Games and Puzzles

Shake up the letters.  Turn over the timer.  Try and find as many words as you can in 90 seconds.  Complicate it by only allowing words whose letter dice touch each other in the grid.

For one or more players.

Ages: 8 upwards if using the complicated rules.

Video explaining the complicated version of the instructions:

Yahtzee sounds like a traditional Chinese game but, in fact, it was first sold in 1956.  It is a dice game, in which you are allowed to throw five dice three times. You aim to achieve various combinations such as a full house or four of a kind.  You score each round and add up the scores at the end of the game to determine the winner.

2+ players.

Age suitability: 8+

Here is a useful video by 'Gather Together Games' from Youtube explaining the game:

28 chunky wooden dominoes in a sturdy wooden box with a sliding lid.

Storage box measures about 33 x 20 x 2.5 cm

Age suitability: 3 years +

BJ157

 Play the centuries-old strategy game on this wooden board.

Comes with 48 colourful acrylic 'stones'.

Two-player game for people of almost all ages (not suitable for the under 3 year-olds - small bits - choking hazard).

34007

Colourful wooden board with four wooden counters and a dice.

28 cm across

Age suitability: 3 years +

BJ788

Claims to be the ultimate wood game - not sure if Scrabble would agree.

You have to race your opponents to make a word grid and be the first to use up all the letters.

1-7 players

7+ years  age suitability

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Jungle Speed is a fast and furious, somewhat chaotic, game of observation and then of lightning reflexes, so that rules me out.

It is a matching game, a bit like snap, but, instead of calling out snap when two cards match, you have to be the first to grab the Totem (the yellow rubber cylinder thing) that sits in the middle of the table.

The cards are divided equally amongst the players (the more, the merrier).  On each card is a symbol in a variety of colours.  Some symbols are quite different, others are deceptively alike. Players place their cards in a pile face down in front of them.  One by one, each player flips over the top card and, as they accumulate, gradually makes a discard pile in front of him.  When one player flips over a card whose symbol matches the shape of the symbol on the top card of another player's discard pile, both players make a lunge for the Totem.  The winner then smugly hands over his discard cards to the loser who puts both these and his own discard cards face down under his cards.  Grabbing the Totem mistakenly results in you getting everybody's discard cards. The winner of the game is the first to get rid of all their cards.  Each game takes about 20 minutes.

To complicate the game further, there are several special cards.  One of these special cards for example changes the rules so that you have to match the colour of symbols rather than the shape. A different special card requires every player to lunge simultaneously for the Totem.  A third one requires everybody to flip over a card at he same time on the count of three.

2 - 8 players

Age suitability: 6 +

Here's an excellent Youtube video from Skip the Rules (NB the Totem has since been changed from wood to rubber):

 

Dobble is a modern-day classic game of observation. Each card in the tin is unique and has 8 symbols on it.à However one of these, but only one, symbols is shared with each of other cards.  You have to be the first to spot that shared symbol .  It should be easy but it's not.

Suitable for 6 years+  (younger children might stuggle with some of the symbols so try Kids Dobble which has fewer but more recognisable symbols)

 

We have this game on the shop counter and I love challenging customers to play this excellent observation game.  I am normally beaten but frequently end with a sale.  Roll the two dice and be the first to grab the piece matching the symbols on the dice.  The fun bit though is pinching the pieces that your oppponent has already got.

Made from good quality domino-like pieces.

Age suitability: 6+

 

Ticket to Ride features in so many people's top 10 lists of board games and is often recommended to people new to the board game scene.  It is a stategy game in which you compete to connect cities by claiming train routes before your competitors can.

It comes in various formats.  The original one is based on North America.  This, the European one, has routes all over the continent from Edinburgh to Ankara which, unlike the original version, involves tunnels and ferries. 

2-5 players

Age suitability: 8 (bright 8) to adult

Here's an excellent video from 'Watch It Played' on Youtube: