Hobbies And Interests
Dots and Boxes
Create a grid of dots. Each player takes turns drawing a single vertical or horizontal line connecting two dots. If a player can draw a line that will create a box, then he gets to write his initials inside the box and claim it as a point. In some cases, a player may create two boxes with a single move, giving him both boxes. Play continues until the entire grid is filled with claimed boxes. If you're playing against one other person, you might set up the grid to create an odd number of boxes and ensure that there won't be a tied game. For example, you can create a grid that is eight dots wide and six dots high, which will yield a total of 35 boxes.
Ghost
In this word game, players test their vocabularies against each other and try to force their opponent to complete a word. The first player starts by writing a single letter. The second player adds a second letter so the two letters combined would start a complete word without actually completing one. Each player adds a letter to the evolving word, attempting to create a longer word fragment without completing a word. The first player who creates a complete word loses and gets a "G" in the score keeping. The first player who gets "G," "H," "O," "S" and "T" on his scorecard first loses the game. Players may challenge the previous player's word fragment if they believe that it cannot be completed to make a word found in the dictionary. If the challenge is legitimate, the challenged player loses. If it is not, then the challenger loses. Most variants of Ghost allow completed words that are three letters or fewer long, and do not allow proper nouns.
Exquisite Cadaver
This collaborative game provides much of the fun of mixed up translation also present in the game Telephone. In Exquisite Cadaver, each player starts by writing a quote or descriptive sentence at the top of a piece of paper, then passes the paper to his left. The next player draws a picture to illustrate the sentence, folds the paper down over the sentence so only the illustration is visible, and passes the paper to the left. The next players writes a sentence that he believes describes the illustration, folds the paper over the illustration so only the description is visible, and passes to his left. Players continue to alternate between words and images until the paper is completely folded. You will enjoy unfolding the entire paper and seeing how each original sentence morphed through translations of words and images. This game is ideal for an odd number of three or more players so everyone has plenty of turns to write and draw.