We have already greeted Rory’s Story Cubes with appreciation and enthusiasm. This elegantly designed Major Fun award-winning set of nine story-building dice has found happy welcome in classrooms and restaurants, libraries and living rooms. The evocative images on the faces of each die, the simple rules, the sturdy little box with the magnetic closure – all work so beautifully together to invite creativity and humor and the endless invention of new invitations to the imagination and new ways to play with it.

So it is with great interest and anticipation that we greeted the arrival of the Actions set of Rory’s amazing cubes. Same packaging. Same number of dice, but, instead of nouns, the illustrations suggest verbs. And, even if this is the only version of the Story Cubes you have, you’ll find the Actions set as stimulating and and inspiring as the original set. And, should you have both sets, you’ll soon discover that you can happily combine dice.

According to Rory:

One tip is to mix 3 Rory’s Story Cubes®: Actions with 6 Rory’s Story Cubes®. We find this to be a good combination for storytelling.

We find that some prefer the Actions for storytelling. Especially people exhibiting Autism. They can relate to the character it seems. Others don’t like the use of characters so much, as they find it hard to use images in other ways (unlike the more metaphoric icons on the original set). The Actions have been used on their own, and all 18 together, especially with larger groups (like in the classroom).

Quite a few teachers teaching ages 4-6 like to use just 3 dice of either set, to form simple sentences and stories.

What a fascinating invitation to explore not just story telling, but also story tellers. So much to play with. Such fun, as a way to spark your own imagination, as an exercise, a game, for children, families, creative thinkers of all ages and purposes. Thank you Rory. Thank you Gamewright.

You throw the five letter dice into the conveniently felt-lined dice-throwing area. The letters appear: U S R S R. Though you only need to use three letters, you come up with the awe-worthy “RHINOCEROUS” – which uses all 5 cubes (scoring bragging rights) and earns you the 10+ chip. Yes, it would have been even better had this been the second or so turn, and you had exactly that roll and the category had been “wildlife.” But that, clearly, is neither here, nor there.

You collect your chip. Turn it over. And reveal the “Home Sweet Home” category, which entitles you and your fellow players to “any word related to things you can do or find in your home.” Can do or find. A bit generous for your typical Home Sweet Home category. But all the more welcome, eh? You toss the dice. The letters appear: P R R F U. And the race is on.

“REFRIGERATOR” you say? Good enough. More than good enough, even though you didn’t use all five letter cubes, as its 12 delightful letters earn you the right to pick up that most valuable of all 10+ chip, and to be the category-giver and the dice-tosser for the next round.

And so it tensely goes, players displaying verbal uncanniness, gathering chips, chip-after-chip-after-chip, until all the chips are used, or some pre-arranged score is reached or until you all can’t wait any longer to decide who the winner really is.

And no, you don’t get any extra points for using all the cubes. And yes, you can make it the rule that some people have to use more cubes than others, like, for example, because they’re younger, or because they keep on winning. But no, all you really have to use is any three cubes. And further no, it doesn’t matter if your word is longer than someone else’s if that particular someone else has already declared her particular word.

You can run out of a certain kind of chip. In that case, the winning player can take any chip. This adds a strategic wrinkle, if you’re interested in wrinkled strategies. If you can exhaust even the lowest scoring, four-letter-word chips, all the four letter words you come up with after that can earn you the 10+ chip, or whatever highest value chip remains. What this means is that, given the circumstances, proving your personal brilliance might not be the smartest move. Ah, so much like life, eh?

In addition to the dice there are seven stacks of chips, each stack worth from 4 to 10 points (indicating how many letters the winning word must have), each chip showing the score value on one side, and the category on the other. There’s one “Create a Theme” category which adds the opportunity for much interpersonal introspection and the opportunity to play compassionately or competitively depending on your whim and/or wisdom.

There are several other ways, in addition to  your clever use of the “make a theme” category,  you can fine tune the game to match the needs and interests of the players. As described, you can increase the challenge by making it the rule that everyone, or just the winning player, has to use more cubes in their word. In like manner, you can decrease the challenge. You can be more lenient in your definition of what meets a particular category (OK, you can use fictional characters in solving the Famous People category), or you can be more, shall we say, literal (only Russian authors). You can make the game shorter (by playing for a specific score or number of chips) or longer (playing for two or more rounds). This kind of flexibility significantly increases your chance to have a good game with almost anyone. And yes, you can play in teams.

Spell it!, from Blue Orange Games, was designed by Thierry Denoual, who also designed, among many other games, the Major Fun award-winning Yamslam, which also uses a similarly ingeniously designed, self-contained tin container to house dice, felt-covered dice throwing area, and seven stacks of chips, and yet, even more ingeniously, turns out to be an equally award-worthy, yet completely different game, entirely.

Wordsmiths, rejoice, for you have at last been granted your game. Assemble your friends (three, at least; the more, the most definitely merrier). Assemble your wits and your sense of humor. Assemble your word parts.

To play Faux-Cabulary is to find oneself suddenly thrust into an intensely focused wordsmithy, where one’s inner wordsmith is challenged to cavort creatively whilst competing somewhat anonymously for the favor of the Wordmeister who determines which player (or team of players) has most successfully forged the perfect verbal coin, so to speak.

Faux-Cabulary is an ingeniously silly word game.  One might even say “intelligently” when it comes to describing the silly that Faux-Cabulary brings into being – what one might call hyper-silly-icious, were one of that disposition, and should one find those particular word parts on three of one’s collection of word part cubes.

If one were counting, one would find 21 of such cubes in one’s Faux-Cabulary set, each face of each cube imprinted with a different word part. Along with the aforementioned cubes, one would also find 180, two-sided definition cards, each of which is so cannily worded so as to cause the silliness to leap several quanta. I exemplify: “That squishy, icy-cold last cherry tomato in the salad bar,” and “The aftertaste of a burp,” and “To constantly spend too much time in the rest room,” and “A person who gets pumped-up by listening to easy-listening music.”

One would similarly find six “cube covers.” These are cleverly designed cube-hiders, assemblers and conveyors, made of thin, but sturdy plastic, which one uses to: 1) hide one’s cubes from view as one is determining precisely which of the six faces of each of one’s three (or conceivably two or even one) word-part cubes to employ, in which order; 2) to cover one’s assembled cubes and 3) to convey one’s assembly to the current “Wordmeister” (a different Wordmeister meistering each round of play).

Key to playing Faux-Cabulary is to recognize that the goal is not to be “correct” (since that is impossible), but to know your Wordmeister well enough to be the whose “word” gets picked. Hence the humor, the outrageousness, the verbal shenanigans, the sheer, lovely, friendly silliness.

The game is designed by Matt Nuccio (click the link to read about the evolution of the design), graphics are by Design Edge, John Kovalic, and Cathleen Quinn-Kinney. This wonderfully fun, creative game is available, as one might guess, from Out of the Box Publishing.

If you’ve ever played Bananagrams or any game of similar race-to-build-words ilk, it will take you maybe 10 seconds to understand not only how to play Zip-It, but why you so desperately need to have your very own set, immediately.

You get 24 letter cubes. The cubes are large enough, the letters big enough, the print heavy enough so it’s all very easy on the eyes.

The game, however, is not so easy on the mind.

You divide the cubes equally (it’s a two-player game), and, at the sound of your mutually agreed-upon warhoop, you race to be the first to assemble all your cubes into a crossword-style array in which every word is spelled correctly and can be found in your mutually agreed-upon dictionary.  As in all crossword-style arrays, any letter that is vertically or horizontally adjacent to any other letter must make or be part of a mutually agreed-upon word.

As soon as you have assembled all your cubes (yes, you can turn your cubes as much as you want until you find exactly the right letter) (yes, every turn of a cube takes exactly the millisecond that might very well mean the difference between the joy of victory and the agony of you-know-what) you scream, as gloatingly as possible, “zip-it!,” thereby indicating the conclusion of the round.

This takes maybe 20 seconds.

You now record the score, which you do, ever so cleverly, by using your zipper. Let me clarify. On closer inspection of the Zip-It case, you will notice that there are two zippers. Why two? On even closer inspection, you will notice a line of numbers, from 0-10, next to each zipper. And, when you inspect the zippers even more closely, you will notice that one pull is reddish, the other greenlike. Aha! And, O, the cleverness. Not just zippers are they. But the score-keeping device itself!

And now it all becomes clear, the scoring, the shouting of “Zip-It!,” the veritable name of the actual game.

Furthermore, there are variations, o yes there are. A probable myriad of ways to make the game even more challenging, or, perhaps, less. You can, for example, get an additional point for words of 7-letters or more for more. Or points for rhyming words, or words that can be read backwards as well as forwards (palindromes and perhaps even semi-palindromes), or words that describe, for example, fruits, musical instruments, psychological aberrations…. Or, you can allow the less verbally or digitally endowed players to make words of 2 or 3 letters whilst you must make words of 5 or more or more than that. Consider all these possibilities, and you can easily see how you can play the game endlessly, keep it interesting and challenging, play with children and seniors.

And then, for those who wish to delve further into the back alleys of language, the good people who bring us Zip-It include, at no extra charge, a charming little dictionary of “Weords” – a collection of “weird words that win crossword games.”

Zip-It is just the right size, with just the right amount of pieces, with just enough self-contained portability to play anywhere you have a surface to play on – a restaurant table, the backseat of a car, the kitchen floor. You don’t need pencil or paper to keep score. You don’t need a big empty table. All you need is your Zip-It game and someone who likes to play with words as much as you do.

Anomia is a game. According to Medicine.net, anomia is “a problem with word finding. Impaired recall of words with no impairment of comprehension or the capacity to repeat the words.” After 20 minutes of playing the game, I can personally confirm both definitions. It happened to me, my actual self.

I was playing, as I am wont to do. There came a time when all I had to do was name a guitarist. Any guitarist. Before another player was able to name a fashion designer. Spurred, thus, by spirit of competition, I said, with seemingly total assurance, “Jose Guitaro.” That’s what I said. Honestly. Jose Guitaro. Struck down by anomia while in the prime of playfulness.

Anomia is a party game (due to the unavoidably loud, enthusiastic vocalizations of the players), for 3-6 players. The recommended minimal age is 10. There are two decks, each with 92 cards and 8 wild cards. Each playing card has a noun of some sort, repeated on the top and bottom of the card. In the center of the card is one of 8 different symbols. The wild cards don’t have any words on them, but rather show two different symbols.

To begin the game, players choose one of the two decks, shuffle said deck, and then split it into two draw piles, placed face down on the table. The shuffler then takes the top card from one of the draw piles, places it in front of her, and turns it face up. The next player takes the next card from a draw pile and, in like manner, turns it face-up. And on and on. If it happens that two face up cards both have the same symbol on them, those two players enter into the face-off stage – racing to be the first to name correctly an example of the category on the opponent’s card. The player who succeeds gets the opponent’s card, and places it face down in her winning pile. If an entire round has been completed without a face-off, the game just continues, the next player placing his card on top of his face-up card.

After a few rounds, it is highly likely that a player will have several many cards in his face-up pile. As soon as a match is revealed, and the victor declared, and the card claimed, the card below it is revealed, thus precipitating what the designer calls the “cascade effect.” Which is another way to say mayhem. Mayhem is furthered by the revelation of a wild card, which calls for a match between two different symbols, meaning that if one player is showing one symbol on her face-up card, and a second player showing the other symbol on his face-up card, those two players have a face-off, the winning player taking that card and placing it on his face-down pile.

The game is very easy to learn, and after only a few minutes of play you’ll be completely, and intensely engaged. In a few minutes more, you’ll understand why you need to be even more focused on whose card has what symbol. And, in a few more minutes, you’ll probably have your first moment of anomia. The rules are easy to read, comprehensive, and sequenced so that they actually walk you through the game, one rule at a time.

Anomia is unexpectedly fun. It comes in a small, mild mannered box – exactly large enough to hold 200 cards and a rule sheet. There are no enticing graphics. No clever cartoons. Designed by Andrew Innes, it is the only game to be produced by Anomia Press. But the fun, my friends, the fun is Major!

See, in your traditional, non-reverse charades, one person is trying to get her team to guess a word, a phrase, a book, song or movie title – except she can’t talk; while her team is guessing everything they can think of that is remotely connected to the frantic gestures of their team mate. So, logically, Reverse Charades is just like charades, except that it’s the team that’s frantically gesturing to one of their team members, who is guessing with equal franticity.

So, you ask, is that fun enough to deserve being a whole new game? Our answer, without further qualifications or conceptual gesticulations: you bet it is! Observe the following for further self-evidence.

As you can see, the team is trying to get its representative to guess as many words as possible within the 60-second time limit. As you might also note, there are children in the team, and they are using the soon-to-be released iPhone app. This demonstrates two more key aspects of the game – it is such an elegant, easy-to-understand concept for anyone who knows charades (like, for example, you) that it lends itself to just about any group; and that the rules, as elegantly as they are written, are meant to be change – whatever the size of the group, or the time they want to give each other per turn, or whatever else they want to do to make the game fun.

When we first tasted it, we didn’t have the recommended minimum number of players. We only had 4 people, and the game recommends a minimum of 6, 3 players for each team. So we changed the rules. We didn’t have teams. Three people did the charading, one the guessing. Next round, we just changed the guesser. If we would have kept score, we would have given ourselves points for all the words we managed to get, each round, hoping each time to beat our record. And the fun actually abounded.

Reverse Charades demonstrates the kind of reversal that we most like to see in games. In your traditional, non-reverse charades, one player has to do all the performing, all alone. This puts anyone even remotely shy or self-conscious in a potentially embarrassing position, and, sadly, some people find that person’s discomfort emblematic of the fun of non-reverse charades.  In Reverse Charades, no one is embarrassed, because everyone is acting silly together. And yes, there is a certain chaos. And yes, it’s the very kind of chaos makes the fun major.

Game design by Bryce and Scott Porter, with artistic design by Dave Regnier, the most recent edition of Reverse Charades comes with 288, double-sided word cards,  a 60-second sand timer, and very simple, inviting instructions. A new edition with many sets of themed card packs (sports cards, 80s, junior editions, movie, holidays) all in the works. The game app for Android, iPhone and iPad will be released in med-February, with lite-versions for free so people can taste the games themselves before they leap into the joyous fray.

As you no doubt know, Rory’s Story Cubes has proven itself to be the kind of game the Major Fun award is here to let you know about. It’s easy to learn, engaging, it brings people together, encourages people to think and laugh together, it involves creativity and communication, empathy and collaboration.  It’s easy to store, easy to take everywhere, well-made, well-packaged, creative fun for everyone who plays it – young, old, young and old together.

After playing and playing Rory’s Story Cubes – with children and adults and younger children and older adults, in living rooms and dining rooms and restaurants and school rooms, we have all come to the same conclusion. It’s a Keeper.

It’s the kind of game that you’ll want to keep, so that you can share it with others.

It’s the kind of game you can make your own.

There are many ways to play it. The package gives us a good sample of some of them.  More can be found on the Rory’s Story Cubes website. The best are those that you invent together, with whomever you happen to be playing with. You don’t even have to make a story with them. Maybe you can take turns putting them in order and then explaining to everyone why you organized them that way. Or roll a die and explain to everyone why what you rolled is the most meaningful thing in the universe, and then take turns, each player rolling the another die and explaining why it is even more meaningful than the other. Or, roll three dice and then roll a fourth and explain how that die connects all three. Or, using three dice, take turns making up a story that is as close as you can get to being the opposite interpretation of what the three dice stand for.

In other words, it’s an opportunity for you to create your own games – free-form, open-ended, make-up-your-own-rules-as-you-go-along story-telling fun.

It’s a tool as much as it is a toy. You can introduce it to lighten people’s hearts and get them talking to each other. You can use it to break the tension during a meeting, to change the mood at a games party, to bring people together after dinner, to give people something constructive to do together.

The more people you play it with, the more ways you’ll find to play it. Rory’s Story Cubes is not even a game – it’s an invitation to genuine, creative, shared fun – the kind of fun that feels as good after you finish with it as it did when you were playing.

Scattergories is a party game that’s been around since 1988 – long enough to merit our, so to speak, serious consideration.

The main ingredients, aside from 2-6 players (and yes, should you be in a sufficiently party-like mood, you can play in teams and engage a small multitude of players) are:

• six sets of eight, two-sided category cards, each side listing 12 different categories;
• one 20-sided letter die of such heft that a cardboard die-rolling pad is included to prevent die-rolling table damage;
• an electronic timer (sans two AAA batteries) with three different duration settings that gets faster as the time limit approaches and can be stopped and reset at the touch of a button (maybe the best made game timer ever);
• enough answer sheets, cardboard pad and category card holders, and pencils for each player (or one for each team)

To begin a round of play, a list of categories is chosen, the letter die is rolled (carefully), and the timer started. From then, until the timer (or players) expire(s), everyone is heavily engaged in writing examples, beginning with the selected letter, that fit each item on the selected list.

It’s easy enough to think of examples for each of the categories. A little less easy to do it in the allotted time (3 minutes – or, for the more adventurous, 2.5 minutes, or, for the masochistic, 2 minutes). And close to impossible to do it with every example starting with the same letter.

It’s the “close to impossible” part that makes the game so challenging and often so hysterically funny. If you try to think quickly enough of something that goes well with chocolate that starts with “E” you’re likely to come up with an answer like: “everything,” or “Easter eggs,” or even “Europe.” Of course, your opponents can challenge you, and even you, when you finally stop laughing, might decide that perhaps your answer was more witty than accurate.

Of course, you try to find the appropriate answer for each item in the category list. Otherwise it wouldn’t be so funny when you can’t. Equally of course you can write totally inappropriate answers, or even skip a category entirely, since you only get points for correct answers (that are different from anyone else’s correct answers). And yes, there’s a recommended variation which can further exacerbate hilarity where you can try to get extra points by using the key letter more than once as a first letter in your answer (e.g. Hogan’s Heroes, Donald Duck, and the clearly contestable Pussy Paws).

Speaking of the clearly contestable, the success of the game very much depends on the light-heartedness of the players. There are always those who are prone to taking challenges, any challenges, actually, too seriously. Even when the correctness of an answer is determined by something that is as aboveboard as a democratic vote, those who wish to get ugly about things can always find reason, or lack thereof. Our suggestion – invite them to create another variation, e.g.: two-timing (start the timer again after it has run out), timus interruptus (anyone can stop the timer at any time during the game), allowing the use of foreign words, allowing alternate spellings (kawphy anyone?), scoring if you make people laugh.

Scattergories is a good game. The fun is especially major, however, only when you’re playing with people, like you, who so clearly appreciate the sheer humor of it all.

Scrabble Flash is an electronic word-making game. It’s a good word game. It’s fun, absorbing, challenging. There are three different games, and each has one variation. In the first game, you try to make as many words as possible in the given time (75 seconds – with an extra 5 seconds added to the clock for every 5-letter word solved). In the second game, you have to use all the tiles (4 or 5 depending on how many you start with) to make one word; and, as soon as you do, you get your next set of letters, and so on. In the last, you play competitively, passing the tiles to another player as soon as you have succeeded in spelling a word using all the tiles. That player must accomplish the goal in ever diminishing time. If the timer expires, you’re out for that round.

The variation: you can use 4 or 5 tiles. If you use 4 tiles in the first game, you can spell 2-, 3, or 4 letter words. In the other games, all the words have 4 letters. If you use all 5 tiles, words have to be 3, 4 or 5 letters, and the other games require your using all 5 tiles. Whether you elect to use 4 or all 5 tiles, the games are equally challenging and inviting.

Whenever you finish a game (the time has run out), the tiles inform you how many words you were able to complete, and how many words you could have completed if you only thought harder and moved the tiles faster. This is really all the information you need to keep your ego in check. As you might guess, the game uses the official Scrabble dictionary. As you might conclude, many of the words you’ll need to know are, well, shall we say “obscure”?

Scrabble Flash is not just an electronic word-making game. You could download one of those to play on your iPod/pad/phone or computer. It’s the tiles, the 5, separate tiles, and the feel of them, and the challenge of moving them and lining them up as quickly as quick can be that makes Scrabble Flash as uniquely, and majorly fun as it turns out to be – no matter which variation you play, regardless of whether you’re playing by yourself or with friends or family.

If you’re over 10, it will take you a while to get over the sheer wonder of the technology you’re playing with. It’s truly amazing to discover how this thing works – how the tiles can function individually and collectively, how it “knows” how many letters you’re playing with, how the tiles communicate with each other. If you’re under 10, you’ll just enjoy playing the games, taking, as is your age-related privilege, the technology completely for granted.

You get 5 tiles and a storage case. The tiles are like Siftables – they are each battery-powered, they each have an LCD screen and a computer chip, and they “communicate” with each other via infrared transmitter/receivers housed in each tile. The batteries (watch-like), are included, bless them.

The whole package is so convenient, the little case so elegantly portable, the components so accountably few, that you’ll be taking the game with you pretty much everywhere. All of these factors also make it perfect for a library games collection, for a school library collection, for your own personal collection, to play at home, to play at restaurants, and, whenever possible, to flaunt shamelessly.

You get 160 cards, total. Each player gets three cards. Each card has two categories on it – like: “Cannot take off” and “Leisure activities for old people.” Or “Things you secretly do at work” and “Famous sportsmen.” Or “Things that itch” and “Presents for mommy’s widdle puddy tat.” (Actual categories from actual cards.) You get an electronic timer you can set to 5 or 8 seconds. And you get a cloth bag that everything fits into very nicely.

It’s your turn to be Buzz Master. You pick any card, either category, and read it aloud. You start the timer. It beeps once. Everyone else takes a turn, each turn trying to come up with yet another example of the chosen category. Then the timer makes a polite, cymbal-crashing sound, and the card goes to whomever’s turn it is as a “token of failure.”

The round continues until everyone has used all their cards. Then a new round starts. On and on until all the cards have been played, the player with the fewest “failure tokens” having won.

You take turns being Buzz Master. The Buzz Master’s responsibilities are not only to select which of the two categories to use, but also to make sure the chosen category is in keeping with the general spirit of the crowd (Buzz It can be played by 2 to 10 players), and that responses are in keeping with the category. The Buzz Master may elect to make the categories more or less abstruse (e.g. “fictional sportsmen” instead of “famous sportsmen” ), or add more restrictions (things that itch beginning with the letter “b”). By artful selection and modification, the Buzz Master helps keep the game fun and helps the players avoid needing to resort to overly playful strategies (you could, if you wanted to, both hem and haw until the time was just about up, forcing the next player to take the “token of failure.”) Though the rules don’t specify it, it’s fairly obvious that when there are only two players, the Buzz Master answers questions as well as asks them.

OK, so the timer doesn’t “buzz.” It gongs. Which is a lot more pleasant, especially since it does so every 8 or 5 seconds (depending on the whim of the Buzz Master). And the box it comes in is cute, but flimsy. Which is also OK, because the bag works perfectly and for pretty much ever.

Buzz It, yet another of the surprisingly many games designed by Reiner Knizia, is most definitely a game you’ll want to take with you next time you have a family festival or you meet with a group of playful friends. It’s easy to learn. It is fast. It is funny. It is from Asmodee. It is Major Fun.