Board Game stories

I thoroughly enjoy playing board games. I would hedge on saying that I am fiercely competitive, actually my friend Margaux would swear on it as she refuses to play Scrabble with me anymore. I think it was after a particularly heated debate where I was insistent that ‘Yacht” was spelt phonetically: ‘ Yaught’ and I would.not. believe her. (This is before we had the dictionary App on our iPhones).

I get edgy in Scrabble if I don’t get the ‘X’, ‘Q’, ‘Y’ ‘J’. I mean think about how many amazing words you can make with these: Sexy, Queue (yes this is how you spell the one where you stand in a ….). Or even better ‘Quiz’ on a triple word score, the joys and slight smugness of getting an over 60 score is unbeatable. It despairs me when virgin Scrabble players use the ‘J’ for say ‘Jam’ and it gets them a measly 12 points. But even more funny is that I was playing recently and words such as ‘Botox’ cropped up, nice one Plastic Surgeons.

On Balderdash: I think this must be the best game ever invented. Not only have I learned words such as ‘Ululate’ I have also learned that even the most innocent of my friends can be the biggest bulshitters.

On Trivial Pursuit: Let’s face it, the only people who actually like this game are people like Ryan (you know who you are) who memorise the answers like parrots and know the answer to ‘Who was the first Prime Minister of Timbuktu’.
Quite frankly most of my friends who are in their late twenties, still cry out that Trivial Pursuit Teens is way more fun.

When I think of Trivial Pursuit, I think of when I played it in Chamonix with a bunch of Swedish boys who translated the questions which ran along the lines of ‘What’s the deepest lake in Scandinavia?’ to which I retorted ‘Fuck this game, let’s go shag instead’. Needless to say it was much more fun.

On Backgammon: I used to love this game so much, especially the little briefcase it comes in and the noise the di (note plural of dice morons) make when they rattle in their cutesty wutesy leather cases. My 28 year old friend (also competitive) taught her nephew to play backgammon recently, apparently he is such a pro now, he beats her every time – he’s 6.

On Monopoly: This is one game I remember being so tedious, and I wasn’t particularly good at it either. I could never afford the properties on Ellof and Jan Smuts and instead would have to borrow money from my mother to afford the properties on Marine Parade. It’s suddenly dawned on me why I didn’t particularly like this game: Nothing’s changed: I still don’t have the faintest clue about owning my own property or what the hell VAT stands for. On that note, does anyone know what APR means when credit card companies seduce you with their rates? Hmmm.

On Celebrity: I particularly like this game as it makes you laugh like you have never laughed. It’s even better when you get to play with people that you don’t particularly like and then seeing these macho men on their hands and knees enacting ‘Lady and the Tramp”. Quality.

On 30 seconds: I love this game…sometimes. I like it when I’m on the same team as Ryan (parrot reader of Trivial Pursuit cheating above). However when Ryan and Nicole (his wife) get together it’s ridiculous. He’ll be like: ‘you know that guy..” and she’ll scream ‘Marco Polo’ and he’ll be ‘You know when we were in..’ and she’ll shout ‘Mexico’. I mean WTF, it’s like spouse telepathy. I am kind of good at 30 seconds until it comes to politicians or sportsmen, then I am screwed and it’s like uh no clue and afterwards people shout ‘Who was it?’ and I’m like: ‘Some dude called Sean Pollock’ and everyone just rolls their eyes.