xtcian

Plain old checkers. Spent hours on rainy days playing checkers against anyone who would have me.

Battleship as a child.
Hungry Hungry Hippo as an adult.

That says more than I wanted it to.

Oh yeah, Connect Four for me, too. I was UNBEATABLE at that game. Still am. Ian, I challenge you to a match! :)

p.s. Isn't that a picture of you on the box?

Scrabble!

Stratego. Did anyone else even play that game?

Worst board game -- Mouse Trap. It looked so cool on TV, but when you actually played the game, it took 25 minutes to set the stupid mouse trap up and then you only used it once every three games or so. Total rip off. Suitable only for setting up the mouse trap outside and trying to trigger it from about 15 yards away with your Crossman pellet gun. OK, that part was kind of fun, but only until the first time that you actually hit part of the trap with a pellet and the cheap plastic parts shattered. And then I got in trouble for tearing up the game. Man, that game sucked.

Monopoly, but only if I can be the Top Hat. And Parcheesi. And Mousetrap!

By the way, if you like Connect Four, you should try it blindfolded. It's even better!

ouija.

I don't know about favorite, but the most hilarious/worst has to be the one I played in my basement with your sister-in-law, because we were such sensitive and serious teens: The Un-game. Here's their description:

The leading family communication game. This best-selling non-competitive communication game fosters listening skills as well as self-expression. Players progress along the playing board as they answer questions such as "What are the four most important things in your life," and "what do you think life will be like in 100 years?" Special spaces on the board encourage players to describe how they've been affected by frustration, success, excitement, anger, worry, affections and loneliness. This non-competitive game can be a great ice-breaker
or a serious exchange of thoughts, feelings and ideas.

You can imagine how seriously we took it. Seriously.

Stratego - without a doubt was my absolute favorite game as a child. With Clue and Battleship rounding out the top 3.

They have some neat games out there now - spent an enormous amount of time playing Apples 2 Apples Jr. over the vacation, and the adults had as much fun as the kids.

Monopoly as a kid (also Stratego), Axis & Allies as a teenager, and Settlers of Catan as an adult.

My grandfather always crushed me at Scrabble, but now I crush others thanks to his "training" of me.

Another vote for Stratego....

My 7 year old plays a mean game of Sorry and Battleship.

Mastermind. Awesome!

Ooooh, I totally forgot about Apples to Apples! That game is hilarious! I was on a beach trip with the girls this past weekend and we laughed ourselves silly playing that game (um, alcohol may have been involved). It's a good one to play when you want to have a conversation in conjunction with the game - a bit like bunko.

Trivial Pursuit, for sure.

Stratego, definitely.

Axis & Allies a close second, with honorable mentions to Cranium, 22B Baker Street, and Boggle.

Connect Four? Pretty sneaky, sis!!!

Mine was and is Trivial Pursuit.

K, Mastermind was pretty cool. My dad and I played that a lot.

Clue. Why did everyone (even girls like me) always want to be Colonel Mustard?

I liked mastermind (when Ian didn't cheat) and Monopoly. (When Ian didn't cheat).

That being said, I never liked board games, and have just decided not to play games in my adult life. The only exception, Dungeons and Dragons. If I had twice as many hours every day, I'd take two of the extra hours to make my life less crazy, and spend the other 22 playing D&D.

Hey, Sean? You're about to go on vacation with your wife and me. Prepare thyself for the coming of the games.

Sean, it's not my fault that everyone loved me less, and I took it out on you. Winning was ALL I HAD, DONTCHYA SEE?

i like perfection and mousetrap. i just moved into electronic games as soon as my little fingers could manage to stick a battery into a piece of plastic.

my kids have a game called gassy gus which has an actual plastic farting guy and that is pretty hilarious. also the elephant game that blows butterflies into the air was a good one.

ok so it takes me like 2 seconds to move past board games.

do card games count? lunch money is a great grown-up card game, with a deck full of punches and kicks and awesome pictures of the creator's kids.

i also like the board game called khet where you have to move your pieces to deflect the lasers from the sides. it's like chess with lasers.

As a child, Stratego. There's nothing better than deceiving your opponent into a wall of bombs, far away from the flag you have hidden elsewhere. I also liked a version of Go called Pente. And I was such a vicious competitor at Hungry Hungry Hippos that I could win even with the broken hippo.

As an adult, Wise and Otherwise. You get the stem of an obscure proverb and have to make up the end, trying to get others to guess that yours is the actual proverb, e.g.

If you take a squirrel out of the water . . .
a) the squirrels on land will throw him back in.
b) he will be very grateful.
c) the water level will go down.

Without a doubt, Axis & Allies.

Clue. Not just for the mystery, but also because I was totally hot for Miss Scarlet. Also: Stratego, Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit.

And... DARK TOWER! Did anyone else play this game? It was Milton Bradley's attempt to make a boardgame version of an RPG, and it had an electronic DARK TOWER (that took about 27 D size batteries to operate) at its center that controlled all the battles, loot and haggling you had to do at market. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven when I played this game.

Monopoly - because if someone didn't cheat or the board was not thrown in the air in a hail of accusation it was not an official game.

Maybe Connect Four would be a good band name.