Scattergories – “Brainstorm Your Fabulous Brain For Some Epic Words”

 

What’s Scattergories About? How To Win A Game Of Scattergories?

For my family and me, Scattergories is a stress-free word game. It’s sporadic and funny. We usually use it as a kind of “warm-up game.” It doesn’t take long, it’s light and easygoing. It is all about getting those brain juices flowing so that when you play or main game, you’re in a prime brain space.

How Do I Win At Scattergories?

You get a list of topics and a letter. Then you quickly think up a unique answer that you think no one else will write down. If you write something no one else writes, then you get a point. Get the most points over a certain set of rounds (usually a full page worth), and you win!

Should I Buy Scattergories By Hasbro Gaming?

What a great question and the answer is yes! I truly think that everyone needs a “light” board game to play when they need a filler game. Scattergories isn’t the most complex or competitive game. As I’ve mentioned in the intro, what it does right is get you thinking. For me, it helps get me thinking outside of the box.

What You Need To Ask Yourself Before Buying Scattergories

So what I would ask yourself is this. Do you want a stress-free, replayable, and good fun kind of board game? Then I would say that Scattergories is definitely for you. If you’re looking for something a little more dense and full of strategy and competition then I would recommend something like Happy Little Dinosaurs.

Scattergories General Information
Play Time: 15-30 Mins
Publisher: Hasbro Gaming
My Recommended Age Group: 13+
Player Count: 2-6
Difficulty 1-10 : 4

What’s The Gameplay Like For Scattergories?

Everyone gets three things: Pencil, Lists, and Numbered blank lists for your answers. Then when you all have your materials you choose someone to go first. Before anything else, everyone should agree on what list you all want to start with. Usually, list #1 is a good place to start. Then someone rolls for everyone’s letter. Very shortly after rolling, you want to flip the hourglass timer in the middle of the table.

Now’s your time to shine, read that first topic at the top of your list and see what you can think of. For example, let’s say you got the letter “P.” Then you look at #1 on your topic list, and let’s say it’s “Superheroes.” Okay so now we want to start to think of all the different superhero movies and comics we can remember for a good answer. So the first superhero that comes to my mind is “Professor X” from X-Men. Most likely of the 3-5 other players playing, no one going to put Professor X. So that’s good for me, easy 1 point.

BONUS POINTS

This is something that you always want to think about when you’re thinking of your answers. It’ll be hard to do when you first start to play but it becomes easier and easier the more you play. If you can think of an answer that has your given letter and has two words for the answer then you get double points. I will give you an example, using the letter and topic we just used. Let’s say instead of putting “Professor X,” we put “Peter Parker?” So obviously with Peter Parker being Spider-Man, with the double P’s, we would get not one but two points for that answer.

Then as we just did in our example we would keep going down our lists 1-12 until we run out of time or we come to the end of our lists. If you ever get to the end of your list and there’s still time. Go back up your list and see if you can change an answer and get some extra points. It might end up winning you the game in the long run.

What To Do When The Time Goes Off?

Okay, so you’ve just put down the best possible answers that you can muster up. You feel pretty confident that you got some good unique answers that no one has. You also realize that you also have quite a few common answers that others might also have. So now the timer goes off and everyone reads off their first answer.

The first thing to remember is that if you and another player have the same answer, then everyone has to cross it out and get no points for the answer. You don’t have to go in any particular order but just say your answer one by one out loud. This is the time that everyone in the group gets to see if everyone’s answers are acceptable or not.

Don’t Forget To Have Fun

Take it easy and don’t get so competitive that you lose the chance to have fun with the game. What I mean by this suggestion is this. Sometimes your mom, uncle, or friend might be thinking outside the box with their answer. For you it might seem crazy or way off the beaten path. It’s good to think outside the box and try to stretch the meaning of the topic the best they can. It’s what makes Scattergories fun and exciting. So I just suggest that everyone tries to keep an open mind with everyone’s answers if you can see where their answer is coming from. Then maybe just let them have that point, obviously, you have to feel this part out. I find it’s just more fun to have everyone trying to think outside the box and come up with crazy answers.

To encourage people to write fun and interesting answers, you gotta give them a little wiggle room to really “bend” the topic. Now keep in mind there’s a huge difference between “bending” a topic and just not making any sense at all. I’ll let you and your group figure that out for yourselves.

How Hard Is Scattergories To Learn, Teach, And Play?

It probably took me less than 5 minutes to read through all the directions and rules. It then probably took me less than 5 minutes to explain them in common words to my family so they easily understood how the game worked. Scattergories have very few rules and complex directions. It’s a straightforward game once you get the hang of it.

For adults, this will be an easy game to learn game. Now for the younger players. When I think about it, I don’t think that my son (8 years old) would have fun. Just because it’ll probably be hard for him to think of a good list in his head of answers. Now for my daughter (12 years old), I think she could play with us adults and still have fun and enjoy herself.

Scattergories Box Setup

We’ve had Scattergories for a long time, we recently found a new version at Wal-Mart so we bought it. It had new topics and we happened to see new things to write about so we got it. The box setup for the older version was nothing much. The new one on the other hand has a nice little box for the list cards. The outside of the box and black and has a nice design on it. Overall everything fits in the box nicely. The only complaint that I have is that Scattergories still doesn’t come with pencils in the box! It’s a small thing but I would think that they would at least put some “Golf pencils” in the box so you don’t have to scramble to find something when you play every time.

Scattergories Game Rules

All Scattergories Category Lists

Thank you for taking the time to look over my review. I hope that it brought you some kind of value. If there are any new games you’d like me to check out feel free to contact me and let me know. Thanks for everything, God bless…