FitzIt is something like Scrabble, only instead of letters you’re playing with ideas. On the other hand, it’s nothing like Scrabble at all, because the winner isn’t the one with the biggest vocabulary, but rather with: a) the most imagination, b) the best ability to convince everyone else of the unquestionable logic of oft-absurd assertions, and c) a modicum of sheer luck.

There are cards. Many, many cards. Two hundred sixty-five two-inch, round-cornered, nicely finished, fun-to-hold square cards, each describing an attribute that can be more or less reasonably attributed to something.

I select, at random:

“comes in an odd numbers”

“fits in a car trunk”

“usually holds other things”

The task is to think of something that all of these things would describe. One might say, for example, “a shopping bag.” And reasonable others would have to admit that a shopping bag does in truth come in odd numbers (e.g. one), fit in a car trunk, and usually holds other things. Of course, if you had more cards (and you, in fact, you have the prescribed five), you would be sorely tempted to use as many more of them as you could. “Hmm,” you opine, “could a shopping bag be, as this other card describes, ‘used to build something’?” Probably not. More than likely, should you make such a claim, you would be voted down, and you would lose your turn. Is there anything else, then, that comes in odd numbers, fits in a car trunk, usually holds other things and is used to build something?” How about a bag of nails? Perfect, no? Now, if only a bag of nails were “often considered romantic.”

Of course, unless you play first, you have to add your cards to cards already played, crossword-like. And your goal is to play all your cards. And, though you have five cards in your hand, you actually have a stock of 15 with which to dispense.

And then there are the strategically pleasing exigencies. For example, should you be able to play four of your cards, you may give away your remaining card to any of your opponents. And in the event that you are so lucky, and so linguistically well-endowed that you manage to employ all five cards, you may give two of the cards from your stock to the unlucky, but deserving player of your choice. And, potentially even more profoundly satisfying, if you add a number of your cards to an existing row or column of four or more cards, you get to give away an equal number of cards, much to your advantage, and equally as much to the disadvantage of your preferred victim. Keeping in mind, of course, that the more cards you hope to use, the more arduous the feat of reasoning required to make sense of them all.

And then there’s the aesthetic, but unscored delight that comes from proving yourself so extremely clever that one of the cards in the row you’ve created connects to a column of other cards in crossword-like manner, and you are able to produce an acceptable definition for both.

Cleverness, in sum, is what it’s all about –  cleverness and convincingness –  and luck, and playing with people who see reason in being reasonable, and have a well-established sense of humor.

FitzIt, they claim, is a game for two or more players. The “and more” part, I believe, is probably not more than, what, 28, figuring 7 players per team. All in all, a party game. And even if only two people are playing, a party game of major fun proportions.

FitzIt was designed by Jack Degnan and is published by Gamewright.

“Brevity is the soul of wit.” Shakespeare (through Polonius in Hamlet Act II, Scene 2)

“Eschew surplusage.” Mark Twain (“The Literary Offenses of Fennimore Cooper”)

“Just spit it out!!” Anyone who has ever played Tasty Minstrel’s brain wracking party game Train of Thought.

Like a lot of party games, Train of Thought puts one heroic player on a quest to squeeze the magic word from the lips of the other players. In most such games each player discovers, when it is his or her turn to accomplish this task, that all the other players were gifted with fewer brain cells than the universe bestowed upon zooplankton let alone higher mammals. Can’t they SEE what I’m doing? How hard can it be to guess this word?

Train of Thought gleefully flips the script around so that it is the player who feels as if they are a couple of IQ points short of stupid as they try to give hints that may be only three words long. There are a lot of laughs to be had due to this limitation, but practice and patience rewires the brain and soon enough, everyone starts to feel almost telepathic.

There are three main components to Train of Thought. 200 Station Cards contain the word clues (6 per card). A 6 sided die. A 120 second timer. Each player has a turn as the Conductor in which they try to get the other players to guess specific words in 120 seconds. A correct guess scores a point for the guesser and the Conductor.

The Conductor draws a Station Card and rolls the die to determine which word will be the starting word. All players see the starting word. When the timer starts, the Conductor draws another Station Card and finds the word with the same die number as the starting word. This is the target word. The Conductor provides a THREE WORD clue that contains the starting word. All other players shout out one word—and ONLY one word—as an answer. If no one guesses correctly, the Conductor must make another THREE WORD CLUE that includes one of the words shouted out by the other players. This continues until the correct word is guessed. The Conductor draws another card and now has a new destination word.

Especially in early games, it is easy to get flustered by the three word limitation. How can you possible get someone to guess “chimpanzee” when one of your three words must be “pudding”? This is a source of great frustration and humor. When you say “This eats pudding” the other players will naturally say things like “children” and “grandpa” and “ants” which are all wrong. BUT it lets you now say “Children sized ape” which might get you a bit closer.

In my observation of the game I learned two helpful strategies. One: don’t worry about wrong answers. If anything, think about getting the others to guess words that will help you get closer to your goal. Two: don’t even worry about making sense. It is perfectly legal to say “Pudding Jane Goodall” with the hope that someone will blurt out “chimpanzee” even though there is no connection to “pudding.” You have three words, and if two of them will get your answer out of another player then you get a point and you also get to seem like the Amazing Kreskin.

Tasty Minstrel Games has a great party game here and it looks great. The instructions are clear with plenty of examples. Art is catchy and the game play is lively. They are a relatively new company but have an impressive stable of games that will appeal to a wide variety of gamers. Check ‘em out. In three words: Major Fun likey…

For 3 – 7 players, ages 10+

Train of thought game design by Jay Cormier and Sen-Foong Lim. © 2011 by Tasty Minstrel Games.

There is often a wide chasm that separates the digital world of video games and the analog world of the table-top game. Sometimes this is facilitated by a generational difference, sometimes by the clash of personalities between traditionalists and early-adopters. There are also some very real differences between the gaming experiences—fundamental differences that keep good games from crossing over. Even at their fastest, board games tend to be slower and more deliberative than their electronic counterparts. And when table-top games are built for speed, they generally require the players to physically manipulate objects—a mechanic that is often problematic for video games.

Asmodee’s takes something of a hybrid approach with their grabby, slappy, trippy card game Jungle Speed. It is not a remake of an existing video game, but it successfully captures the frantic action (and bug-eyed rabbit characters) of a series of games for the Xbox Kinect: Ubisoft’s Rabbids.

Jungle Speed Ravin Rabbids is essentially a fast-paced matching game. Cards are evenly dealt to all the players. Extras go into a pile (called “the pot”). Players turn over cards and if a match occurs, the two players with the match try to grab the “totem” (a soft plastic tube that stands on one end in the middle of the table). The loser takes the winner’s face-up discards and puts them at the bottom of his or her pile. In this manner, winners get rid of cards and losers get more cards. The game ends when one player is out of cards.

Special cards complicate things (naturally!!) If the “rabbid hunter” card appears then all players try to grab the totem. If the “BWWWWAAAAH” card appears then all players must put bunny ears behind the player to the left and laugh maniacally. There are others but the effect is the same: players never know if they are going to be in a duel with one of the other players or ALL of the other players.

The cards for matching have some small differences which make mistakes maddeningly common. And mistakes are costly. If you grab the totem at the wrong time you get ALL the face-up cards from ALL the players. The game also comes with t little Rabbid figurine that sits on top of the totem. Whenever someone grabs the totem, the figuring falls off. The first person to grab the figurine can get rid of one card.

Although the Rabbids are not the first to move from the video world to the wider world of popular culture (Pac Man Fever anyone?) they do bring with them a wild, hilarious, and Major Fun game that will have you swatting and cursing at your friends around a cozy table. Much like you would if you were playing in front of a Kinect.

For 2 – 10 players, ages 8+

Jungle Speed created by Thomas Vuarchex and Pierric Yakovenko. Published by Asmodee. © 2011 by Ubisoft Entertainment.

It’s always good news when we find another Keeper. And Bug Out  is very good news, in deed.

This simple matching game turns out to be remarkably flexible – suitable for kids as young as pre-school age, for families and even for a party full of grown-ups.

You get two decks, each with 36 cards. One deck is round. The other square. The round Bug cards are two-sided, each side showing the same bug. The square Leaf cards are also two-sided, but only one side shows the bug. In the beginning of the game, you put all the Bug cards out and distribute all the Leaf cards equally between players. Then everybody races through their Leaf cards, looking for the matching Bug card, slapping it down, and on to the next, and on, racing to be the first player to run out of Leaf cards.

Now here’s the thing. Sure, you can play it on a table. And sure, you can have everyone sitting down. Or you can have everyone standing up. Or you can play it on the floor, with people standing up or sitting down. Since the Bug cards have the same bug on both sides, you can just drop them anywhere and they’ll be right-side-up. And you don’t have to keep all the Bug cards together. There’s a variation called Big Bug Out that tells you to play with the cards spread out on the floor, but you might as well plant them all around the room and down the hall and into the other room so that people wind up running around and amok, generally screaming.

And each way you play, on the table or on the floor or in the whole house or outside or in school is different.

And the game is strong enough and simple enough that you can change the rules, if you want, and play in teams so that people with limited abilities or very different skill sets can help each other win, or all play in one big team and everybody can help everybody beat the record for how long it takes to get all the bugs cozily covered by their matching Leaf cards. Or a relay race maybe? Or if you’re playing with the back-bending-challenged, you could arrange the Leaf cards on the floor and have them drop the Bug Cards onto them (easier, because the Bug Cards are the same on both sides).  Or what about giving some players Leaf cards and others Bug cards and have them try to find each other? Or take one Bug Card or Leaf Card out of play and see if you can figure out which one is missing.

You get the picture? Flexibility. Adaptability. Variability. Fun for everyone, anywhere, again and again.

And it comes in a travel case, too!

Ever hear the expression “snake oil salesman?” Ever think about what it’d be like to be that guy, driving through the untamed wilds of the West with a wagon load of magic elixer chock-full of medical marvels of pleantifully purported properties?

You know how, in your heart of hearts, you always thought it might be fun to be that guy, pitching dubious delights to the half-believing  - especially if you were the one who made it out of town without getting both tarred and feathered?

Well, step right up and let me tell you about Snake Oil, the party game that’s sure to cure the direst of doldrums. Just look at this box full of colorful cards – 285 of them, just counting the Word Cards, and another 72 if you add the Customer Cards.

The Colorful and Clever Customer Cards? That’s how you find out the kind of person to whom you are making your pitch: a pirate, maybe, or a sports fan, or maybe a dumpster diver or dumped lover. The Word Cards? The only thing you get to figure out exactly what you’re pitching.

Six word cards for each player. You say you got: wig, whistle, lace, closet, safety and paint? Go ahead. Choose any two. You say the customer on the Customer Card is a sports fan? You say for some reason, not perfectly clear to you at the moment, you pick “whistle” and “wig?” And it’s your turn? And you have 30 seconds to explain why every sport fan in the world, and especially the customer in question, needs a wig whistle? Hey, what can possible be more fun, more practical, more exciting than a wig whistle? Wear it. Blow it. Want it? You know it!

Everybody gets a turn playing the customer. After a sale is made, that player wins a Customer Card. Everybody (except the last customer who didn’t get to sell anything) then takes two more Word Cards, and someone else gets to play Customer. After everyone has had a chance to play Customer, the salesperson who makes the most sales wins.

Snake Oil is crazy fun. It’s fun to play the salesperson, enthusing your little heart out pitching a truly absurd product to a whimsical, and often genuinely silly customer. The intensely purposeless creativity, the sheer passion of the pitch, the remarkably consumer-like arbitrariness of the customer. Hilarious fun of major proportions.

The manufacturer recommends Snake Oil for 4-9 players, age 13 and over. Snake Oil was created by Jeff Ochs, design by the design company, available from S-s-nakeoil.

As you indubitably recall, Say Anything received not only the Major Fun award, but the extra special, invaluably honorific Major Fun Keeper award.

Now that Say Anything is available in its long-awaited Family Edition, one would naturally wonder if it could possibly be as award-worthy as the original. Does the new collection of family-appropriate question cards make it not only more child-appropriate (eight and up) but equally as adult-alluring?

After exhaustive Tasting (exhausting also – mostly from laughter), we are pleased to announce that it is our very considered opinion that Say Anything Family Edition is in every way as much of a Keeper as the original version. We were especially amused to discover that adults could play the family edition, and, with little prompting, interpret these carefully crafted child-appropriate questions with as salacious of insinuations as the most adult-classified adult or even teen-ager.

Major Fun, indeed, for kids, families, adults, around the dinner table, at a party, wherever fun is welcome.

Rhino Hero is a kids’ game, unless they allow their parents to play. And then, when the kids are asleep, it’s party time.

It’s a direct descendant of playing house of cards. But it’s a game instead of an exercise in masochism. And an innovatively fun game it is.

Of the 59 cards, 31 of them are “roof cards” and 28 are wall cards. The wall cards are scored down the middle so they can fold. The cards are much thicker than playing cards, which you might consider innovation number one. The folding wall card, which, as you might expect, stands upright much more easily than a standard playing card, and is far easier to build on top of, is innovation number two – a much more significant innovation, especially in the eyes and hands of younger players. The wall cards are also illustrated, so that one side looks like the outside of a house, and the other, the inside. You could consider this innovation number three, as it adds a constructive fantasy element which playing cards lack. But it doesn’t actually affect the playing of the game.

The Roof Cards are most definitely significant, innovation-wise and game-play-wise. Hence, we shall consider them innovation number three and four. Number three because on every roof card is an outline determining where the wall cards are to be placed – there may be only one wall card in the middle, or two wall cards in a surprising variety of positions. Clearly, roof cards that call for only one wall card result in a far less stable construction and hence more tension-filled game. The fourth innovation comes from the foil-embossed symbols on each of the roof cards – symbols which add truly gamish mayhem, resulting in a) direction of play being reversed, or b) the next player skipping a turn, or c) the next player drawing a new roof card, or d) having to use two roof cards on the same turn, or e) or having to take the small wooden Rhino of purportedly super significance from wherever it is, and place it on that card, without, of course, knocking down any of the surrounding or supporting cards.

In the beginning of the game, each player is dealt a hand of roof cards. The first player to get rid of all her roof cards wins. This card-game-like aspect is what you might easily consider the fifth innovation in this innovatively fun game.

The overall design is so effective that you can disregard the rules entirely and still have a grand old time, either by yourself, or cooperatively with your friends and family. Or, you can follow the rules, and have an even grander time, filled with tension, surprises, laughter, and much hilariously sudden toppling.

Rhino Heroe is for 1 to 5 players, as young as five and for older folk of steady hand. A round takes maybe 15 minutes. Cleverly designed by Steven Strumpf and Scott Frisco, with fanciful art by Thies Schwarz. From Haba, available in the US from Maukilo. Not just fun, mind you, but Major Fun.

One of the most entertaining games I played with my girls when they were very young was Statue. I would sit absolutely still and they would move my arms and legs and face into whatever position they desired. Sometimes we would name some pose that they would have to make: guy-on-bicycle, stinky-socks, spider-in-your-hair.

You Robot (available from Asmodee) has that similar vibe. A partner game, You Robot requires that one partner act like a mindless robot and the other, the teacher, must get the robot to assume a specific pose. The trick? No talking and no touching.

A posture card is drawn and all the teachers gather around to look at it. The robot partners sit on chairs, eyes forward, and hands on their laps. The teachers then proceed to instruct their robots using 6 Remote Control cards. Two cards depict the robot’s body. The teacher can use these cards to show the robot what body part to move. Two cards have arrows that can be used to indicate how the robot should move the body part. The last two cards either tell the robot to pick up something in its vicinity or to think for a second (the sort of oh-come-on-it’s-so-obvious message that always occur in games like these).

In many ways, You Robot is like a variation of Charades that does not allow acting.

Fortunately, it does allow laughing. Which makes the tasks that much more difficult. And the teachers’ job is TOUGH. It is tough to keep from talking. It’s tough to just use the Remote Cards. It’s tough to keep from gesturing. It’s tough to refrain from reaching out to strangle your robot when it doesn’t understand the ever-so-obvious gesture you are trying to communicate.

Asimov needed a fourth rule of robotics: A robot will only make small, careful movements (instead of wild flailing movements) or risk injury at the hands of the human teacher.

The pairs race to see who can strike the pose first. Teacher and robot change for the next round and the process starts over. First pair to win 5 poses wins.

After the first few rounds, robots and teachers figure out that small moves work best and the arrows can be turned in very useful ways. It’s not cybernetic neural science but it is major fun.

For 4 – 10 players, ages 6+

You Robot game design Alain Rivollet. © 2010 by Repos Production.

You can learn how to play Timeline in, what, three minutes?

You’ve got some beautifully illustrated little cards on the table in front of you (109 0f them). Each card shows a different invention, like, you know, a transistor, a toothpaste tube, a laptop. The actual date when each item was invented is written on the other side of each card. Which is why your cards are on the table rather than in your hand – so you can’t see the dates. In the middle of the table is one card, date-side up. You take one of your cards, invention-side up, and slide it next to the date-side up card. If you put it on the left side, you are claiming that that particular invention took place before the date showing on the date card. And if you put it on the right side, after. And that’s just about it, rule-wise.

From then on, players take turns, trying to get rid of their cards by placing them in the correct position (sequence) in the growing time line. As the game progresses, it gets more difficult, because there are more dates, the timeline growing evermore finely graduated. So you really have to know increasingly more precisely when that thing was actually invented. If you are wrong, you put your card back into the box and take a new one from the deck. If you are right, often enough, you get rid of all your cards, and you, ha ha ha, win!

The whole game feels like something special – 109, small, unique, beautifully illustrated cards fitting ever so perfectly into the velvet-like-lined insert into the ever so metal case. So easy to learn and teach. And yet, so very challenging. In a good way.

It’s probably true that the more you play, the better you get. Unless your memory is like mine. If you suffer from near-eidetic memory, you will eventually run out of people who want to play with you. The only version of Timeline currently available is about Inventions. Fortunately, the next set, Discoveries, is scheduled to come out this Fall, so: 1) you won’t have to wait too long, and 2) you’ll be able to put both sets together and have 218 beautiful little cards with which to demonstrate your historic memory.

On the other hand, it only takes maybe 15 minutes to play. It’s not a game you’re going to take, like, seriously. But it’s seriously fun, and, for the rest of us, it’s a great opportunity to learn some things, surprise ourselves and each other with our knowledge and lack thereof, and it will occupy a welcome and happy place in your game collection even when you aren’t the one who gets to play.

Timeline can be played by 2-8 players. Though players can be as young as eight-years-old, it’ll probably be more fun for them if they play with kids of more or less the same age. For players of every age, the fun of Timeline is timeless.

Timeline was designed by Frédéric Henry. The original publishers are Hazgaard Editions. It’s available in the U.S. from Asmodee. (you can find them on Facebook, just in case)

Drawing games are often polarizing events because lots of people will say, “I’m not an artist. I can’t draw to save my life!” The games also turn the screws by putting a timer on the contestants. And then comes the sharing of the pictures: all that judgment and ridicule and justification that ensues.

Blue Orange’s elegant drawing game Sketch It! takes all of these frustrating aspects of other drawing games and doubles down on it all. Your pictures? They need to communicate specific items so that ANYONE at the table can identify your subject. Time limit? You have to be faster than the others to get the most points. The guessing process? Every single line will come under scrutiny and the inner workings of your mind will be laid bare.

Fun? Oh yeah.

The game is simple. Each player has a card with 6 items, a pencil, and a piece of paper. The game comes with 6 numbered chips (1-6) and these sit in the center of the table. Someone rolls a die and everyone sets to drawing the item that matches the rolled number. The first to finish grabs the highest numbered chip from the center of the table and the other players grab chips as they finish. The drawings are shuffled and passed out randomly so each player has a drawing made by someone else. They write what has been drawn and then reveal their guesses. If a player guesses correctly, the artist and guesser get the points on the artist’s chip. Incorrect guess means no points for either.

This mechanism of awarding the guesser and the artist works well to balance the game for those who do not feel so confident in their artistic skills. Being a good guesser is as important as being a good sketcher. The task of grabbing the numbered chips also adds a great deal of pressure to the better artists because they can’t keep their attention strictly on what they are drawing. A quick sketch that hints at the object can be more effective than a detailed depiction because the time for fine detail costs the artist the most valuable chips.

But part of the fun is the explanation and evaluation of the drawings created under such stressful conditions. How a creature with five legs, no ears, and a serious under bite (not over bite) can be a “donkey” is one funny conversation. That, more than the accumulation of points, is the aspect of Sketch It! that makes it Major Fun. I haven’t laughed so much at my own ineptitude as I did playing Sketch It!

3 – 6 players. Ages 10+

Sketch It! by Gregory Detrez. © 2011 Blue Orange Games.