letter\/word-guessing game<\/a>. Up to four can play. Each gets a plastic tray with 12 spaces, of varying scores, as well as a box full of letter cards and “blank” cards. You build a word (no hyphens, no abbreviations, etc.), pad it (or not) with blanks at one end or the other, and put it face down in your tray.<\/p>\nPlay goes around the table, drawing an action card (that may add score, deduct score, multiply correct guess scores, or require you or someone else to reveal a card), and you guess at hidden letter on another person’s tableau. If you guess correctly, you get the points for that space and can ask that person (or another person) another letter (only one letter of a kind need be flipped over on a correct guess, so they person may indeed have another “T”). There are extra scoring variations for guessing someone’s word, being the last person unrevealed, and being wrong when asking if someone is using a blank.<\/p>\n
It’s really a very easy game — like most word pattern games, it doesn’t rely on intelligence per se, but pattern recognition, and very simple words can be difficult to deduce (especially with blanks involved). It’s limited to four (though the rules graciously suggest that you can buy multiple sets and play with more people). And it’s fun, and clocks in at about 30-45 minutes\/round. <\/p>\n
At the very least, folks who like that sort of thing will find it the sort of thing they like.<\/p>\n
Now, the reason this was so cool is that we used to play this game on our “cabin” vacations. It was one of a select set of board games that would travel with us (along with decks of cards) to help us while away the evening hours. Indeed, my mom found inside the box a score sheet I’d kept, probably twenty-five years ago, complete with doodles. Neat.<\/p>\n
Now to see if I can find a copy for myself, since my mom called specifically to ask for their copy back … :-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Every New Years Eve, a group gets together at the Ks and eats, drinks, puts together puzzles, and plays games. This year there was a chance my folks would be…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gaming"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":15222,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/07\/16\/game-review-10-days-in-africa.html","url_meta":{"origin":6788,"position":0},"title":"Game review: 10 Days in Africa","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 16-Jul-09 7:46am","format":false,"excerpt":"Mary gave Katherine a copy of this game, from Out of the Box. We played it last night during Family Game Night -- and had a lot of fun. The game is conceptually simple. Put together (sort of like putting together hands of rummy) a trip through Africa over the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Gaming"","block_context":{"text":"Gaming","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/gaming"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9822,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/10\/27\/hextuple_word_score.html","url_meta":{"origin":6788,"position":1},"title":"Hextuple word score?","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 27-Oct-06 12:37pm","format":false,"excerpt":"A record-breaking game of Scrabble, including most points in a game by a player (830), most total points in a game (1,320), and most points on a single turn...","rel":"","context":"In "Gaming"","block_context":{"text":"Gaming","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/gaming"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/images\/830scrabble.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3335,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/12\/18\/its_tues_okay_i.html","url_meta":{"origin":6788,"position":2},"title":"It’s Tues — okay, it’s Wednesday","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 18-Dec-02 8:48am","format":false,"excerpt":"But that doesn't mean it's too late for this week's Tuesday This-or-That ... does it?...","rel":"","context":"In "Personal Q&A"","block_context":{"text":"Personal Q&A","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/personal\/personal-qa"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8294,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/12\/24\/getting_ready_f.html","url_meta":{"origin":6788,"position":3},"title":"Getting ready for dinner","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 24-Dec-05 3:05pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Christmas Eve dinner at the Ks, an intimate affair for twenty-one this year ... this post enabled by airblogging.com....","rel":"","context":"In "Food & Drink"","block_context":{"text":"Food & Drink","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/food-drink"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/images\/05d619692f.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":134199,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/12\/game-day-august-2017.html","url_meta":{"origin":6788,"position":4},"title":"Game Day (August 2017)","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 12-Aug-17 10:05pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Another fun game day today, with a larger crowd than usual, which just meant more opportunities to play different games. I won't mention all the ones I saw out at various times -- since I didn't catch them all (Sushi Go!, Tsuro, Forbidden Island, Exploding Kittens, Betrayal at House on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Gaming"","block_context":{"text":"Gaming","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/gaming"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/DDQ-p69XsAAk8Hl1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/DDQ-p69XsAAk8Hl1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/DDQ-p69XsAAk8Hl1.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/DDQ-p69XsAAk8Hl1.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":19571,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2010\/12\/14\/i-am-a-man-of-christmas-carding-virtue.html","url_meta":{"origin":6788,"position":5},"title":"I Am a Man of Christmas Carding Virtue!","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 14-Dec-10 11:59pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Okay, so I obsess a bit about Christmas cards. \u00a0I come by it honestly -- my mom is a diligent Christmas carder. \u00a0Call it pathology, call it OCD, I just feel a keen obligation to \u00a0send out Christmas cards each holiday season. (Note: just like I'm very laid-back viz my\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Holidays"","block_context":{"text":"Holidays","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/holidays"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/santa_claus.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/santa_claus.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/santa_claus.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6788\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"probe.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/images\/probe.jpg\" "\\"Probe\\"")
This year there was a chance my folks would be here, so I borrowed a game from them I’d not played in many, many years: Probe, <\/em>by Parker Brothers (1964, with a redesign\/re-release in 1982).<\/p>\n