Tag: Party Game

Speed Scrabble

Posted by Nathan – September 1, 2008

I don’t like Scrabble much. It’s for various reasons. I feel like the game has a lot more to do with manipulating the space on the board and preventing others from doing things than it is about finding cool words that fit together. Basically, Scrabble with anyone who’s any good at it more of a strategyless strategy game than it is a word finding game (like, say, Boggle) and I find it deteriorating into waiting for your turn only to have your hopes at using that long word dashed and spelling “id” instead, even though you don’t know what it means.


Enter Speed Scrabble.


How to Play


Grab your Scrabble set and dump all the pieces face down in the center of the table or surface where you will be playing. You don’t need the board; each player just creates his own structure in front of him.

  • Each player takes seven tiles and keeps them face down in front of them.
  • When everyone is ready to go, players flip their tiles face up and try to create a single structure using all of their letters. Rules for what words and placements are valid are the same as in regular Scrabble.
  • When one player has used all his words he says “Done” and everyone takes another tile which they use to add on to their own structure until someone says “Done” again.
  • When someone says “Done” and there are not enough tiles left for all players to receive one, play ends and everyone counts their score.
  • Like Scrabble, players score for each word so some letters might be scored twice. Every letter not attached to the structure counts against the player. Each illegal word counts double its score against the player.




Advantages

Turns in Scrabble are a necessary evil. On the plus side, since you don’t interact with your opponents during their turns, you can go to the fridge or talk to nonplayers while everyone else is going. Speed Scrabble is ideal for a party situation where folks are looking for less of a time investment (about 7 minutes), any number of players (you can combine Scrabble sets) and high action all the time (no turns).

Couch of Power

Posted by Nathan – January 23, 2008

One issue I’ve been grappling with is what to play when you have more than 8 people. The most obvious game is Mafia/Werewolf. While I have nothing against Werewolf, like all fantastic games it has an addictive quality that can be unhealthy for a regular game night. So I went looking for an alternative. What I needed was a game where there was communication, strategy, lasted for a bit less than an hour and was playable with more than 8 people but with few materials. Couch of power was that game.

We tried it out last night and it worked pretty well. The rules we used were from Wikipedia and are as follows:

Everyone writes their name on a slip of paper and puts it in the pile, which is then shuffled. Each player takes a slip and does not reveal the name on it to anyone else.

Divide the players into two teams. The game works best if the teams are even. To avoid later confusion, instruct one team to distinguish themselves from the other team by wearing headbands, rolling up their pants legs or shirt sleeves, etc. — boys vs. girls may work.

Teams then alternate seats (i.e., no two team members are sitting next to each other) so that two people from each team are on the couch and there is one empty seat. Play begins with the player left (or clockwise) of the empty seat.

The player calls a name, and whoever has that name on their slip must move to the empty seat, making their former seat the new empty seat. Play always passes to the player to the left of the empty seat. When all four people on the couch are from the same team, the game is over and that team wins.

The game works on several levels. One is that you have to remember everone’s name and then also who HAS that name. Then you also have to play the game with a bit of strategy. I like the team dynamic that it has and it’s a great alternative to Hombre Lobo (Mafia) if you have an even number of players.