Articulate – A Slightly Competitive Board Game…

After writing about Bookchase the other day, I thought I should dedicate a day to writing about my favourite board game, Articulate. I first encountered this game in my A-Level English Language class and since then I have been hooked on it!

The purpose of the game is to move around the circular board from start to finish. You achieve this by describing a word on the game cards without saying that word. For example, for the word ‘door,’ you might say, ‘you open it to come in a room.’ Once your team members guess the word correctly you can take another card. The number of cards you can correctly guess as a team equates to the number of spaces you can move round the board; the first team to make it all the way round wins.

The spaces on the board represent different categories, including:

• Object
• Person
• World
• Nature
• Random
• Action
• A club symbol (now dubbed super-random)

All teams start on the ‘object’ space on the board, so they have to guess as many objects correct in the time limit, and then move on that number of spaces. The category that they land on is what they will be describing on their next go. All of the categories appear on the game cards. If you land on the club symbol, you have to check on the game card which category has the corresponding symbol next to it. For every card you pick up this can be a different category.

This game is immensely entertaining, and it has been know for groups of us to stay up well into the night playing it! However, the game can get pretty competitive!

Bookchase Board Game

In the January sales at work I stumbled upon a board game called ‘Bookchase.’ The purpose of the game is to travel to each of the six different coloured section, and answer a question correctly to receive a book of the corresponding colour. Once you have collected one book in each colour you have to roll the exact number necessary to land on the centre square to win the game. However, it is necessary to do this without ‘losing’ any books on the way – therefore it is necessary to avoid the ‘sentence or reward’ cards. The game is similar to ‘Trivial Pursuit,’ just with a sole focus on books.

Even though the game is completely book based, it is not just a game for book lovers. My boyfriend has become thoroughly addicted, even though he is not a regular reader. All of the questions have multiple choice answers, but that certainly doesn’t make the game any less challenging! The questions also focus on six different genres, so there are areas that every player, reader or non-reader will be confident in answering.

The questions all come under the following genres:

• Fantasy and Science Fiction
• Children and Fun
• Travel and Adventure
• Classics and Modern
• Poetry and Plays
• Crime and Thrillers

Included with the game are some miniature ‘book jacket’ stickers, which you can stick onto the plastic books. All of the jackets have titles on them so you can customise your game to your reading tastes.

This game is incredibly fun and definitely very competitive! I would recommend it to any book-lover and encourage them to get everyone involved so they can see that you don’t have to read lots to win this game! Penguin have also released their own version of Bookchase using their trademark coloured covers for each section, which is beautifully presented in a giant box that looks like a book.

Enjoy!

If you enjoyed this please read my article on the London Olympics: http://bit.ly/IaTK1X