How to Play Things the Board Game

Play with four or more people of any age who can read and write. Make one person the reader and have her read a topic card out loud. Everyone including the reader writes a response on the response pad, folds it to hide their answer and puts it in the box.

Have the reader read all the responses out loud twice in a row, and no more, so others can remember each response--a few key words of it or the general idea is all that's needed. If there are eight or more people then there's only one reading allowed and then it switches to two readings once half the people have been eliminated. There's no writing the responses down by the people because it's all about memory.

Give the person to the left of the reader the first guess of who wrote which response. He picks one response, tries to match it up to one player and if he's correct he's just eliminated that person and gets another turn until he guesses incorrectly or passes. If he guesses incorrectly he's still in the round but the turn goes to the person on his left. If he can't remember any responses he passes to the left and is still in the game--the only way players get eliminated is by having their response matched to them.

End each round when only one person hasn't been matched to her response. End the game when each person has been the reader once.

Keep track of the score by marking down one point for every correct guess per person and six points for the person left at the end of each round. A tie can only occur when the remaining people can't remember any responses and in this case they should split the six points. Whoever has the most points at the end of the game wins.