Game 72: Wise and Otherwise

 Wise and Otherwise is a word game which is similar to Balderdash and Literati in that players try to make up creative, compelling responses to try to get others to vote for theirs and in which each player is trying to guess the correct response.  In this game, rather than working with definitions of words, players are finishing old sayings/aphorisms from other countries.  David and I played with Jacob, Ocean and Caleb just before Caleb left for the airport to fly back for the final semester of his senior year in college.  It was a good, fun way to end our holiday time together.
 Players take turns being the one to choose the beginning of a saying from the card that the other players need to try to finish.  The board itself has a mix and match of beginnings and endings of sayings, each of which makes use of the number of the space that it is on.

 Ocean had the brown pawn and dashed to an early lead.  She and David ended up tying in the end.
 Here is the front of one of the cards.  This is one that came up when I was the reader.  I actually wanted to use the second saying, which I loved, but I chose the first one because I thought it would get a wider variety of responses and that the other players might not guess the correct one.
 Our ending for the old Norwegian saying beginning, "He who lies on the floor  .  .  ." were:

"  .  .  .  feasts on the crumbs."

"  .  .  .  longs for his bed."

"  .  .  .  coughs on dust."

"  .  .  .  rises to see his grandchildren."

"  .  .  .  doesn't fall down."

I'll give the correct response at the bottom of the post.  Can you guess which is right?  Can you fill in the endings of the other sayings on this card?

We had some cards yet in the box from a game we played years ago, so I am posting some examples.  The first is one of David's from back in the day, and below that I have a photo of five long-ago responses to "empty rooms make  .  .  ."


ANSWERS:

He who lies on the floor DOESN'T FALL DOWN.

After a game the king goes into the SACK LIKE THE PAWN.

He who has only one eye WIPES IT WELL.

A grasshopper does not always come when ONE BREAKS A STRING.

He who eats BEATS.


How did you do?  We all felt that this game was rather more fun than Balderdash or Literati - that is that it is more fun to try to finish saying than to make up definitions for words.  So that's our take on it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

BONUS: Special Events - CMC^3 and Thanksgiving

Image
These days it is me, David, and Jacob in the area, but it is rare that I get a photo of all three of us, as one of us generally has to take the picture.  This weekend we had the chance to meet fellow gamer Adam, a  math professor at CSU Fullerton, who gamed with us and took a picture of our family.  He was a keynote speaker at the CMC^3 Math Conference in Monterey, which is where we were this weekend.  I made sure to connect with him, as I had read in his bio that he has created a freshman-level class on problem solving based entirely on board games.  How cool is that?!?!?!?  I connected with him after his keynote address, and we decided to be in contact after dinner to see if gaming would work out, and it did!  As had we, he too had brought a bag of board games along "just in case."  Below you see them all laid out on this table in the hotel lobby.  It was fun to see that so many of his games were ones we were familiar with (For Sale, Code Names, 7 Wonders, etc.), but som
Read more

Game 4: Huggermugger

Image
My son Jacob and I are the ones in the family who particularly enjoy word games, and since he and I were the only ones gaming tonight we reached for Huggermugger.  It's kind of a mash-up of Hangman, Trivial Pursuit, and Balderdash.  It's a game for 2 to 4 players or teams - though we've played with more in the past by simply adding an extra token. There are four categories: definitions (key), spelling (bee), unscramble (soup), and miscellaneous (horseshoes).  For miscellaneous you might be asked to find 12 words using the letters of another word, to find 10 words that rhyme with a given word, to complete a quote, etc. When you land on a numbered spot on the edge of the board, if you answer a question correctly, you get to look under the dial labeled with that number.  The goal of the game is to be the first person to determine the mystery word on the mystery wheel. If you guess wrong, you lose, but if you wait too long before guessing someone else might beat you t
Read more

Game 118: Cities and Knights of Catan

Image
  Cities and Knights of Catan is an expansion to Settlers of Catan .  It's been on our shelves for a LONG time (probably as long ago as 1998 when it first came out), but it's also been a long time since we played it; it's probably been over a decade at this point.  Normally if we're going in this "direction," we just grab the original Catan off the shelf.  I do remember playing this one quite a bit, though, in the early days, especially with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law Tony and Stacey.  I think this expansion is a very nice addition to the original game, but over the years David has tended to get more and more tired of extra complication, which is probably part of why we haven't played this in a long time.  Of course we have lots of other options of games to play too, so it's not JUST that.  Among the things this expansion adds are knights (and I've always been one for chivalry, so I'm all about that!) and barbarians and walled cities.
Read more