Two delightful conversation games

There are two delightful games we have been playing in our family during the last few years. Both are very entertaining, but also very intellectual. Usually our moms, my sister, Aunt Bea (the sister of Mommy Jean), and, in case they visit us, Uncle Frank and Uncle Guido (the brothers of Mommy Friede) participate in them. The mother and sister of Mommy Friede are unfortunately not fond of playing games at all.

The first one we call “The Know-All”. One player picks a random entry from Wikipedia; if he does not like it he picks another. It can be some strange word or the name of a person. He then tells everybody what he picked but without the explanation. He then writes the explanation on a piece of paper from a notepad and puts it into a cloth bag. The other players make up fanciful explanations for the entry which they also write down and put into the bag.

Example given: James Venture Mulligan. Correct explanation: Ireland-born Australian prospector and explorer. False explanations: British 19^th-century horror author whose most famous work was the Gothic novel “The Second Doppelganger”, American inventor of the escalator, British 20th-century historian best known for his studies of ancient Egypt.

The player who chose the entry then reaches into the bag and pulls out one explanation after the other, reading it out loud to the other players. These other players then have to guess which explanation is the right one. Every player who guesses right gets a point. For every player whose wrong explanation is chosen both the player who chose the Wikipedia entry and the player who wrote the false explanation gets a point. If no-one guesses correctly the player who chose the entry gets an extra point.

The game ends when all players have picked an entry. The winner is of course the player with the most points.

The other game is called “The Mad Scientist”. One player comes up with a weird hypothesis in any science - physics, geology, history, literary studies, fine arts, whatever. The other players are fellow scientists who refute the hypothesis. Examples given: The Swiss are descendants of the Aztecs, electrons have a brain, human beings are not most closely related to monkeys but to elephants, the Mona Lisa was not painted by Leonardo da Vinci but by Michelangelo.

The mad scientist then has to try to convince the other scientists of his hypothesis. The other players are allowed to come up with objections which the mad scientist then has to refute somehow. He has ten minutes for this attempt to convict the others. After each player has been the mad scientist once the players then vote who most convincingly defended his mad hypothesis. If there is a tie the players who were voted for have another five minutes to defend their hypothesis. This continues until one player finally wins.

Both games are a lot of fun and have often caused roars of laughter.

Do any others of you play similar games?