CrapScrabble (UPDATED! Now with more gravy!)

in Random Crap

My friend, Dr. Pants, just pointed out that I’ve never been on TableTop before, and that’s true, but it’s also true that the games I’m really good at are mostly made up by me and my family.  But that’s sort of nice because it makes it easier to win if I’m the only one who knows the rules.

My favorite game is Drunk-Catchphrase, which is just Catchphrase but…you know…drunk.  Basically, in each round of play you have to drink for different things.  Like a drink every time you think you’re explaining one word but really it’s a different word but you’ve been using it wrong your whole life.  The other team drinks if you’re using the wrong word but your partner also has been using the word wrong and guesses the answer.  Then the next round you have to drink every time you say the word “Um”.  Then you pass out.

CrapScrabble is my second favorite game and was invented by us when my parents came to visit.

BuARgxmCIAAPH8A

Everyone grabs a handful from our giant bowl filled with hundred of old scrabble tiles (and stray dice and some runes for some reason).  Longest word you can bullshit wins.

On our last game of CrapScrabble my dad won with “rigortotoise.”  (The second stage of turtle death.)   He also came up with “ereptiledysfunction” (when your cyber lizard won’t reboot).

My father is dangerous at CrapScrabble.

Full rules of CrapScrabble:

  • Points are given for creativity, lying with confidence, and stealing tiles from other players without them noticing.
  • Points are subtracted for subpar puns, getting caught cheating, and not getting me a drink when you got one for yourself.  
  • If the cat lays down on your tiles they are no longer yours and you must play around the cat until she leaves.  
  • If the cat jumps on the table and scatters all the tiles you have to yell “JENGA” and grab up all the tiles near you.  This is your new hand.  
  • Tiles knocked to the floor are out of play (unless it’s your birthday or you’re under 12, in which case you get them all, but only if you get them from the cats before they knock them under the refrigerator).  
  • Tiles under the refrigerator stay out of play until we get a new refrigerator.  
  • Tiles may be exchanged for a new set, but only if the player does a funny dance first or tells an acceptably embarrassing story about themselves or someone else at the table.  
  • Rules are subject to random change at any moment as long as the new rule is accepted by the majority of the table.  
  • You can turn any tile over to make it a blank tile, but only if you first do that knife trick where you splay open your hand and quickly stab in between each finger.  If you succeed you get as many blank tiles as the room thinks you deserve.  If you fail we get to replace your tiles with our extra Q’s for however long it takes you to apply the tourniquet.
  • Cats can never be banned from the game, but a live ferret or a particularly angry bird may be used as a substitute cat, if medically necessary.

So, this post is my official challenge to TableTop.  Let’s do this thing.  (But you have to come here, because my cats get travelers’ diarrhea something fierce and you do not want that.)

UPDATED:  The brilliant KWadsworth just shared the best thing ever with us and now it’s going in the game too.  I’ll let her explain:

It is time to tell you about Surrealist Poker.

This was something that my college friends came up with (I’ll explain how shortly) where the twist in the rules doesn’t apply to the game play – rather, it applies to the BETTING. It’s just plain old, straight-up, five-card-draw poker; but, you can bet anything. And I mean literally ANYTHING.

What I mean is – the dealer for each hand deals out the first five cards like usual. The dealer also has a piece of paper and a pen. And the first person opens the bidding by stating what they are going to bid – and it can be ANYTHING IN THE ENTIRE WORLD. One opening bid I remember was “three cacti”. The dealer writes that down. And then everyone else has a turn betting, and they too can bet ANYTHING. And the dealer writes all that down.

The fun comes in with the discussions people have negotiating the comparative worth of each bid – does “a herd of stampeding Mogwai” MATCH the current bid of “1953”, or does it RAISE the bid? Because if it raises the bid, everyone has to go around and either ante up with something else, or fold. And of course their new bid could end up unintentionally raising the bid again, which sets off another round of discussion, and often another round of bidding.

Once you’ve all settled on all the bidding and are finished, it’s time to show your hands – and the winning hand is ascertained the same way it is in regular poker. And then the dealer reads off the ENTIRE LIST of all of the random shit that’s been bid over the course of that hand before presenting it to the winner. Then you get another dealer, another piece of paper, and you start over.

This was PERFECT for a bunch of arty and nerdy college students who had more creativity and goofiness than they had money or shame. And I did actually win 1953 in a hand once.

(I said I was going to explain how this happened – it’s actually even more ridiculous; a couple in our ranks were apparently playing strip poker once, and played to the point where they were both sitting there naked – and yet, for reasons known only to God and the two of them, decided that instead of doing anything naked-sexy, they wanted to KEEP PLAYING POKER. But they had no more clothes to bet, so they started betting sex acts, carefully keeping track of their ongoing bets on lists. One of their roommates found one of the lists one day and asked about it, and that’s when the idea of keeping track of poker bets on a list got adopted for more general and less salacious purposes.)

Conclusion: This is the best thing ever and must be adopted immediately. I think we just found our lightning round, people.

In the event of a CrapScrabble tie (or whenever someone farts audibly) the challengers get a new handful of tiles,  and five minutes to create the best thing they can come up with (which will be hidden from their opponent) and they then move to Surrealist Poker-style betting on who has the better word/words/miniature Eiffel Tower made of tiles/whatever.  Then the opponents reveal and explain their creations, and the winner is rewarded with the paper list of prizes.  (The list should be pinned on their homemade CrapScrabble sash or crown, which they can wear to all future games and most black-tie events.

I want to play right now just so I can say “I see your sack of sloths, and I raise you the gravy. ALL THE GRAVY.”

That’s probably the most bad-ass thing anyone has ever said.

139 thoughts on “CrapScrabble (UPDATED! Now with more gravy!)”

Read comments below or add one.

  3. Wow. And to think I came close to discarding a bag of scrabble tiles yesterday when I was clearing out the basement. I could throw in the BINGO balls I was going to toss as well. Like the proverbial Hen3ry, the numbers will have to be silent.

  5. I am DYING. And trying to figure out how to turn this into a drinking game.

    Do they sell just letters for Scrabble separately, or do I have to buy 5 Scrabble games and throw away the boards to play CrapScrabble?

  8. I think I’d excel at Crapscrabble. But I have two questions:
    1. Is there a time-limit? On the one hand I hate to be rushed, but on the other hand, think of how much a Major League Baseball game would be enhanced by the use of a shot-clock.
    2. If the cat coughs up a hair-ball on my letters, can I use it as a blank?

    (No time limit. Play continues until everyone gets distracted or hungry. If the cat horks on your tile you automatically lose. That is the cats way of disqualifying you. ~ Jenny)

  9. Well this is truly craptastic. Can’t wait to introduce this game at the next family get together. Bonus is that I’ll always win.

  10. If only I was able to drink alcohol sigh
    I’ll never truly appreciate the full enjoyment of this game 😀

    (There is a non-alcoholic version. Instead of drinking you can spin around in a circle for 15 seconds at a time. ~ Jenny)

  15. This TableTop would be EPIC. Let’s Kickstarter the shit out of this so they can come to Texas and film it. May I suggest that Wil bring his pets as well?

  16. I’d win this game, hands down, in part because (right now) I’ve got the letter “D” (two points) in my pocket AND I’ve got two Christmas flasher bulb lights (each worth 7 points).

  17. Have you ever heard of “Mow”? My aunt taught me, kind of the same principal only with cards, not Scrabble tiles. It sounds right up your alley, or back street, or front porch, or under your refrigerator, or maybe under MY refrigerator! Which ever is closest and has a dead mouse under it…

  22. If you don’t have cats, just plain-old Phonetic Scrabble can be really funny. Words must be real, but if you can sound it out, it counts!

  23. Does your Dad win every game he plays? Those are great words. I, unfortunately (for this game anyway), am very bad at lying. What happens if you accidentally play a real word? Is there a challenge for that?

  24. I am officially going to have to scour yard sales and thrift stores for old, incomplete Scrabble sets. This game sounds awesome.

  25. Looking at that photo of all the tiles in giant bowl, I realize that I don’t want so much to play the game as much as I want to push my hands deep into the bowl and let the tiles slowly trickle off my hands. Repeatedly. You know, where it almost feels like a relaxing massage. Can I call that a game so I can still play with you guys? You can catch the tiles as they fall off my hands. Otherwise I’ll be sitting in the corner with the giant bowl and playing with the tiles.

    (That is honestly the reason that bowl exists in the first place. The feel of the tiles and the noise they make when they lightly crack together. No one walks past it without putting their hand in. ~ Jenny)

  26. And there was a run on old Scrabble games at all 2nd hand stores around the world.

    I seriously, seriously want to play this. It’s awesome.

  28. my family invented the “dictionary” game. The rules were that you and your team would pick a word in the dictionary that you were sure no one else would know the meaning of and then either make up your own meaning or use the real meaning. The other teams would have to also think of a meaning and then we all picked which one we thought was real or not, or something along those lines. My Grandfather’s go to answer was always “A kind of fish”. You never knew when it would really be a fish…

  29. I play a lot of scrabble with my grandma. When I was in high school I made my best friend start playing with us. A few years ago my friend admitted to cheating. Sometimes she would have more than 7 tiles, she would look up a word and assure us it was in the dictionary when it was not. I think you two may be related.

  30. Does the cat/JENGA rule also apply if the cat eats a tile? I just want to be sure I’m clear so I’m following these very specific rules to the letter of the law:). I can tell these are serious.

  31. And now I have to hoard Scrabble tiles, thanks Jenny😜 I would love to be at that TableTop taping with you and Wil. I bet that would be a epic level of wordplaying.

  32. #5 Sydney: You can buy letters without a board if you pick up a Bananagrams bag, but those are fairly pricey — thrift stores and yard sales are more likely to have lots of tiles for nearly-free.

  33. If anyone who does not have a cat wishes to play, I have a couple slightly used ones you can borrow. I only want them back when they learn not to wake me at 2 a.m. by screaming in my face in two part harmony.
    Cats….

  36. I pretty much feel like life has been a lie up to this point. How have I made it so far without a giant bowl of scrabble pieces? Also, I second the putting the hands in the bowl idea. It will probably go down much nicer than all the times I slide up to my elbows in yogurt pretzels at the health food store. People, apparently, frown on that.

  38. I could totally try and kick ass at CrapScrabble! Sounds like a blast, and my Dumbass cat would fit right in with Ferris and Hunter.

  39. Drunk Jenga is also awesome. You write stupid things to do on each little piece and you have to do whatever is written on the piece you pull out. The drunker you get, the more likely you are to do the stupid stuff.

  40. This is tremendous! First, clearly everyone here is showing up at your place for game night. Second, my dad needs to know about this game. The man cleans up in both regular Scrabble and Fictionary (wherein you make up a bullshit word and an equally bullshit definition, and try to pass it off as legit). Apparently the ultimate secret weapon in Fictionary is to use the phrase “of or pertaining to” in the bullshit definition. Sounds very Miriam-Webster-y. Fools people every time.

  42. I love that you have to specify “a live ferret.” Sounds like there is a backstory there.

  43. You need to box that shit and sell it in the liquor store accompanied with a bottle of wine. But you might need a new name I don’t think the scrabble ppl would want to be associated with it.

  44. I once talked my way into using “Oxpit” (it’s the pit where you keep your ox) in a regulation Scrabble game, so I am so looking forward to playing this. Thanks!

  46. My friends would probably refuse to play this version with me just like regular scrabble. “Because librarian” is their defense.

  47. Oh god people don’t discard your old Scrabble tiles — send them to me. Or at least one “C” and one “W” because I once thought it was a GREAT IDEA to make scrabble-tile jewelry for a friend of mine. And I’ve never seen as old a set at a garage sale since.

  48. This.is.so.awesome!! You just beat my boyfriend at making up games, and he’s the original inventor of Aquaduck (which involves using a microphone stand as a golf club and people attacking you with super soakers).

  49. My mom hordes scrabble tiles and she’s always finding them at Goodwill and other random resale shops. I’m pretty sure I could make a monster bowl of them with her sets

  51. It is time to tell you about Surrealist Poker.

    This was something that my college friends came up with (I’ll explain how shortly) where the twist in the rules doesn’t apply to the game play – rather, it applies to the BETTING. It’s just plain old, straight-up, five-card-draw poker; but, you can bet anything. And I mean literally ANYTHING.

    What I mean is – the dealer for each hand deals out the first five cards like usual. The dealer also has a piece of paper and a pen. And the first person opens the bidding by stating what they are going to bid – and it can be ANYTHING IN THE ENTIRE WORLD. One opening bid I remember was “three cacti”. The dealer writes that down. And then everyone else has a turn betting, and they too can bet ANYTHING. And the dealer writes all that down.

    The fun comes in with the discussions people have negotiating the comparative worth of each bid – does “a herd of stampeding Mogwai” MATCH the current bid of “1953”, or does it RAISE the bid? Because if it raises the bid, everyone has to go around and either ante up with something else, or fold. And of course their new bid could end up unintentionally raising the bid again, which sets off another round of discussion, and often another round of bidding.

    Once you’ve all settled on all the bidding and are finished, it’s time to show your hands – and the winning hand is ascertained the same way it is in regular poker. And then the dealer reads off the ENTIRE LIST of all of the random shit that’s been bid over the course of that hand before presenting it to the winner. Then you get another dealer, another piece of paper, and you start over.

    This was PERFECT for a bunch of arty and nerdy college students who had more creativity and goofiness than they had money or shame. And I did actually win 1953 in a hand once.

    (I said I was going to explain how this happened – it’s actually even more ridiculous; a couple in our ranks were apparently playing strip poker once, and played to the point where they were both sitting there naked – and yet, for reasons known only to God and the two of them, decided that instead of doing anything naked-sexy, they wanted to KEEP PLAYING POKER. But they had no more clothes to bet, so they started betting sex acts, carefully keeping track of their ongoing bets on lists. One of their roommates found one of the lists one day and asked about it, and that’s when the idea of keeping track of poker bets on a list got adopted for more general and less salacious purposes.)

    (This is the best thing ever and must be added. I think we just found our lightning round. In the event of a CrapScrabble tie, the challengers will have 5 minutes to create a new word (which is hidden from their opponent) and they then move to Surrealist Poker-style betting on who has the better word. I want to play right now just so I can say “I see your sack of sloths, and raise you gravy. ALL THE GRAVY.” ~ Jenny)

  52. you used to be able to buy scrabble tiles in almost any colour imaginable (I bought dark blue) but I can’t find the supplier online anymore. they do seem to be coming up on eBay though so you could add some random colours to increase game complexity.

  53. Oh, I love the idea of CrapScrabble. I’m going to have to start buying Scrabble boards now. Along with half the world, most likely.

  54. I like Scrabble using only Flemish words. You can never have to many Os. Czech is a good alternative.

  56. This is great. We used to play phonetic scrabble, which included entire sentences if you can sound it out. But I think this is even better.

  57. For those looking for just tiles (not wood) check out Bananagrams. An excellent game (fast paced no waiting around) and could definitely be used for Crapscrabble. Would LOVE to see you on the TableTop show. Looking forward to TableTop Game Day in April!

  58. Scrabble is a contact sport at our house. We play a game every day and it can get pretty violent. Those tiles could take out an eye if flung hard enough!

  59. I like this game already and I haven’t even played it yet.

    Also: I keep laughing every time I think of “ereptiledysfunction” (when your cyber lizard won’t reboot).

  60. I expect to read a story about Thrift Stores having a run on Scrabble games in the next week or so. And maybe people having their houses broken into and the only that is missing is the Scrabble game. Because some of these people strike me as shady…just saying.

  62. You are SO my hero & Cosmically related to me, it is hilariously wonderful!
    I’d get together with some of my more weirdly-canted family & friends, and we’d invent and play games like what you describe:

    One favorite was The Dictionary Word game, which followed many of your rules.
    FWIW, this was back int the early-to-mid later 70’s.
    My older sister and I also came up with a sort bicycle “dog-fighting (as in: AIRPLANES, not dogs)”
    using those plastic dart-guns. I was about 18, and she about 24 when we did this.
    NOW there are Paint-Ball things.
    I feel cheated: I could have been famous !
    Your carry the torch onward, My Sistah! ;

  63. Seriously…. where can I buy a bag full of scrabble tiles? I feel like this is not a “want” kind of item, but a “if I’m on an island and I can take only one item” kinda thing

  69. Sold.
    This Saturday night’s Game Night shall now officially include CrapScrabble. Perhaps with Rory’s story cubes, Jenga blocks and Keva planks mixed in with the tiles…and wine. This sounds like a wine game.

  70. For another variation, my friends and I have the scrabble rule that if you make up a word and you can draw a picture of the word, it counts. Our two favorites:
    1) Jammeow = cat in a jam jar
    2) Merwolf = wolf from the middle up, mermaid from the middle down

    Try it. So fun.

  73. This reminds me of the game of Spoons that my cousins and I played with Grandma, when we substituted a fork for one spoon and told Grandma that the last one to notice the utensils missing had to get stabbed in the hand with the fork. 🎉

  74. This sounds incredible! I have the cats but need more tiles. I’ll be shopping tomorrow! If there’s a Kickstarter to get Tabletop to Texas let us know. I’ll contribute. 🙂

  76. We have a “cheating is encouraged so long as you’re slick enough to not get caught” rule in my family. Imagine my surprise at my first sleepover when I learned this rule was not standard in all homes.

  77. “Tiles under the refrigerator stay out of play until we get a new refrigerator.”

    Harrumph. Don’t you own a yardstick?

    Also a great cat game, by the by. Yardstick plus whatever’s under the fridge … chase!

  78. Rigatortious. . My new favorite word. Laughed so hard I nearly poured my pants. Thank you for sharing! Awesome!

  81. I would FAIL at this game so hard. Which just makes me want to play it that much more. ‘Cause sucking at something is so easy. And I’m lazy.

  84. Oh my god this game would be amazing for us, we spend almost all of our weekend playing drunk versions of 5 second rule, rummikub and ring of fire. Drunk CrapScrabble would take our weekend social activities to an all new high. Or low. Depends how bad at the game you are.

  85. Some creative person who works in Polymer clay could make themselves an epic set of letter tiles. Not sure they would clink as nicely in a glass bowl, but bonus points for art. I LOVE this idea. And the poker game where you can bet anything in the world.
    I bet all of the leftover candy canes from Christmas.

  86. We have a version of Scrabble, it’s called “No Rules, Dirty Words Scrabble”. Obviously it’s an adult only game because the only rule (in No Rules Dirty Words Scrabble) is that you have to play a dirty word or a word that can be used in a dirty sentense. You can reuse other players tiles you don’t even have to stay on the board – after a while we don’t even take turns. Adult beverages makes this game a lot more fun. 🙂

  88. My family would love CrapScrabble and I’m so upset I sold the Scrabble game at my yard sale when I sold my house and just about everything I owned. Another penalty in CatchPhrase could be to make someone say a word most people mispronounce and embarrass themselves. Such as élan, cacophony, and nuclear.

  89. “I bet all of the leftover candy canes from Christmas.”

    There was one hand where someone bet “teenage angst” and another person matched that with “the 83-year-old Indonesian lady who wraps all your dry cleaner hangers in paper”. that may have been the hand with 1953 in it.

    another time I tried betting “yahtzee”, and things ground to a negotiating halt when I had to explain that I was not betting a copy of the board game Yahtzee, I was betting “yahtzee” as an independent concept. I still don’t quite know what I meant. (Probably nothing. It was midterms and I was sleep-deprived.)

  90. I have zero Scrabble tiles at my house, but there IS drinking and cats that constantly lay on crap that you’re working on… so I’m halfway there.

  91. I’m terrible at regular Scrabble so this would be great for me. Although when it comes to games that involve drinking, I never understand why the loser has to drink MORE. I always think the prize for winning should be to get drunk. This is why I still don’t truly understand the rules for “King’s Cup” because I try to lose and then forget the rules when I black out.

  92. So hilariously true story- when I was in high school, we had a youth lockin at my church (Basically 30-40 teenagers determined to stay up all night, with 4-5 chaperones desperate to go to bed). Around 4 am we decided to start playing Scrabble, got bored with it, and started introducing our own rules. Rule Number One being that you were allowed to make up your own words so long as you could also come up with a legitimate sounding definition for said word. My favorites (that I can still remember): Rubnarfgekokidy (the state of being severely depressed and/or sarcastic about life.), Parlexio gas (the cause and cure of rubnarfgekokidy), and Cwinjalazo (An Arabian taco, only found at Canadian Taco Bells). Your version sounds like ours on Steroids (or just alcohol?). I can’t wait to try it at our next wine night.

  93. Well. It just so happens that I have a ridiculous number of Scrabble tiles just lying around my house from that time I thought I would attempt to be crafty. This sounds like fun. I’m so going to make people play it.

    Might I recommend looking up Run for Your Life, Candyman? And then playing with real gingerbread man cookies and red food coloring gel as the blood stains on the gingerbread man? It’s a take on Candyland, but with shooting and stabbing and biting off the head of your enemy. Highly recommended. Just saying.

  94. I’m so NOT telling my teen dd about this. She’d try to negotiate EVERYTHING. And the victims would be her younger sibs.

    And me. She’d break me. More than she already does. I can’t imagine her trying to negotiate the value of a herd of hippogriffs being ridden by anime characters.

  96. I think I need to set up a game of CrapScrabble for my sister’s baby shower.
    I’m a little concerned with farting for another handful of pieces..? What if someone accidentally shits themselves because they were trying to fart because they needed more pieces? No one wins.
    I need to borrow some cats now for this shower. Mine get travelers’ diarrhea too.

  97. OH man. I had already decided to buy all of the Scrabble games at every garage sale for this. Now I need a Scrabble tiara for my winnings. (I already have one for cleaning and one for gardening.)

  98. I’m confused. When you play strip poker, you are supposed to put on the clothes you win. It was a great first date idea because I cheat at poker. Nothing is better than being fully dressed standing next to a naked man who doesn’t know you well enough to know you are really nice underneath all his clothing, and he HAS to do something to get his clothes back so he can go home.

  100. I so want to meet you, and your dad. I came up with areptiledysfunction last month. My neighbour (a single, part-time dad) has a lizard and a turtle for his kids, but he works in Russia so he leaves for a month at a time. I am officially on turtle and lizard duty while he is gone. i declared that the lizard had areptiledysfunction every time his family disappeared.

  101. I don’t know how to incorporate the dice, but you MUST incorporate the runes somehow.

  104. Awesome game! Thank you for sharing. My husband has a disability and gets easily frustrated at board games. He can now play Crap Scrabble with no problems. This is too awesome!

  105. “I’m confused. When you play strip poker, you are supposed to put on the clothes you win.”

    Really? that’s a new one on me.

  107. About 20 years ago my husband and I were living in Nowheresville, Montana and my best friend had come out to visit for two weeks. My husband and my best friend and I invented a game that we called “Fuju”. We were sitting in a restaurant one day and the wait for our food was long and boring, and my friend absent-mindedly moved the salt shaker. My husband picked up the pepper shaker and clinked it against the salt shaker and then set it down in a new place and said “Check”. My friend replied, without missing a beat, “Are you using the 1974 Blue Book rules or the 1978 Yellow Book rules?” and “Fuju” was born. (We called it “Fuju” because that’s what “Fooled You” sounds like when you’re laughing really, really hard.)

    A few days later the three of us went to my husband’s aunt and uncle’s ranch to celebrate Thanksgiving with the aforementioned aunt and uncle as well as my husband’s parents. My husband (Adam, his name is Adam) and my best friend (Ace) started goofing around with a ‘game’ of “Fuju” and my mother-in-law, drink it hand, wandered over to see what was up. After watching a few rounds and cluing in, she asked if she could play. Smirking, Adam and Ace said sure. Adam went, Ace went, and then my mother-in-law slammed her drink down on the table, hollered “Gin!” and got up and walked away. My mother-in-law actually won a made-up game with no rules. I love my mother-in-law.

    Anyway, that’s what your CrapScrabble reminded me of, and I had to share. Feel free to work our “rules” into your rules if you wish 🙂

  108. It’s like Calvinball for Scrabble! I would love playing this game. Maybe I’ll make my coworkers play it at our upcoming retreat. Well…okay…maybe that’s not as great of an idea as I first.

  109. My friends and I regularly play board games (when you play Settlers of Catan, we leave the “friends” part at the door, to be resumed after the game). This sounds like what we need to do next time we play. Definitely. Along with the lightning round. But no cats, cuz they’re allergic. (The friends, not the cats.)

  111. I have a birthday coming up, and just sent this out to all my friends to start collecting scrabble tiles, and also to find someone we can borrow a cat from. Do you have any rules for what happens in the game when you bring a strange cat into a socially anxious dogs home?

    Crapscrabble will become a world-wide phenomenon….in my world…maybe not the whole world. Time will tell on that.

  113. We used to play a game where an obscure word was read and then people would make up definitions and if their definition was picked as the real definition, then you got points. My stepdaughter always had THE BEST fucking definitions. Things like….Old men who live in forests and feed squirrels and rake logs.

  117. Just cut out the middleman and use actual gravy as the currency.
    You’ll probably want to include bowls.
    And napkins.
    Lots of napkins, preferably.

  118. OK, crapscrabble sounds like 50 Shades of Awesome, but I want expanded rules for drunk Catchphrase! Maybe they could all be combined… 1) grab tiles 1a) drink 2) describe the Catchphrase word using only words formed with the tiles 2a) swig 3) Whoever guesses the Catchphrase word must use it in a surrealistic way, ie: “Rosie O’Donnell dressed as a sloth drank a gravy smoothie”

  119. Have you ever played “Fictionary”? One person picks a hard word out of the dictionary and everyone makes up a definition, or, if they knew it, give the real definition. We played it in church youth group one Sunday and I won one round for “panoply — a room that you look across. From ‘pan,’ ‘across’ and ‘op,’ ‘eye.'”

  120. I wonder if you could incorporate Crap-scrabble with Charades…Holy Crap you could dominate the world!! I love Charades and make my family suffer through hours of it as I make the idea cards!

  124. @ comment 17–

    We played Mao all through my final year of school every lunch. As I understand it’s named after Emperor Mao in honour of the random and silly laws he passed. (Like commanding everyone to spend days doing nothing but kill flies) At least, that’s what I got out of Modern History… card games 🙂

  126. No-one believes me that this game exists! I play it with my cousins at Christmas after we all drink too much red wine. It is the best game ever.

  127. This is so much like playing Monopoly with a 6 year old, a 10 year old and a 15 year old dog. The dog’s role is mainly to play Godzilla and stomp across the board at random intervals, turning all properties into the rubble of downtown Tokyo. There is usually a song & dance number, a snack break (I once got to put up an extra hotel because I provided brownies) and lego bricks for houses/hotels (skyscrapers cost extra, earn more rent, but are quite vulnerable to the Godzilla attacks). Game pieces can be supplemented with other toys, but any dolls used in game play must be clothed (this is a family game, folks, so no naked Barbies on my Monopoly board).

  128. I love Surrealist Poker! It’s in one of my favorite movies from when I was a teenager was “Benny and Joon” with Johnny Depp. It was released back in ’93, but I don’t think I ever saw it till 10 years later.

    In the movie’s game, Joon bets that if she wins her opponent, Mike, has to re-grout her bathroom with green grout. Then he raises with a lava lamp and that the loser shampoos his dog. She comes back with “Scrape and Paint the exterior of my house” and his all in is “You take my cousin off my hands.” She loses her hand and has to take home Mike’s crazy cousin, Sam (played by Johnny Depp). They fall in love and are so adorable! Joon is mentally ill, Benny, her brother, is way over protective, and Sam is a total oddball who never learned to read. It’s so funny and makes me cry just a little bit every time.

    I always wanted to join that poker game. You never know what will happen if you join that game!

  129. I’ve played drunk catchphrase. I told my father-in-law’s girlfriend that she’s “never the designated driver” when she was trying to give the clue “bride”. One of her sons-in-law mentions it every time the family gets together.

  130. This, along with some fairly serious karaoke, is going DOWN at the next family gathering (on my side of the family. Hub’s side of the family wouldn’t dream of it…). Thank you!

  131. What a fun game! But I wouldn’t play it with my husband because he knows like a gazillion words and I wouldn’t know if he makes one up and totally bullshit me. But still, that sounds like a fun game.

  133. So… I used to have a friend that was as much of a Harry Potter nerd as I am. We challenged each other to what we called Harry Potter Scrabble. We had two complete Scrabble sets, and each made our own “boards” with only words that are related to Harry Potter. (Hippogriff, Knockturn, Beauxbaton, etc.) The topic can be changed to anything. Only cat related words, for example. (or travel, science, ice cream… anything!) The first person to use ALL of the tiles wins.

  136. I just discovered your blog and I dearly wish we could be friends in real life. My husband had the idea of playing Charades Cards Against Humanity. Basically whatever card you draw you have to act out and if your team doesn’t figure it out within one minute your team has to drink. Needless to say every time we’ve played it has been fantastically ridiculous (and drinks)

  137. I remembered reading about your crapscrabble game a while back. When we were trying to decide what game to play after Thanksgiving dinner, I brought it up. Thank you for sharing it. We had so much fun! A few of my favorite words: teenagoney – the agony of parenting teens, bumpdabang – when you stub your toe on a corner wall, dowopenitis – a sickness caused by singing do-wop music on a corner, and zooyhathaing – a zookeeper leading the animals in Hatha yoga.

  138. lol. I’ve been looking all over the net for this game.. figures that my favorite blogger was the one who posted it. LOL 🙂

  139. We’ve decided to keep a list of our words and their definition/s. We call it the Craptionary!

Leave a Reply

MY BOOKS:


shop

Subscribe to the bloggess, y'all.

Enter your email address and receive notifications of new posts by email. It\'s like I\'m stalking you, but more efficient.

Archives

ALL THE COOL KIDS ADVERTISE HERE:

I fucking love these people & not just because they support my wine-slushee habit:

Flourish in Progress: (T)hug Life: Part hood. Part good.

Pregnancy Calendar at Alpha Mom: Amalah’s week-by-week guide to the miracle of pregnancy and all the various indignities that come with it.

The Mack Files: Digesting life in bite-sized pieces through the lens of clichés, quotes & “truisms”.  Often irreverent, always honest.

Barking at the Moon: If your dog is your furry child, you will laugh out loud at Tracy Beckerman’s book about her family & a one-dog wrecking ball named Riley.

Kieran’s Humor: Not suitable for children, the sensitive or those hoping to get into heaven.

Go Doc Yourself Podcast: When a good doc ends, the klatch begins… Join hosts, scientists, and friends, Erin McCourt and Erin McCartt in weekly documentary dissection.

Welcome to xanaru: A mostly funny blog about the quest for happiness through authenticity, Great Danes and indiscriminate swearing. Plus hand-painted, custom artwork on bags, jackets, backpacks & more.

How the Hell Did I Not Know That?: Humorist Lucie Frost shares daily Instagram reels with learnings of the day—words, music, whatever–with plenty of laughs and all the curse words.

Beautiful Writers book: Writers! This coming-of-career memoir (w/ the BEST advice from celeb authors, real shit you haven’t heard) is life. A page-turning beach read doubling as how-to. #Magic

The Dating Days of Marta O: When I told my sister I was building a blog she said: “Do people still read blogs?” I do not know, but if YOU want to read it, here it is. Keep in mind, my stories about dating after 40 are for the brave.

Where Do I Belong? A memoir of Sarah Carrington: The unbelievable story of growing up in a religious cult in the mountains of Northern British Columbia. What happens to you in life doesn’t make you strong; rising above it does.

CONNECTED: A Personal Journal for Ketamine Therapy Created by writer & patient Katherine Davis for this powerful clinical treatment. If considering ketamine for major depression, check out this essential tool.

Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh: SO GOOD.

Discover more from The Bloggess

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading