A river named Trevor

Well, that’s what you get when you attempt to play a game with a child born post 2000, reliant on the general knowledge of a child born in the 1960s or 70s. News flash of the day; my kids’ have appalling general knowledge. In fairness, Harriet is only seven (Trevor was one of her witticisms) though perhaps what was more telling was the fact that neither she nor Jacob could name a household chore beginning with any of the letters that the wheel landed on, after multiple spins. Hmm.

So, the premise of the game ‘Tell Me’ – the grand quiz game’ (found at a charity shop, as reported here) is pretty straight forward. The preamble to the instructions calls it ‘a jolly party game – for young and old alike. Instructive, humorous and altogether enjoyable’. Any number of persons may take part. A ‘leader’ is chosen to operate the spinning wheel and take the role of ‘Impartial Questioner’ (sounded terrifying). Each round is conducted by the Inquisitor selecting a card, reading the question out to the players (like q. name a river, name a fairy tale) and then spinning the wheel to see what letter the answer must begin with (a. Trevor, Edwina Currie). You get the idea.

Actually,  this game, in spite of all the difficulty, was a roaring success. The kids LOVED it. The fact they couldn’t answer half the questions (what child under the age of 47 can name an opera beginning with the letter ‘e’ anyway?) didn’t stop them from laughing their socks off at every silly response they came up with.  No tantrums, no petty squabbles, not even any complaint when the question master effectively cheated by allowing Trevor to pass as correct, just because it was the more entertaining of the possible responses.

We award this game 5 stars. Certainly it was instructive, humorous and altogether enjoyable.

Waddington’s Memory Game: the game that should come with a health warning..

Sunday night and time for another vintage game. What could be more delightful than sitting crossed legged on the floor in the mellow light from our seasonal decorations,  playing the fabulous 1960s edition of the Memory Game?  For the love of all that is festive,  do not try this with a crotchety 7-year-old. We learnt this lesson the hard way.

It all began so well. Harriet got dressed specially for the occasion in her Santa’s Little Helper costume,  and looked thoroughly angelic in an impish kind of way.  Jacob was a little late to the party,  preferring to ‘hang out with his mates’, but joined us one round in, and this didn’t seem to matter too much as we didn’t have any matches by this point.  For anyone who hasn’t come across this game before,  the idea is that you lay out the 50 or so pairs of tiles, face down in a random order and proceed to take it in turns to turn over 2 at a time,  attempting to match the pairs up. Unfortunately, the imp within our midst is rather a sore loser and happened not to be on form on this occasion.

With each round,  and every narrowly missed pairing,  Harriet’s ire became more apparent, and more audible. By the time we had paired around two thirds of the available tiles (which, incidentally are rather charming,  archetypically 1960s in their designs) she was screaming blue murder, accusing all within earshot of cheating, producing floods of tears and making the sort of sounds that you’d expect to hear from a BBC-scripted teenager.  Unfortunately,  the actual teenager in the room was not doing a good job of stifling his sniggers as he took every advantage to claim those pairs that Harriet had marginally missed in the turn prior to his. The realisation of what was coming each time she miscalculated only served to exacerbate her rage further. By the end of the game, I found myself exhausted from the effort of trying (and failing) to keep the peace, Harriet was a sobbing heap, and Jacob sat in the midst of it all, smiling serenely over the spoils of victory, having defeated his opponents decisively. Final score: Jacob 19, Mummy 15, Harriet 8.

Verdict: “It’s not fair,  I hate this game, I hate you,  I’m rubbish at this game, I’m never going to win….. urrrrrrggggg…raaaahhhhh”.

Thankyou Harriet, I think that’s a 1* rating then.