we played...

HALLIE: When I was trying to finish writing NEVER TELL A LIE, I got totally stuck. I'd gotten my character locked in a windowless attic room and I could not for the life of me figure out a **believable** way of getting her out.

The answer came to me as I was driving and,for no particular reason, thinking about games I played as a kid. Candy Land--remember those amazing graphics of the gingerbread man and gumdrops? Clue, of course, with its real lead pipe in the days before toys were recalled for being toxic. Careers, a truly bizarre game where you pick a career based on how much money, fame, or happiness you want. (Turns out it was invented by a sociologist and one of its careers was "Uranium Prospecting".) And what about Go to the Head of the Class?

It was Chutes and Ladders that helped me get my character out of the attic, but I'm not telling whether it was a chute or a ladder that did it.

What were your favorite games?

RO: I remember the names of those games but don't remember playing them. Also Operation, Parcheesi, and Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots. I played a couple of card games, Royalty and Uno, but two board games stand out from my childhood.

The first is RISK. It was about global domination, kind of like Monopoly for those who thought Atlantic City (Monopoly) too limiting. I played with an older male cousin so that's probably why I thought it was cool. For some reason I always wanted to own/invade Kamchatka - or something like that. It was green..I think you could see it from Alaska.

The other game, of course, was and still is Scrabble. I am one of those annoying people who can be 200 points ahead and still agonize over the next word, and more importantly, ruin something for the next player. My husband only agrees to play a few times a year because it's too demoralizing.

I've always wanted to really know how to play mah jongg. In high school,friends and I played with somebody's mother's set. I even had my own cards (there's an annual card with the official mah jongg hands, as I recall.) But I haven't played in years. I bought a gorgeous set on Ebay a few years back and haven't used it once. So, I also bought these nifty bracelets made of vintage mah jongg tiles - I had a feeling that was going to be as close to the game as I was going to get. I just rented the movie Lust...Caution and there was a lot of mah jongg in it. (Also some pretty steamy sex, but that's another blog.)

JAN: At my house, with three older brothers, we always LOST the pieces to the board games. The only games that stayed intact were Trouble, the game where you get to send your opponent (and older brother) back to square one. That was probably my favorite. And Monopoly, which my father kept track of. Mostly, we played card games, especially during rained out vacations down the shore, and next door at my aunt's house. Crazy Eight, Rummy 500, gin Rummy. and some poker. It taught me to be a cagey competitor (hah!)

To this day, when I play cards, I like to have a glass of Coke over ice in a squat "rocks" glass. It reminds me of being a kid who felt grown up, getting to play cards with the big kids.

ROBERTA: RISK! that's what I was going to mention, too. My older sister always won, though she doesn't remember it that way. We also loved Clue, Parcheesi, Mousetrap, Monopoly, Candyland, Chutes...When on vacation at the Outer Banks in NC with my extended family, big groups of both adults and kids used to play Pounce. this involves everyone having her own deck of cards and playing solitaire with them, but all playing to the center of the table. So you were constantly scanning the cards in the center and try to bang yours down before someone else got to what you needed. It was so much fun. I'm certain the grown-ups weren't sipping on Coke in their rocks glasses:).

Recently, we have developed a family tradition of playing Boggle. In my stepfamily, as the kids got stronger and bigger, it was the only game I could win. Even that's beginning to give way:(. I had a lot of fun putting a Boggle game in ASKING FOR MURDER. Rebecca Butterman was a tad annoying to her guests, insisting on using every rule properly, and then keeping score when it was clear she was ahead. Something like your description of playing Scrabble, Ro. Remind to decline if you ask--or make sure we give you a big handicap to begin:)

HANK: Yes, RISK! That's where I learned about Irkutsk (and right, Ro, I think you can also see it from Alaska) and that Italy always loses. We also played Yahtzee. And I adored Go to the Head of the Class. I haven't thought about it for years--but wasn't it pretty much Trivial Pursuit (also fun) with desks? Mille Bornes? We were big on Charades, too, and I'll admit I still love to play it. Another good after-dinner game is Celebrity--do you guys know it?

We also used to make up games as kids, the main goal of which was so that my little sister Nancy would lose. My sister Nina and I would say--hey, Nanc, want to play "Hawaii?" And she, dupe, who wanted to be with the big kids, would say yes.

Then we'd get out the card and proceed to pretend to be playing a game. And then just make up random rules. "Oh, we forgot to say 8's are wild, but only if they're red. You lose again."

We also tormented her in Scrabble. We'd put down any old word-looking combination of letters, and then tell her it was Russian, and Russian words were fair. (She's a very happy and successful person now, don't worry.)
I do adore Scrabble. Or I should say, I used to. When I used to win. But my husband is killer at Scrabble, and it's no fun when I'm making perfectly good words, and then he puts some triple-score word with z and x in it, a doozy that also uses two lines, and works across and down. I yell "Earthquake, earthquake!" and so much for the board.

Roberta, you could probably make something of this...

HALLIE: What is it you ladies had for world domination? I had an Annie Oakley rifle... And I know CELEBRITY. Still love charades. And am a pissy loser at Scrabble, too.

Roberta, loved the way you used BOGGLE in "Asking for Murder" which I just read on the plane back from the lovely Surrey International Writers Conference in Vancouver.

Please, let us know--what are the games you loved to play?

Tagged #5

HANK: Okay, I'm "it" now. SO here are my seven things. And, then, to complete our assigned task--we get to tag seven more people to tell all. I have a lot more things I could tell. But I only get seven. Lucky you.

1. I'm probably a workaholic. I never take all the vacation days I'm allotted. I think about work--TV reporter and writing my books--much more than I think about anything else. Sometimes I'll realize I've just stopped talking in the middle of a conversation, because something gave me a good idea, and I'm suddenly in another world.

2. I'm ridiculously competitive and I like to win. Charades, Monopoly, Celebrity, Trivial Pursuit. I won't play Scrabble with my husband any more, because he beats me. I almost got all the badges in Girl Scouts, but I couldn't figure out a way to get "Beekeeper"without being around bees. It was all I could do to let my 4 and a half year old grandson beat me at Fish. And even then I thought Eli should learn about losing. I even like to take standardized tests.

3. I stink at sports. You name it, I stink at it. Tennis. Skiing. Softball. Swimming. Whatever other stuff people all do. I'm terrible. (This is where my competitive streak disappears.) Okay, I'm a pretty good softball pitcher, but I can't bat or catch. Not much call for such specialized playing.

4. I kind of do have, um, ESP. From time to time. Or whatever you call it. I saved someone's life when they tried to kill themselves. I was home. I sat up and thought, oh no. He's in trouble. I called. No answer. I beeped. No answer. I called a neighbor. They called the ambulance. He had taken an overdose of sleeping pills. Another time I had a boyfriend. I was home. He was at his house. I thought: oh no. I called him. No answer. I called his sister. He had been taken to the hospital with a ruptured appendix.
Less dramatic stuff happens all the time. But not always.

5. I can wake myself up at any time with some sort of internal alarm clock. I don't totally rely on it because you never know when this kind of thing is going to stop working. But if I tell myself: I'm going to sleep now, I want to wake up at 7:35 in the morning, I will. On the dot.

6. I'm kind of superstitious about some things. Walking under a ladder, why do it? Throwing spilled salt, why not? Rabbit rabbit, yup. Hat on bed? nope. I kind of like Friday the 13th though. Plus, I believe in life on other planets. And possibly time travel.

7. I don't go to sad movies. I haven't seen Steel Magnolias, or Beaches, or Terms of Endearment. I start crying instantly, within ten minutes, because it's so clear to me what the ending is destined to be. The first movie my husband and I saw together was Sling Blade. Which I hadn't known was touching and emotional.
Few minutes in, I started sniffling. It was obvious this movie was on the path to be devastating. My husband-to-be leaned over and said--"do you have a cold?"
I whispered, "No, I'm crying."
He was baffled. "It's not sad," he said.
"I know," I replied. "But it's going to be sad."


NOW! Nancy Pickard tagged us. So that means we can do it, too. Jungle Red writers tag:

The Femmes Fatales http://femmesfatales.typepad.com/
The Plot Monkeys http://plotmonkeys.com/
Poe's Deadly Daughters http://www.poesdeadlydaughters.blogspot.com/
Cathy Cairns http://catherinecairns.com/blog/
Robin Agnew http://heydeadguy.typepad.com/heydeadguy/

You guys are it. And lest you forget, here are the "rules."

1) Link to the person that tagged you, and post the rules on your blog.

2) Share 7 facts about yourself.

3) Tag 7 random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs.

4) Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

(Okay, I'll admit it. I was actually kind of fun.)

Did any of us surprise you?