The eight stages of Kerflipping:

1) The Unboxing

You open the box. You take out the various and many intriguing components: the bag of 90 letter tiles (two-sided, ivory and yellow, some of which having little numbers on them), the lovely cloth drawstring tile bag, the four (yes, four) sand timers, the cute little deck of 22 bonus cards, the sturdy, yet empty, inner box for, what, holding the letter tiles? even though you already have a lovely cloth drawstring tile bag; the game board with the tuck-in-able flap; and the large, well-illustrated, cardstock rule thingy.

2) The Re-box

You read enough of the rules to realize that you should put the tiles in the tile bag (logically enough); and that strange, sturdy, yet empty inner box should have actually stayed in its special compartment; and that board with the tuck-in-able flap should go back on the box, on top of the strange, sturdy, yet empty inner box, with it’s flap, tucked in.

3) The wonder

You read a little further and find yourself pouring the letter tiles out of their lovely letter-tile bag, onto the flap-tucked game board, and then sweeping the tiles into the two compartments that yawn enticingly in their left and right compartments in front of the flap-tucked game board. And then you lift the box, and shake it so that the tiles slide rearwardly. And then you remove the gameboard only to discover that yes, as advertised, almost all of the tiles (you needed one more slight shake) have made their way to that inner box, which is now, at last, filled. And you remove that inner box and dump the tiles with consummate ease into the lovely letter-tile bag. And you are awash in wonder at the sheer cleverness of it all. And you do the whole thing again so that you can be similarly wonder-washed.

4) The play

And now, at last, box reassembled, tiles in their lovely drawstring bag, cute little bonus cards tucked snugly into their compartment, front and center; you find yourself stepping beyond the playing-with-the-game stage, ready, finally, to play the game itself actually. You and three of your anagram-loving, party-going friends each take three tiles from the tile bag, simultaneously place your tiles on top of the board in a random, ivory-face-up fashion, and then: let the game begin. As soon as you find it, call a word that can be spelled from some of the letters on the gameboard and start your timer. Now the remaining three get a bit more frantic, because they must find yet another word, hopefully a word that doesn’t use any of the letters that were in the first player’s word. (Well, you can use them if you need to, but they’re worth only half of the value of an unused letter.) And then the second player calls her word out, and starts her timer. If it happens that somehow in all this focused fury that the second player’s timer runs out before a third player has called out a word, the round, of course, reaches its untimely conclusion. And on and on, until everyone has found a word, or run out of time.

5) The score

The first player spells out his word, turning each tile in the word over as he announces each letter, and scoring 10 points for each. Should any of the tiles used in creating the word happen to also bear a number in their lower corner, the player also takes that many bonus cards, and keeps them, face-down, until stage 7:  the summing. The next player then spells out her word, scoring ten points for each ivory-side-up tile, but only 5 points for each of the tiles that are yellow-side up (having been turned thuswards by the first player).  And again, should a numbered letter tile be involved, collecting bonus cards accordingly. And so on, until the last player’s score has been recorded. And the on to stage 6.

6) The Replenishment

And so it goes, round after round, until there are not enough tiles left for the replenishment.

7) The Summing

The inevitable end of the game evits itself. Players add their totals from each round, arriving at a grander total. And then, for the moment of grace, look upon their bonus cards, adding their cumulative bonus to their cumulative scores and chortling variously. And, semi-finally, a discussion of strategies and feats of astounding cleverness and the fickleness of fate, and marveling again, perhaps, at the genius of it all: the box, the game, each other. Perhaps even noting how, in deed, given the tile-flip factor, a child as young as shall we say eight years could join the game, at somewhat of an equal advantage, should she be quick enough to shout out a word of as few as shall we say four as yet unused letters, and should we be inclined to invite her to join us some other time perhaps tomorrow.

8) The Replay

And so, without further ado, the game begins again, unless someone new wants to join, which will result in yet further ado.

Kerflip. Designed by Damon Tabb, available from Creative Foundry Gameworks, for 2-4 players, 8 and older.

What’s, you are sorely tempted to ask, The Big Idea? It’s a party game. It’s a creative/persuasive party game with cards. The kind of creative/persuasive card game for parties that makes people laugh.

You get a lot of cards. A lot. There’s your “item cards’ – 92 of them. And then there’s your “description cards” – 92 of them also. And then your 6 “medal” cards and 24 “blank” cards which altogether make up your “vote” cards for up to 6 players, or teams. Beautifully, colorfully, invitingly illustrated cards (the blanks, not so much).

So, let’s say you have six players. You give each player or team four blank cards and one medal card. Then you shuffle all the “item cards” in one pile, shuffle all the “description cards” in the other, and each player gets three from each pile.

Then everyone gets very quiet, except for the occasional irrepressible chuckle, meditating on their cards, combining as many as they want into an idea for an invention of irresistible ingenuity , and then preparing an equally irresistibly ingenious sales pitch. They then take turns making their pitch. After the last pitch is made, someone summarizes all the various inventions, and the voting begins. Voting cards are placed, face-down, beside each player’s invention pile – each player giving a medal card to the one invention they thought the most inventive, and a blank card to all the others. At the end of the round, the player with the fewest medals loses. Several rounds are played. The player or team or, in case of a tie, players or teams to have received the fewest medals loses or lose.

That’s it. That’s the Big Idea. And even though it may remind you of other party games we have already so highly recommended, it’s unique for so many good reasons, three of which are: the two different kinds of cards, the voting mechanism, and the method for determining the winner. All three result in a uniquely fun and funny experience.

1) Having both nouns and adjectives as resources seems to add inspiration for even greater humor and creativity – not only have you invented the world’s first underpants that also can be used as  a can-opener, but these are desktop panty can-openers, designed so they invisibly blend in with your other office accoutrements, whilst remaining at the ready for your less official functions.

2) The voting process is anonymous and painless so you can vote for anyone for any reason without having to explain yourself, and you only have to vote for the one you think is the best.

3) It doesn’t really matter how many people think your invention is the best. All that’s important is that you managed to get at least one vote. This makes for a much gentler competition, resulting in more laughter, and a more light-hearted, creative play experience.

The Big Idea  is published by Funforge. It can be played 3-6 players or teams. The minimum recommended age is eight. It was designed by James Ernest and lovingly illustrated by Stéphane Boutin. At least two more kudos for their efficient and attractive packaging – the box is just large enough to contain the all the cards.

Hasbro’s Scrabble Slam! has received an electronic upgrade that accelerates the frenetic pace of the original while maintaining the basic structure that earned the game a Major Fun Award in the first place.

First, a quick review of the basics. The Scrabble Slam! consists of 55 double-sided letter cards (different letter on each side). A four-letter word is spelled in the center of the table and the remaining cards are split between all players. Players use their cards to change the four-letter word in the middle. First player to use up his or her cards wins.

Turbo Slam! introduces a timer and special cards. During a round, the electronic timer plays an increasingly rapid jingle. When the tune is interrupted by a Turbo sound, the players race to slam the big red button on the top of the timer. This accomplishes two things: a moment of blessed relief from the timer AND the chance to draw one of the 12 special cards. The special cards generally help the players by allowing them to get rid of cards (hand them to other players) but a few actually hurt the winning slammer.

We found that the Slam! button kept things moving rapidly and helped equalize the game a bit for those who were slower at changing the central word. Generally I am not a big fan of new editions that introduce random events, but in this case it works pretty well. The timer also serves as a carrying case for the cards, and the whole thing is remarkably compact (unfortunately the game comes wrapped in a lot of unnecessary packaging which hurts the sleek, efficient design of the game).

All in all, a fun revision of a fast-paced word game.

For 2-4 players, ages 8+

Scrabble: Turbo Slam! © 2011 by Hasbro.

There’s a game. A party game. An old party game called Fictionary. There’s another game. Plays like Fictionary. As challenging as Fictionary. At least as funny. Only, more elegantly designed. More intriguingly packaged. More portable. More, well, lovable. And it’s called Fictionaire.

Yes, it looks like a package of cigarettes. If you’re an anti-smoking kind of person, get over it. It’s a very clever little package. Very functional. Let me explain:

It’s a deck of cards. Sixty of the cards are for questions. There are questions on both sides of the cards. So you get 120 questions. There are also answers on the lower half of each card. But, notice, if you close the flap and tuck the question card the question card in as illustrated, you can’t see the answer. Very clever. If you could see the answer, you’d also notice that some of the words are in red (most of the time). There are also point cards and instruction cards. We’ll get to them later.

First, let me tell you about the exceptionally elegant part. You don’t need a dictionary. You don’t need paper and pencils. Everything you need is in that small, enticingly politically-incorrect, shirt-pocket-size box. You don’t even need pencil and paper to keep score. That’s what the point cards are for. There are 14 of them. You only need twice as many as there are players, because you only play two rounds.

So, one person reads the word in question on top of the first card in the pack (or any card, as long as the bottom stays hidden). For example, the questioner reads: “What is a Kiskeedee?”

Then the pack is passed to the next player. That player slides the card up so she can see the answer, which, in this case, is “A French-speaking person who us unable to understand English.” Notice the words in red. Since that player is the first to go, she can decide whether on not she wants to give the “real” answer. If she goes for reality, she must include the red words, her clue being something like “a French person who is unable to understand you,” or “what you might call someone who is French who, no matter how hard you try, seems unable to understand what you are saying.” The remaining players make up their own definitions, e.g.: “an affectionate person who likes to make nice to babies.”

Of course, the first player can always choose not to give the real answer – in many cases, a very wise choice, forcing someone else to have to deal with the truth – as long as someone does so before the round is over. The person who read the question (the “host”) then gives one point card to the person she thinks gave the correct answer. If he tricked the host, then that player also gets the question card. If not, the host gets it.

And on and on, until all the point cards are played, the player with the most point and/or question cards winning the game.

Elegant, don’t you think. Portable, party-worthy, pencil-and-paper-less fun.

There are four different, shall we say, packs, each extending the concept into a different area of knowledge: Classic (“What is a Vade Mecum?”), Naturals (“Harlequin ducks walk like a duck and quack like a….?”), Fool Science (“In the early 1900s phone operators were required to…”), Tall Tales (“When you enter a Mongolian Yurt it is customary to drink a glass of Kumis. What is it made of?”).

Designed by Hervé Marly, for people of smoking age, but not necessarily for smokers, available in the U.S. from Days of Wonder.

The Game Chef’s variation on charades, Rollick! is Major Fun. By every way with which we have to evaluate a game, it is wildly Major Fun. So why did we not give this game an award when we tried it out last year?

Rollick! is a blast to play. No question. Our games testers loved Rollick! It is also elegantly, economically designed with clear rules, clever variations, and quality materials. And yet, Rollick! is only now receiving a Major Fun award after languishing the better part of a year in our limbo. (To be fair, the Major Fun limbo is well appointed with magazines, couches, a ping-pong table, wi-fi, and some great coffee.)

I’ll explain a bit more later. But now… Rollick!

The brilliance of Rollick! is in its simplicity. It’s a game of charades in which the actor role is given to the group and one player tries to guess the word. This slight change on the rules is brilliant because the acting has always been the most compelling part of charades. A party game where most of the players are up and acting the fool is far superior to the same game where most of the players sit on their butts.

The game comes with 378 double sided clue cards, a score pad, and a sand timer. The sides of the clue cards are color coded to help accommodate younger players (blue side is easier than the red side). Like charades, each team earns points by successfully communicating their words to their guesser without using any sounds. A team gets one pass per round.

Teams that work together have a much better chance of communicating their words. Take the clue “Wizard of Oz” for example. 4 people skipping arm in arm is pretty powerful and better than everyone trying to act out their favorite character. There is also less need for the standard charade short-hand such as the “sounds like” or “second syllable” gestures.

One funny side effect of the game is that the actors tend to move closer and closer to the guesser so that the poor player has to cringe away from the most zealous actors. Establishing a minimum-safe-distance line is probably a good idea.

Now some of you might have a strong feeling of déjà vu right about now. You may feel compelled to scroll back through the Major Fun archives, convinced you have read a similar review. And you’d be right. Reverse Charades received the Major Fun award in January of 2011 and was named a Keeper in November of that year. The games are virtually identical down to their release dates.

So why the delay for a Rollick! review?

Timing is part of the answer. We received a copy of Rollick! after we published the review for Reverse Charades. We loved Reverse Charades and here was an exact duplicate. This poses a problem for a reviewer. It seemed there was nothing new to say about Rollick! and reviewers need something to say. We try very hard to provide our readers with the spice of the gaming life. There was a lot of debate, but in the end we decided that part of the value of the Major Fun award came from our advocacy of variety and originality. Rollick! missed out on a Major Fun award in part because it arrived at an awkward time.

But timing is only part of the reason for the delay, and hardly the end of the story. I’ll be writing more on this later. Stay tuned.

For 6+ players, ages 8+

Rollick! by Brent Peterson and Stephanie Zundel. © 2010 by The Game Chef.

In 2008, Parker Brothers & Hasbro re-released this excellent game of charades from 1990. Guesstures needs very little explanation beyond “charades with a timer” but that would just gloss the surface and would fail to capture some of the things that makes this version of charades Major Fun.

The timer is the most obvious device of the game so let’s start there. Shaped like a clapperboard that you associate with directors marking the beginning of a scene, the Guesstures timer is hand-wound and holds 4 cards along the top. The cards are words the player is trying to get his or her team to guess. The player starts a round of play by snapping the timer closed (“Guesstures, scene one, take two!”) This starts the timer. As the timer winds down, the cards drop out of sight. The player tries to get his or her teammates to guess the word before it drops out of reach. When the timer has run out (about 15 seconds) the team keeps any cards they guessed correctly.

The timing device is especially effective because not only does it mark the end of the round, it also dishes out the “punishment” for a player who takes too long. No one needs to watch the timer. If the card is there, you can try to grab it. If it’s not you gotta move on. Rounds are very fast which gives everyone time to play.

The cards are divided into 2 categories: easy and hard. This makes it easier to include younger players or the guessture-impaired. It also affects scoring: two points for every hard category, one point for every easy category. You must draw a total of 4 cards but they can come from one or both of the decks. Cards are double-sided so you have some choices once you draw your cards.

The game also comes with a Best Performance Trophy. Any player can earn the trophy if they get their team to correctly guess all four cards AND at least two of the cards are hard. The trophy will move around a lot. Whatever team has the trophy at the end of the game receives 2 extra points. It might not be worth many points but it is very satisfying to win it away from your opponents.

Guesstures is fast, colorful, and very easy to learn. There are no batteries and lots of laughs. True, creasing and folding and tucking the flattened trophy into something that would actually stand was a task beyond our collective abilities. Equally true, being asked to apply the decorative stickers to the timer was at least mildy annoying. I could easily leave off the stickers, but it seemed odd that Parker Brothers / Hasbro would not do this piece of finish for a game with otherwise high production values. If you are going to have me decorate your game for you, why not include a variety of stickers so I can customize the timer?

Oh well. The game is still Major Fun.

For 4+ players, ages 8+

Guesstures by Jeffrey Breslow and Howard Morrison. © 2008 by Hasbro.

So we go from cavemen to Martians…

You are the Martians. You have come to Earth and need to know who is in charge: Chickens, Cows, or Humans. The Martian bookies are laying 3 to 1 odds on the chickens but the humans do have those irksome tanks. Better get some of each just to be sure.

Tasty Minstrel Games’ press-your-luck game, Martian Dice, is deceptively simple. Roll the dice and set aside Tanks (these are trying to hurt you). Choose any ONE of the following groups and collect any that you just rolled: Death Ray, Human, Chicken, Cow. Death Rays cancel Tanks but don’t score anything. Humans, Chickens, and Cows score one point each BUT once you collect a sample of that group you cannot collect any more. If you have more Tanks than Death Rays, you may not score anything. Bonus points for getting specimens from all three groups.

There are thirteen dice and with each roll you must keep Tanks and one other group. This keeps the game moving quickly, and each roll diminishes the pool of dice. Your choices with each roll are limited, but each choice presents a unique risk that the player must weigh against the potential rewards.

And sometimes, you just need to get a few more Death Rays.

Each game goes to 25 points, which doesn’t seem like much. Especially given the first roll of 13 dice. Sure you get a few Tanks but you will also get several Humans or Chickens and LOTS of Death Rays. But after the Tanks, you can only keep one category and you have to keep ALL the dice from that category. So, if you have 2 Tanks and keep 6 Death Rays (not uncommon) that means you have only 5 more dice to roll for points and out of those dice you might roll more Tanks or Death Rays (which don’t get you any points).

The whole thing is silly, but it is also really engaging. In every turn it feels like a player just squeaks by or just barely misses a score or hits a big jackpot. Each roll is an extreme. There is no happy medium but lots of fun. Major Fun. You can’t help but WANT to roll the dice one more time.

Tasty Minstrel has done a great job with the rules and the dice. Colorful, clear, and short. Our only nitpick came with the tube that you use for rolling the dice and storing the game. One plastic end comes off to open the tube, but the other plastic end is SUPPOSED to remain affixed to the cardboard tube. Alas, with even a moderate shake, the bottom falls out and the dice scatter across the room, racing for shelter under every item of furniture that has more than a finger-width of clearance from the floor. And the heat grates.

Appropriate I guess. If the Martians are coming at me with Death Rays and probes, I’m running for cover too.

For 2+ players, ages 6+

Martian Dice game by Scott Almes. © 2011 Tasty Minstrel Games LLC.

Family reunions on my father’s side would not be complete without shuffle board. That my great-uncle and aunt HAD twin shuffle boards on their property did not strike me as odd (I was never older than 12 at these reunions). I loved the long poles and the smooth rasp of the pucks as they traversed the polished cement. I loved the tournaments and the good-natured ribbing.

I first learned of curling when it was officially recognized as a winter Olympic sport in 1998. I had 2 conflicting thoughts. First: “Fantastic! Shuffleboard on ice!!” Second: “Olympic ice shuffleboard? Ridiculous!” I’m not sure why I had such a strong negative reaction to the idea of shuffleboard as an Olympic event, but there it is. Maybe I recognized how damaging the effects of intense competition could be on something that had been more purely FUN in the context of the family social event. I’d had similar experiences with badminton, volleyball, and Frisbee.

Thank the primordial fun-gods for Caveman Curling, the table-top game from Gryphon Games.

The game comes with a roll of illustrated parchment-type paper (in curling called “the sheet”), 2 sets of 6 rocks (red and white wooden pucks), 2 sets of totems/hammers (special events). The sheet has a bulls-eye on one end as you’d find in curling and a start line at the opposite end. Players (individually or in teams) take turns flicking the rocks toward the target. Closest rocks score points.

In modern curling, teams use brooms to adjust the trajectory of the rocks. That mechanic is lost in Caveman Curling (broom technology needed another few thousand years to develop I imagine) BUT each team has a collection of hammers and totems that they can use to protect or move their rocks. Hammers are rectangles of wood that allow the player to move the rock the length of the hammer. Did you get close to the target but not close enough? Whip out a hammer and move the rock closer. The totem protects a rock. It sits on top of your rock. If that rock is hit and the totem falls off, you may remove the rock and flick it again—do over!

There are variations on the rules but Caveman Curling is really a very intuitive game of accuracy with a few tricks to keep things interesting. The pieces are colorful and solid. The rules are short and sweet. The illustrations are amusing (check out how a caveman writes the credits on the curling sheet). It all works to create something Major Fun!

Have to spend a bit of time indoors? Caveman Curling is a great way to pass that time as you wait for the rain or snow or (as it is right now) the blistering-sun (current temperature in Indianapolis: 105^o) to move on.

For 2+ players, ages 7+

Caveman Curling game by Daniel Quodbach. © 2010 Le Scorpion Masque Inc. and published by Gryphon Games.

The game mechanics of Chef Cuckoo will be instantly familiar to anyone who has played party games like Apples to Apples or Balderdash or Snake Oil. There is a judge. Everyone else is a chef. Chefs try to put together three ingredients that will earn points from the judge. In the basic game, the judge assigns points without knowing what chef submitted what recipe. Variations have the chefs perform a sales pitch.

It’s a great vehicle for silly, and Blue Orange does a fantastic job of providing everything you need for the party in a little round tin. It’s like opening an Altoid box to find your favorite meal tucked up in one corner and an attractive table setting in another. So much more in the box than you’d think from the outside. Willy Wonka’s three-course-dinner-gum without the Violet Beauregarde side-effect.

The game comes with 60 ingredient cards (round), 12 challenge cards (square), and 36 small plastic stars. Each player is dealt 6 ingredient cards and the judge chooses one of the challenge cards. The challenges instruct the players to make the best or worst of the following: sandwich, soup, salad, pizza, omelet, or pasta. Each chef then chooses three ingredients and places them face down in front of the judge (who closes his or her eyes to ensure objectivity J).

Best recipe gets 2 stars. Runner up gets 1 star. Everyone else: nada.

The judge rotates, ingredient cards are replenished, and a new challenge starts the next round. Play continues until all the stars are awarded.

Like the games I mentioned earlier, you get to have Major Fun while learning a little something about the tastes of your fellows. No, I don’t mean that you get to lick them! I mean that you get to understand a bit more about… Ah, forget it. Dirty minds.

For 3 – 8 players, ages 7+

Chef Cuckoo game by Christophe Raimbault. © 2012 Blue Orange.

If you were looking for an electronic game to exemplify why the Major Fun seal was created, you’d need look no further than Hasbro’s Bop It! SMASH. It’s very easy to learn how to play. You don’t have to read the instructions, you don’t even have to take it out of the package it comes in. You, as the package so clearly indicates, simply smash both ends at once. That’s it. That’s all you need to know.

The lights blink in sequence. You wait, everso patiently, for the ever-decreasing millisecond that the green light in the center is on, and, well, SMASH! Smash well enough, and you get a bonus round. Continue smashing well and you get to go to the next level, and the next bonus, and the slightly excruciatingly more difficult next level, and then the less threatening but even more excruciatingly difficult bonus round, and on, and excruciatingly on. And if you happen to be altruistic enough to want to share it with someone else, there’s the PASS IT variation (easily selected by moving the switch next to one of the smash-knobs). And, should you seek an even more competitive dialog, you can switch to a multi-player version which allows you to engage in super-fast reflex challenge with up to 5 more people (depending on how much patience and self-restraint you have).

The audio instructions and narrative are enticing, slightly cajoling, often humorous, and a tad, shall we say, sarcastic, but in an inviting, almost lovable way. The game select feature even includes a volume control (either loud or not-so-loud). Ah, so wise these designers. There are three AA batteries required, all of which, bless Hasbro, are included.

Yes, verily, this is not the only Bop It! to have bopped its way into our collective Bop-awareness. There’s the earlier, multi-control Bop It! and the more recent massively multi-controlled Bop It! XT and even the Bop It! iPod/iPad Touch Game. But Bop It! SMASH is the one version that most vividly exemplifies what the Major Fun seal is designed to lead you to – elegantly designed, accessible, intuitive, portable, sharable, engaging, intense fun.