on a fantastic new game

i am exhausted. last week was ridiculously busy at work, and then this weekend was ridiculously busy too. the week blew cause they made me work super hard for my money, which is a BOOO cause they don't pay me much so that's annoying. the weekend was good, but a little less busy would have been nice. i did, however, get to see sarah and iain -- twice!! so i was pretty stoked about that. i don't have too much time right now, so i think i'll leave all of that for another post another day, and instead i will simply tell you about the game that sarah & iain told us all about and that we subsequently went out, bought, brought to our friends' house, played and loved. well at least i loved it, haha.. i thought it was hilarious. i didn't actually ask jon, but i'd assume he liked it as well, since he was laughing and since he won like 3 times. yeesh.

so. it's called apples to apples, and there are two kinds of cards, red & green. the red are nouns and the green are adjectives. each turn, one person is the judge, and this also rotates with each turn, so it's fair. the judge turns over an adjective card, and every other player throws one of their 7 noun cards -- whichever they think fits with the adjective the best, is the funniest, etc. -- face down so it's anonymous, and then the judge picks whichever one they liked the best, for whatever reason they want. you don't even have to offer any reasoning, you just pick whichever you want. so you can bypass 'beauty & the beast' for 'sappy' and pick 'popcorn' if you think it's funny or you just like the idea of sappy popcorn. so then whoever's noun card got picked gets to keep the adjective card, and the goal is to get to a certain number of adjective cards (the number changes depending on the number of players). and each round, the judge becomes the next person, and everyone takes another noun card so they have more choices (you always have 7 cards). some of the examples that i won for are charismatic golf-ball sized hail and chewy mahatma ghandi. there's also a bunch of variations that you can play too, like the quick draw, where you can throw two cards if you can get them down faster than someone else can get one down -- the first four cards (or however many people are playing, or just four if you want to pick an arbitrary number) to hit the table are judged, regardless of who threw them. and then there's a bunch of others that i can't remember right now but that i like; i think it's a good idea to have easy variations of a particular game so you don't get too bored. but it's really a funny game, and you can totally play to the judge by picking a card/combination you think they'll like.. with sarah, eli, jon & myself, it was mostly all pick the funniest, but that worked out for us cause then it was all just hilarious. the only problem i saw was that sometimes when it was my turn to judge, i'd have the perfect card in my hand, but you can't throw it cause you're the judge. burn! it worked out, cause i wanted to use 'golf-ball sized hail' for 'dainty', but when i threw it for 'charistmatic', sarah laughed so hard she cried, so it worked out pretty well. and i had nothing for 'chewy' which is why i went with 'mahatma ghandi' -- i figured i'd throw the most ridiculous thing i had, and i ended up winning the card, haha.

so yeah. i totally recommend this game. it's up there with cranium in my top list of funniest games to play. you can find it at most stores that carry games.. we bought it at wal-mart for $25, which is a big expensive, but it's the party pack, so it came with a ridiculous number of cards: 749 red cards, 249 green cards, 10 blank cards (do-it-yourselfers!), 2 card trays, and the rules (which include the section on different ways to play), so i guess it'll be worth it.. i'm sure with a smaller version you might run into the same cards over and over again, whereas with this many cards, there's a better chance of finding new combinations all the time.

you can learn more here (there are bible, british isles, german, yiddish and jewish editions!!): http://www.otb-games.com/showcase/apples.html

and you can see what our box looked like here (aka, to the right), to help you search for it in stores.

go forth, buy, laugh, and thank sarah & iain!