The Box Girls Big (and Mini!) Box of Questions

Box Girls "Take Out" Family Dinner Box of Questions

We’ve just been unpacking a monster order from the inventive folks at Melissa & Doug.  Although they got their start in the wooden-puzzle-and-building-blocks end of the toy business, M&D  has been expanding its catalogue to include such things as dress-up clothes, puppets, pretend play furniture and accessories, and ride-on toys (see the post on Trunki here).  Among the new items featured in this year’s Melissa & Doug catalogue are a great series of games called the Box Girls Box of Questions and Mini Box of Questions.

Each size is available in a number of themes, ranging from holiday-related games (Chanukah and Christmas) to B(est) F(riends) F(orever), Family Dinner, Slumber Party, and Birthday Girl.  The games are packaged in neat cylindrical boxes, with the large games including 82 question cards and the small games containing 42.  The games are designed to be conversation starters, helping kids, friends, and families to know one another better.

The company was started in 2002 by two harassed moms, Cece Feiler and Heidi Haddad, who were trying to keep impatient children — and husbands! — from melting down during a restaurant outing.  Since that time, over half-a-million games have been sold, and reviewers have been unanimous in their praise for the game’s ability to bring together families and friends.

Box Girls Box of Questions (assorted) CAD$11.99

Box Girls Mini Box of Questions (assorted) CAD$5.99

In stock now.

Anomia — Not Just Another Word Game

Anomia

Anomia is defined roughly as a neurological condition that impairs one’s ability to name persons and objects.  The game Anomia, on the other hand, is defined as a fast-paced card game in which players race to give specific examples of the person, place, or thing suggested on a card.

As Anomia game inventor Andrew Innes says, “Regardless of age or education level, we’re all united in knowing that our brains will betray us under pressure.”  Anomia is an easy game to learn, but definitely not so easy to win.  When we played the game, I found that the suspense created by the game mechanics made it way more difficult than I had expected to blurt out a correct answer — and all too easy to mess up! (I lost, by the way.  So much for my vocabulary skills.)

The game contains two decks of 92 unique playing cards, each with a symbol (there are 8 different symbols in all, and they’re important.  Read on) and a word or phrase.  Players turn up cards, one at a time, onto their individual play piles.  If the symbol on the card matches that on the top of any other player’s play pile, a face-off ensues, with each player racing to name an example of the thing suggested by his opponent’s card.  Wild cards, cascading face-offs, and other rule variations add up to a great social game playable in — at most — a 30-minute time span.  Our games took an average of 15 minutes start to finish.

There’s a rule variation for as few as three players that involves removing some cards — two of the eight “suits”, say — from the deck, so that play will move more quickly.  With six players, the symbol matches come fast and furious!  Anomia is suggested for ages 10 and up, largely because of the vocabulary level, I expect — phrases such as “fairy tale character”, “magician”, and “shampoo brand” — so children as young as eight with strong reading skills would probably do just fine.  Your mileage may vary, as they say.  In stock now.  Anomia CAD$19.99

Go Bananas!

Here in Canada, this coming weekend is the Victoria Day long weekend, traditionally associated with the beginning of the all-too-short Canadian summer. Lots of families will be on the move this weekend — maybe going camping, or making the trek to open the cottage, or merely taking advantage of that extra day to do a little vacation traveling.

Bananagrams® is one game that I can enthusiastically recommend for word-game lovers, especially those for whom storage space is an issue. A multiple award winner, Bananagrams® doesn’t require pencils, papers, or boards. The tiles (144 in all, and surprisingly weighty, ivory-like little things they are) store inside the clever cloth pouch.

Players draw tiles from the pile, and each player then forms his or her own grid of intersecting and interconnecting words. Not only can new words be built as new tiles are drawn, but also old words may be anagrammed into new, more advantageous ones.

I also like this game for children (and impatient adults, too) because all players play simultaneously; the games move quickly and even young children can win through strategies of speed. It has developed quite a following!

In fact, one could say that this is a game with definite a-peel!

Retails for CDN$16.99