MikeJeggo: Japan has the advantage of millions of people. - TheInquisitor: And not having Cindy Crawford.
stuart: I sincerely doubt that Tom considers "meep" adorable - tom: You'd be surprised...
Judging the criterion "Which of these is the most dangerous?" MikeJeggo: Tony Blair... - Senji: New Labour, new danger. - MikeJeggo: ...Discovering America... - Senji: New Columbus, new danger. - MikeJeggo: ...Antarctica... - Senji: New freezer, new danger? - MikeJeggo: and Hairballs. - TheInquisitor: New hairballs, new danger.
Of course, this was the game where "Quicksand" won the "Most Cuddly" round!
How is this played?
In each round, an adjective (say, cuddly) is taken from the top of a deck of adjectives by one player (who is termed "the judge" for that round). All other players have a hand of 7 or so cards with nouns on them. They each decide which of these the judge will consider the most "cuddly", and place that card face down in a pile. The judge then has to decide which of the selected nouns is the most "cuddly". The person who played that noun wins a point - and the adjective. Everyone (except, of course, the judge) draws replacement cards, and the next person takes an adjective. At the end of the game, the player with the most points wins, and apparently everyone is reasonably described by the adjectives they won.
Did that make sense?
And there are a few blank cards to make your own nouns and adjectives. You can also blank out some of the existing cards (there are way too many boring celebrities in the default set in AC's opinion) and replace them with your own ideas.
Nouns Mathematics Cambridge (although "East Anglia" is one of the standard set) Skegness The AssassinsGuild Nokky MontyPython's Flying Circus Unicycle, Pogo Sticks - not that great, could be replaced again We've avoided having an Anime card simply by the fact that both "Japan" and "Japanese" are already in the default set
Nouns The person to my left/right - this could be a lot of fun. Might be a challenge fitting it on the card though. (Wow, *excellent* idea :):) ) Me - we have "my x" for various x, why not just "me"?
Thinking about it, I guess the thing with this is that usually one of the "My x" cards would work. Which is the most Stereotyped, Me or My Past? Which is the most Untidy, Me or My Bedroom? Which is the most Unkempt, Me or My Hair? Which is the most Romantic, Me or My Love Life? ...Nonetheless, I think the extra fun added by this particular "meta' card is worth some partial duplication anyway. --AlexChurchill (hmm, look at the nouns suggested here, and see how many of them are SelfReferential...)
Actually, PeterTaylor thinks he'd say "Me" in reply to all of those questions.
Life Kittens Bad Puns This room ToothyWiki ApplesToApples Some more modern politicians? E.g. Dubya, MichaelHoward. If we're adding people then various wikizens are required to suggest RebeccaBorgstrom (most regular players know who she is...)
George Dubya Bush could probably go in, yes. But I'd be very wary of adding others - the problem with celebrities in general that I've found playing the game with a variety of people is that not everyone knows who they are, no matter how impossible that sounds to the card makers. I think to go in, a person would have to be expected to be known to 95% of players, either that or formalise some kind of "discard if you don't know who they are" rule. Which would rule out RebeccaBorgstrom and even, I fear, MichaelHoward. That's why natural or cultural phenomena are good. Hmm, are there cards for "Television", "Tabloid Newspapers" or "The Internet"? --AlexChurchill
So that would rule out Analytic and Algebraic Topology of Locally Euclidean Metrisation of Infinitely Differentiable Riemannian Manifolds? What about other Cabinet members - GordonBrown? and DavidBlunkett? are probably a lot better known than MichaelHoward, and sometimes one isn't holding TonyBlair when Evil is played.
Computer Programmers. And as well / instead, is there already a card for "Microsoft" or "Bill Gates"?
There's definitely Bill Gates; personally haven't seen Microsoft
iMacs
Adjectives More concrete descriptions such as light, heavy (especially if they are also ambiguous) Colours such as green (could be green as in environmentally friendly, green as in naive, or a stimulus for tasteless speculation about whether a given famous dead person is now green) - others that might work could be blue, dark
I don't think either of these suggestions would actually add to the game. The premise of the game is that the adjectives are abstract enough that they could be applied to any of the nouns and mean something. I can imagine the round now: "Which is the most yellow out of Nelson Mandela, cows, the United Nations and earthquakes?" "Er, um, none of them?" End of discussion. Kills it dead. Take "yellow" as an example: it does have the meaning "cowardly", but not really any other alternative meaning. So why not just use the word "cowardly" itself, rather than "yellow"? --M-A
Hey, I included the word "might" there :) Okay, forget "yellow". But "green", "blue" or "dark" could all work just fine. Your example is a little unfair because people choose the most appropriate card from the seven in their hand. But putting that aside, the revised example reads: "Which is the most blue out of Nelson Mandela, cows, the United Nations and earthquakes?" "Well, hmm. The UN are probably pretty blue that all their suggestions are being ignored in Iraq right now. I imagine Nelson Mandela must have felt like he was pleading till he was blue in the face at times. And I imagine some dodgy people must have made some pretty blue movies involving cows. But moving swiftly on, I'm awarding it to: Nelson Mandela." Or whatever. --AlexChurchill
"Dark" is good; I like it. What originally sparked me off was the phrase "More concrete descriptions". Then I waffled and got a bit sidetracked... --M-A
along the same lines, I was thinking Real or Imaginary - yours are probably better though
Surely concrete can itself be considered an adjective with more than one meaning. Which is the most concrete out of cow pats, Tony Blair, my love life and Japan? Yesterday Rachael, AlexChurchill, PeterTaylor and some others from CityChurchCambridge played an interesting variant on ApplesToApples. A green card is drawn and everyone except the judge looks at it and plays their submissions. Then the judge must choose the winner without knowing what the adjective was. So the judging has two elements - trying to spot the common theme in the submissions (if there is one...) and then judging the winner as per normal. (PT's summary of the strategy was to play the card you think will be most representative of the cards which will be played.) Listening to the judge's thought processes as they try to figure out what the common theme was, and which cards might have been throwaway submissions or ironic entries, is very entertaining. Rachael would be keen to play this variant at GamesEvening...
AlanLawrence thinks it sounds bizarre, and that PT's summary probably has quite a lot of truth in it. But if everyone else is following the same strategy, how will that work? I'm kinda thinking there must be some situation which ends up in *no-one* submitting nouns that have anything to do with the adjective, which'll make it....interesting....for the judge!! One could allow the judge to score extra points for guessing the adjective correctly (though that gives the other players an extra incentive to submit something off-topic!), is there any way to reward players for sticking to the adjective as closely as possible?
I do very much like the idea of trying to figure out the common theme from a bunch of nouns, though, and I am very much reminded of HaveIGotNewsForYou?'s often-ridiculously-silly OddOneOut? round....:-) There's a more recent edition which Rachael and AlexChurchill played with family at Christmas. It has some overlap with our set, but a surprising amount of new cards, which I think are changes for the better. There are far fewer boring celebrities, and there are cool things like Vampires, FlyingMonkeys?, and WallaceAndGromit; and potentially controversy-provoking topics like Women (and I assume Men), and Feminists; and obviously more recent politicians. There are also new green cards, such as Complicated, Awesome, and Cowardly. I'd quite like to get it and merge it with our set (or get the Crate Edition which combines both). --Rachael CategoryGames
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