After a week and a half back in Oregon with my family I can without reservation recommend the board game Wits & Wagers. The tagline is “The board game for everyone” and in my experience that held true. My family hasn’t historically been a big board game family. There are various editions of Trivial Pursuit lying around the house but they don’t get played because:
- Nobody knows most of the answers
- It takes forever to play
Wits & Wagers takes a lot less time to play, usually 25-35 minutes, and everyone has a chance to win based on what they know about the other players. All the questions are number-based (how tall was Napoleon, what year was the Statue of Liberty finished, how much TV did the average American watch last year, etc.) and everyone bets on whom they believe has the closest answer without going over so having an encyclopedic knowledge isn’t required, though it certainly helps. This is a game that benefits from a diverse set of players with different knowledge sets so all the answers don’t turn into guessfests, but it’s still fun with almost any group.
I discovered the game through an article at Wired. The game can be purchased from Target although it may be in short supply so you may have to do some searching but it’s worth it.
Wits & Wagers is a great game. I see from your picture you have a first edition game. The second edition has some cosmetic changes, has increased the odds payouts, and also lets you bet any chips you have won on every round, rather that just the last one. Makes the game even more fun. Try it with the new betting rules (which you can easily do with the first edition).
I grabbed that picture from the North Star Games website but yeah I think I do have the first edition. When some friends and I played we did try a couple games without betting limits and it was fun and we’ll have to try it with increased odds payouts next time.
I love this game! Yeah, we did try it without betting limits, but we kept running out of chips. Hmm, I guess you could start out with less chips.