Gaming With Grandma - 26

Another episode of my regular Saturday morning gaming group consisting of my mother (Grandma to our kids), my daughter Maddie, aged 6, and myself.

First up was Madeline which was selected by Madeline (Maddie). This is basically a memory game with a fair dose of luck where players move around a board representing the city of Paris searching for the 5 lost puppies of Madeline's dog, Genevieve. Maddie and I shared the win finding 2 puppies each. Grandma came 2nd with 1 puppy.

We then moved on to another of Maddie's requests - Tumblin' Monkeys. It's a Ker-Plunk rip-off with little plastic monkeys instead of marbles. I think I enjoy it slightly more than Ker-Plunk (which isn't saying much) because the monkeys will hang on the sticks and you can sometimes slide them off onto other sticks when you pull a stick out. The winner is the player with the least monkeys at the end of the game. I won with 3, Grandma came 2nd with 12 and Maddie came 3rd with 15.

18 month old Georgia peeks out from behind a chair in the background

Next up was another kid's game - the Snail Game. I loaded this game on BoardGameGeek and apparently I'm the only person who owns the game out of all the people registered. This would have to be one of my earliest memories of playing a board game. My grandmother bought it for my brother and I in the early 70's. Players lay card tiles on a track on a board of coloured (red, yellow, green & blue) squares. Whether you may lay a tile or not depends on background colours of the tiles and the relationship of other similar tiles already on the board. The winner is the player with the least number of tiles at the end.

Apologies for the blurry photo

Maddie then left to watch some episodes of Futurama on DVD while my Mum and I sat down for a game of Scrabble.

I went first after drawing a D to Mum's I.

Turn 1 [Me] FEE 12, [Mum] (FEE)D 8
Turn 2 [Me] NOD(E), [Mum] (D)AB 12
Turn 3 [Me] EL(F) 7, [Mum] (N)O 2
Turn 4 [Me] (FEED)ING 13, [Mum] (NO)ISE 10
Turn 5 [Me] (P)E(N) 5, [Mum] FIV(E) 18
Turn 6 [Me] QU(I)Z 44, [Mum] (G)OAD 7
Turn 7 [Me] (N)OR 5, [Mum] T(R)AM 18
Turn 8 [Me] CA(B) 7, [Mum] (O)X/(O)X 50
Turn 9 [Me] (Q)I 11, [Mum] (O)PEN 12
Turn 10 [Me] (A)WE 14, [Mum] (O)IL 3
Turn 11 [Me] PA(L) 15, [Mum] HEL(P) 13
Turn 12 [Me] (QUIZ)zES 24, [Mum] (C)RAG 8
Turn 13 [Me] BOaTIN(G) 20, [Mum] (CRAG)S 8
Turn 14 [Me] (S)EW 14, [Mum] (B)IN 10
Turn 15 [Me] TOOT(S) 7, [Mum] E(N)SUE 18
Turn 16 [Me] (T)RY 10, [Mum] DE(W) 7
Turn 17 [Me] (D)AM 12, [Mum] T(O)N 4
Turn 18 [Me] (M)ACK 17, [Mum] (A)IR 6
Turn 19 [Me] (K)ITE 24, [Mum] H(I) 5
Turn 20 [Me] (H)U(P)/U(S) 20, [Mum] JA(R) 10
Turn 21 [Me] (DEW)Y 11, [Mum] (R)U(T) 6



I was left with a V and G for minus 6 points and Mum was left with R,R,L for minus 3 points.
Probably the most obscure words I played were QI (Chinese 'life force'), MACK (wet weather gear i.e. Mackintosh), and HUP (a cadence marker). I was pleased to see Mum get the top-scoring word of the game with the 50 point skillful placing of a single X to form OX twice and score a double word score both ways. Final scores were [Me] 293 and [Mum] 232. I averaged 13.95 points per turn.