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Can anyone remind me of simple word games like the ones to play in the car with kids?
I've exhausted my limited arsenal, and need some ideas. Thanks
I've exhausted my limited arsenal, and need some ideas. Thanks
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Ugggggghhhh. My DH loves these, they drive me mad. Anyway.
The one where you start with a word (say cat) and the next person has to do a word that begins with the last letter of your word (turtle). Next person says elephant, next person says tortoise, next person says eagle, next person says eel, next person says lion...can you tell we always play this with animals? You can do it with song titles, too, or book titles or whatever.
When I was a kid we played a game where my sister and I would look out the windows and look for letters of the alphabet in order. When you see an A (ona billboard, a road sign, a license plate) you call out, when you see a B you call out, eventually you get through the whole alphabet. (X is usually found in an Exit sign.) Or do it silently so that kids compete against each other. This assumes the kids are honest sorts. (I'm not sure I'd trust my own kids on this one...one of them is a little shifty.
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Twenty Questions, Animal Mineral or Vegetable, Botticelli--you probably know all these.
License plate game--you look for plates that have traveled the farthest or five from a nearby state or whatever.
Who Can Name the Most Beatles Songs? Successful with some groups. Mercifully punctuated with long silences while everybody tries to remember Mister Moonlight. -
Wacky, thank you, this will help. Can't do license plates since this is to keep someone on bedrest occupied...
But what game is Botticelli?Comment
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Oh, DH just reminded me of a game his cousins love. You start to sing a song, and somebody else has to jump in and "steal" a word from the song and start singing the new song starting with that word, until the next person steals a different word from the new song.
For example....
Person One sings: "Oh, girl, girl, girl--"
Person Two sings: "Girls just wanna have fun, yeah--"
Person Three sings: "--yeah, yeah, she loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah, and with a love like that, you know you should be glad--"
Person Four sings: "Glad to be young--"
Person One sings: "young lovers, wherever you are--"
You get the idea. These particular cousins know tons of show tunes and pop lyrics and all of them LOVE to show off, so they can play this song for hours, with a lot of oneupsmanship. Guaranteed to drive you nuts in a small enclosed space.Comment
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I do like Botticelli. It's pretty fun. I've never heard of the "direct mode" thing they're talking about below. We always play it so that "it" has to figure out who you are asking about and reply, "No, I am not Yul Brynner," "No, I am not Jack Black," "Yes, I am Sandro Botticelli" or whatever.
(from Wikipedia)
Botticelli is a guessing game which requires the players to have a good knowledge of biographical details of famous people. The game has several variants, but the common theme is that one person or team thinks of a famous person, reveals their initial letter, and then answers yes/no questions to allow other players to guess the identity.
The game takes its name from the famous person having to be at least as famous as Sandro Botticelli, who is also the answer to the archetypal question, "Did you paint a picture of Venus rising?", referring to his painting The Birth of Venus.
[edit] How to play
One player (the chooser) is selected to think of a famous person (the identity). This person should be someone the chooser is comfortable answering biographical questions about, and someone the chooser is very confident that the other players will all have heard of; obscure identities make for frustrating game play, especially with young players. The rule of thumb is that the person should be at least as famous or well-known as Sandro Botticelli, hence the name of the game. Fictional characters are acceptable, but can present certain difficulties. In some contexts, a non-famous person with whom all the players are familiar may be acceptable.
The chooser then announces the initial letter of the name by which the person is usually known; for non-fictional characters, this is usually the last name. For example, if the chooser chose Sandro Botticelli, then the initial letter would be B. For the purposes of phrasing questions and answers, the chooser adopts the chosen identity.
The game has two modes — direct mode and indirect mode — and starts in indirect mode.
[edit] Indirect Mode
In indirect mode, the guessers take turns (either in sequence or informally) to think of someone with the designated initial letter. These guesser choices do not have to conform to any other information so far acquired about the chooser's identity (e.g. male, non-fiction, still alive).
Each guesser asks the chooser a yes/no question using some detail of the guesser's choice. For example, if the letter is B then the guesser might choose Yul Brynner and ask, "Are you bald?" At this point, the chooser has three possible responses:
1. "No, I am not Frank Black." — The chooser has either guessed the guesser's chosen person, or has thought of another person who fits the same criteria. (Even if the guesser was thinking of the chooser's chosen person, a correct "No I am not" that names a different person is allowed, if it fits the questioned criteria.) The game remains in indirect mode, and moves to the next guesser.
2. "No, and I don't know who you're thinking of." — The chooser can't think of someone meeting the criteria. The guesser reveals their answer, and the game changes to direct mode. (If guesser was thinking of the chooser's person, then the guesser wins.)
3. "Yes, I am Yul Brynner." — The chooser's identity meets the criterion of the guesser's question, and the chooser cannot think of anyone else who satisfies it. The guesser wins.
Guessers can use indirect mode to guess the chooser's identity directly (e.g. "Are you Yul Brynner?")
The bar for guesser choices is lower than that for the chooser's identity; it is not essential for the chooser to have heard of the person, or to know the relevant biographical detail, but guessers should not deliberately exploit this provision. The ideal guesser question is one where the chooser says "Doh! I should have gotten that." when the answer is revealed.
[edit] Direct Mode
In direct mode, the guesser whose choice enabled the mode switch gets to ask a series of yes/no questions about the chooser's identity, as in standard Twenty Questions.
Direct mode continues until the chooser answers "no" to a question.
Example questions and answers for direct mode:
* "Are you male?" → "Yes, I am male."
* "Are you unconnected with art?" → "Yes, I am unconnected with art."
* "Are you bald?" → "No, I am not bald."
If the chooser doesn't know the answer to a direct mode question, or the question does not permit a clear-cut yes/no answer, then the chooser answers as accurately as possible, and the game remains in direct mode. There are some conventions for answering contextually inappropriate direct mode questions; for example, fictional characters are usually deemed to be dead if their death has been recorded.
[edit] Winning
The game ends when a guesser successfully determines the chooser's identity. That guesser then becomes the chooser, a new identity and letter are chosen and the game starts again in indirect mode. If the successful guess was suggested by a non-designated guesser in direct mode, then it is normal courtesy for the designated guesser to defer to the other player.
If all guessers give up before winning, then the chooser reveals the identity. The guessers then determine (by majority) whether the choice was a good one (that is, they should all have known of the character and the chooser's answers in direct mode were reasonably accurate). The role of chooser then remains with the same player, or passes to another player (e.g. clockwise) as appropriate. It is considered bad form for one guesser to hold out after everyone else has given up.
[edit] Stumping
This variant is particularly useful as a pastime for long trips, since a single round can sometimes last over an hour. As in the standard version, the chooser picks a famous person or character and provides an initial (for example, if the chooser picked Sandro Botticelli, he or she would provide the letter "B"). The guesser must then think of a trivia question which can be answered by a word beginning with that letter, so in our example the guesser might ask, "What is the most populous country in South America?", the answer being "Brazil." The answer to the question must be something the chooser could reasonably know, not something personal to the guesser (e.g. "What was the name of my invisible friend when I was five?") or anything otherwise impossible to guess. If the chooser answers correctly, the guesser must think of another question. If the chooser is stumped and cannot answer, the guesser may ask a single yes-or-no question (as in direct mode of the standard version) about the person or character. Once the chooser answers the question, the guesser must stump the chooser again before asking another direct question. Generally, guessing the identity of the person or character counts as a direct question and can only be done after the chooser is stumped; however, in the interest of shortening the game, players sometimes will guess the person without having first stumped the chooser.
[edit] Harvard variants
In a variant of the game played at Harvard, the game only moves to direct mode if, after the chooser fails or gives up, another guesser can successfully identify the subject of the question. This provides a built-in standard for whether the question posed by the guesser was fair. A similar variant rewards stumping the chooser (but not fellow guessers) with the next letter in the chosen person's name (in this case, 'R'). This can make for quicker gameplay.
[edit] Games similar to Botticelli
* Vermicelli, in which the thing to be guessed is a food rather than a person.Comment
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For bedrest (I was on bedrest with my last pregnancy), sometimes we played Trivial Pursuit without the board--we used the questions and had some sort of scoring system where the winner got X number in a row right. Or all the questions on a card right?
When I was on bedrest, I had a Leonard Maltin movie guide and I would lie around making elaborate lists for imaginary film festivals. "Spy Movies of the 1960s." "Screwball Comedies featuring Cary Grant." "The Best of John Ford." Then I would get my poor sainted DH to request whatever our library system had, and then I would watch the themed movies.Comment
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Wacky,
Thank you for all the info!! I love your movie game, can't use that here but will definitely try to remember that one, maybe just to do for fun at home sometime.Comment
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Here's a word game if there's someone in the car you want to torture or at least mystify.
Two of you, not the victim, demonstrate an uncanny ability to guess Botticelli-type answers posed by the victim.
For example, the victim whispers "Michael Jackson" to one of you.
You give your co-conspirator the following clues:
Strong and never generous?
Takes handy road into long, low, easy route?
Your partner pauses a moment, and says- - Is it Michael Jackson?
Do this a few times until the victim begs piteously to know how it's done.
I'll post the solution separately.Comment
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Despite the lack of popular demand, I'll post the answer.
Use words in your bogus questions that spell out an unmistakeable clue.
In my example, the two questions spell "sang Thriller"Comment
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