0
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Players: 2-8
Time: 30-60
minutes
We like games at our house. In fact, the Missus would have a
game night for the family and our friends every week if she could. With our family
ranging from ages five to 41, it can be a challenge to find something that we all enjoy
and can play. That was one of the problems we had with “Why did the Chicken . .
.?”
The premise of the game is simple. One person is the judge and draws a
riddle from the box, along with drawing two Noun cards. The judge then inserts the nouns
into the riddle, poses it to the other players, and they see who can come up with the
funniest answer. The instructions say that the judge should rotate, but we skipped that
part. We broke into teams too, which isn’t really according to the rules either. This
is one of those games that, like Monopoly, needs
some “house rules” to help it along.
It should be a real
blast.
Now the rub here is that the creator of the game assumes that
everyone has a decent sense of humor. We all know that is simply not true. Or at least
we all should know that.
My wife and I are new in the neighborhood and we
thought it would be fun to have a few couples over for drinks and games. We broke out
“Chicken” as the first game and quickly discovered just how few of our neighbors can even
attempt to be funny. The night was a bust and the game had a good bit to do with
that.
Because the game came from an independent gaming company and I want
guys like that to succeed, I wanted to give it another chance—I couldn’t base my opinion
on such a bad experience. A few weeks later we got the game out again and tried it with
our kids. Another bad idea. Apparently a five-year-old’s humor varies too greatly from
a 20-year-old’s, and a nine-year-old with no attention span (can you spell A.D.D.?) as
the judge is a recipe for failure.
Fast forward to last weekend when we
had some different friends over. These guys are kind of like the buddies you had
in college, only now they have really well-paying jobs. After a couple of drinks, we
grabbed a couple of our favorite games (“Operation” is a hoot when you are half twisted)
and proceeded to party down. “Chicken” went over really well with these guys. They got
the point of trying to make your own joke.
We all laughed at the plays on
words and the different directions people took with simple questions. It helped that we
all knew each other and could get the inside jokes.
I’d play this game
again, but only with people that I know well enough to laugh along with. You should try
it out too.
