Today I’m joining in a blogging challenge from Dr Tanya at Salted Caramel who asks what our favourite board games are.

Do you and your family/friends still play board games?

What are your favourites?

Naomi and I have a whole cupboard full of board games and jigsaw puzzles. Many of them are vintage and bought because we enjoyed playing them as children, some are actually from our childhood. Here are some games I enjoy, not in any particular order.

Monopoly

As a child I remember playing Monopoly with cousins who would often “steal” from the bank. Later, as adults, Naomi, David and I would often play. David had a particular method of playing which was to buy the most expensive properties and fill them with houses and hotels, often putting himself in debt to do so. This frequently led to his defeat whereupon he would sweep his houses and hotels off the board scattering them everywhere. I’d often still be finding Monopoly houses on the floor days later.

Naturally, as railfans, we all wanted to buy the stations so it was rare for anyone to get the full set. I always liked them and the utilities because they were steady money earners and you didn’t need the expense of houses.

When we were young, we played with the British version of Monopoly based on London streets but later an Australian version came out and now of course there is Monopoly of every description, “Star Wars”, “The Simpsons” and “Harry Potter” I think are a few. I’ve never played these.

Scattergories

Naomi and I love Scattergories. We play it twice a week at least. However, these days we no longer use the timer. For us the fun of the game is thinking of good answers for every question. We like to be able to answer every question, not just a few of them. We don’t want to have the stress of the timer. We think that Scattergories helps to keep our brains sharp.

UNO

I haven’t played UNO for a long time but we used to play it a lot. When Naomi and I worked for the railways, we would often play it with our workmates at breaks or during quiet periods. It was a lot of fun.

Trivial Pursuit

This is another game that I really enjoy but don’t play anymore. I think you need three or four people to enjoy it. That’s probably true of most games. It’s a bit predictable when the same two people play all the time. Anyway, I used to enjoy the different categories of questions. I was quite good at the history and geography ones or famous people but not so good at science or sport. I’d be a lot better at answering cricket questions now than I was then.

Scrabble

Scrabble is another game that Naomi and I enjoy and play from time to time. She usually wins because although I am probably better at spelling, she is better at strategy and usually beats me to the triple word scores. We don’t use the Scrabble Dictionary. I find some of the words in there are very strange and don’t like using them.

Some other favourite games are Cluedo, Scrutineyes and Jenga Good old Ludo and Snakes and Ladders are still fun to play, as are draughts and dominoes.

In our games cupboard we also have Mousetrap!, Green Ghost, Tip It, Pillow Fight and I Wish I Were, to name a few and many jigsaw puzzles.