Party Games Day

This afternoon I traveled to Mar Vista to join a group of liked-minded people who enjoy playing board games. Locations of the bus stops from my origination point have changed, so even getting to the venue was an adventure game of seek-and-find. Although the social group to which I belong, My People Connection, has no religious affiliation, the Party Games Day venue was at St. Bede’s Church which is a convenient location for the Event Coordinators, Brian and Jen.

As this event was cross-posted on a couple of other social sites, there were six tables of people already playing games when I arrived a half hour later than planned. Before I started playing games, I watched a game of "Moods" in which Jen was playing. I’ve played “Moods” at a previous Games Day and it definitely puts your acting skills to the test. When “Moods” was finished, I joined in a game of “Wits & Wagers” which combined the people from Jen’s table and another group who had finished playing “Ca$h ‘n Gun$”. Because of the number of people playing, we were put into seven teams. I was teamed with a woman named Pam, who I had not previously met. “Wits & Wagers is a trivia game that lets you bet on anyone’s answer. So you can win by making educated guesses, by playing the odds, or by knowing the interests of your friends. It can be taught in 2 minutes, played in 25 minutes, and accommodates up to 20 people in teams.” – boardgamegeek.com. I had played “Wits & Wagers” once before and as I like trivia/knowledge games, I was happy to be playing it again. Usually one round consists of seven questions to be answered and wagered, however, we ended up answering and wagering on eight questions. Do you know the answers? Here are the questions (answers below):

A. How many elevators are there in the Empire State Building?

B. In what year did John Smith settle Jamestown, the first British permanent in the New World?

C. How old was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart when he wrote his first opera?

D. In what year was it discovered that humans have different blood types?

E. How many feet tall are the letters in the Hollywood sign?

F. As of 2005, how many horses have won the Triple Crown?

G. In what year was the Republican Party founded?

H. How many Starbucks locations worldwide were there in 1995?

Unfortunately, there was only one question to which Pam and I had the right answer – the Mozart one – and we ended the game in last place and with no chips. But I have added to my collection of trivia facts and that’s always a good outcome.

The second game I played was “Catch Phrase”. This was the first time I played this game. There were ten of us and we were divided into two team of five. I was on a team with Barbara, Rhonda, Stacy, and Terry. The other team consisted of David, Mary T, Melissa, Pam, and Steve. The game moved quickly (once everyone understood about the buttons) and movement was important - “'Cause if the buzzer goes off while you're holding the disk, the other guys get the point in CATCH PHRASE... the fast-passing, fast-talking game.” – boardgamegeek.com. The easiest on screen word I had was “Thanksgiving” to which I gave the clue “holiday in November”. The hardest word I had was “Machiavellian” and I had totally forgotten that Machiavelli had written The Prince, so I was stumped and I fumbled as to the clues to give the team. Needless to say on that word the buzzer went off and the team lost that round. And I won’t even tell you about “Drugstore Cowboy”. Ugh! Even though the team I was on wasn’t victorious, there was lots of laughter during the game and everyone seemed to enjoy playing. I definitely would play “Catch Phrase” again.

The final game of the afternoon for me was “Dixit”. This was the second time I played this game. Joining me were Barbara, David, Mary T, Stacy, and Terry. The official game instructions state that the storyteller should use a sentence to describe the card that will be played. However, the last time I played, as well as this time, we just used one word to indicate the “story”. The game has sort of an “if…then” scoring system. “If nobody or everybody finds the correct picture, the storyteller scores 0, and each of the other players scores 2. Otherwise the storyteller and whoever found the correct answer scores 3. Players score 1 point for every vote gotten by their own pic.” - boardgamegeek.com. I had two turns as the storyteller and my first story was “Complication” and that was a good turn as some people pick my card and some did not. The next time the storyteller turn came my way, I told the story of “Life”. Unfortunately, no one picked my interpretation of “Life”, so no points for me. At the end of the game, Stacy had won and I tied for last place with Terry. It is a challenging balance to give a word that describes a card that some people will get and others won’t, plus being dependent on the other cards played. If nothing else, I do like the “Dixit” card illustrations.

While we were playing “Dixit”, Jen came over and said that she was leaving to switch with Brian, who had returned home from an outing with their son Finn, and that Brian would come to the church to close out the day. Finally gave Jen the three DVD insert covers for “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” that I got when the Blockbuster near me had a closing sale in late 2009. Saw Brian for a few minutes before I left to go home. Fortunately the bus stop locations hadn’t changed in Mar Vista, so no adventure on the return home portion of my trip. Only one last item, the “Wit & Wagers” answers!


A. 73, B. 1607, C. 12, D. 1901, E. 45, F. 11, G. 1854, H. 676


Images:
Left: Box cover of "Wits & Wagers" from the website boardgamegeek.com
Center: "Catch Phrase" disk from the website boardgamegeek.com

Right: Box cover of "Dixit" from the website boardgamegeek.com

Pursuit Of The Trivial (And Other Games) Ended Today For Chris Haney – Wednesday 9 August 1950 to Monday 31 May 2010

Question: Who contributed to my self-realization that I know a bunch of unrelated information about many things?
Answer: Chris Haney, Canadian Co-Creator of the board (never bored) game “Trivial Pursuit”.

Chris Haney died today at age fifty-nine, but he, along with “Trivial Pursuit” Co-Creator Scott Abbott, had provided gamers with many days (sometimes in a row!) of knowledge spouting and knowledge gaining over the years since “Trivial Pursuit” made its debut.

I was introduced to “Trivial Pursuit” in grad school. Up to then I had only played a few of the classic board games – “Checkers”, “Monopoly”, “Scrabble”, “Risk” – none of which required any demonstration of specific knowledge or facts. The first time I played was with a group of fellow students living on the third floor in our University-owned off-campus apartment building. We would play often and had many willing players. It was during one of these games that, because of the number of people wanting to play, we were teamed up and I was teamed with a guy named Chris. We won that game and it turned out that we had different areas of knowledge (Chris – Science and me – Arts) and together we were unbeatable! When Chris and I won a game, the other players would continue and our reward for coming in first was to read the questions and answers for the rest of the game. That was done many times, and happily so. After a number of times of playing “Trivial Pursuit” as a team and handily winning games, other players began requiring that Chris and I have other partners when team playing was needed. Ah, the price of being too victorious! No matter, playing “Trivial Pursuit” was always great fun whether played individually or in a team with Chris or someone else.

Later in grad school I would often play “Trivial Pursuit” with friend and fellow grad student Kate as part of an after seminar Thursday night ritual of grad students hanging together during Happy Hour in a local restaurant, playing the jukebox, dancing (although the place didn’t have a license for it), and just commiserating about grad life. After Happy Hour was over, we all dispersed and Kate and I would usually have “bad for you” stuff to eat and drink and play a game of “Trivial Pursuit”, which she was a good sport about since I usually won - all that earlier experience came in handy :). As I recall, our areas of knowledge were similar and the games were usually close ones. Makes for exciting competition! I enjoyed those grad times of “Trivial Pursuit” playing and I thank you, Chris Haney (and Scott Abbott) for providing me (and others) with a fun outlet where the trivial can play.


Images:
Left: Box cover of “Trivial Pursuit” from the website upload.wikimedia.org
Center: Chris Haney with “Trivial Pursuit” board from the website telegraph.co.uk

Right “Trivial Pursuit” playing piece and wedges from the website en.wikipedia.org