It’s the holiday season. This is a time when people are looking for good gift ideas. It’s also a time when families and friends often find themselves sitting together around a table. So that’s at least two reasons to talk about favorite board games, card games, puzzles or other activities.

Recently we had dinner with some friends and they introduced us to Monopoly as a card game. I’ve played Monopoly on a board, but never with just cards before. The rules are a little different, but the game is still familiar and easy to learn. It was fun and (as opposed to the version with a board) there was much more control over the duration of the game, as we could determine how many rounds we wanted to play. One odd trivial point of interest: there is no go-to-jail card.

With my parents we like to play a game called super-Scrabble. It’s a version of the game where we don’t use the board. I can’t remember who taught this game to us. Each person starts out with two tiles. At any time, any player who is able to use all his/her tiles says “go” at which point every player draws another tile. This continues until there are no more tiles. Then each player adds up his/her points. It’s easy to play multiple rounds of this game and this version is a lot quicker because everyone is working with their pieces simultaneously. [Of course playing without a board means there are no double or triple-word scores. Oh well.]

Some years our family has purchased a puzzle and had it laid out on a table. We just sit around and talk while we work on putting it together.

Having shared those thoughts, it’s time for some questions.

Do you like board games? Some people don’t.

What games or activities do you enjoy most during the holidays?

Have you ever played Blokus? (I haven’t. I’m curious about it.)