Lucy Rycroft-Smith’s Eight Games

Something I find particularly insidious is the bland, unimaginative place between sexism and ageism that women of a certain age get relegated to once society decides their value has decreased –  as their bodies no longer support babies and their attitudes no longer support other people’s idiocy. My mum has now been a grandmother for fourteen years; I work with extraordinary academic  colleagues at Cambridge who fit this category; my own grandmother and great aunt are still happily living independently and continuing to learn languages, engage with politics and volunteer on local committees well into their 90s. Grandmothers – indeed grandparents – are a broad church, and categorising them by age or the coincidental fact that their children happen to have children seems bizarre to me.  Which game would I take to visit my particular grandmother – not a granny, but decidedly a Nana? Something that would make us both laugh like drains, as we have so often over the years: Egyptian Rat Screw (played with just a deck of cards) is one of my favourite games for a good cathartic giggle.

A crowd-pleaser than works in a noisy room, with plenty of fast action and tense bluffing – the obvious choice would be Skull (and Roses).  I’ve watched entire pubs of people gravitate to watch six-player games of this, with roars of frustration and cheers of delight from onlookers as the cards are revealed. Bonus: you can skip the small talk about who’s had babies and/or got married (yawn) as it’s pretty engrossing.

I was lucky enough to spend a weekend with a houseful of teenagers recently (my daughter and her friends).  Rather touchingly, they were happy to hang out with us – due, I would suggest, to the hilarity of the games we were playing rather than our company per se.  We played Telestrations – an instant hit with almost everyone I play with, mostly because much like Wikipedia and philosophy, it seems there are only ever at least six degrees of separation between any starting sketch and something that looks rather more  – shall we we say – penisy.  I figure if teenagers are going to draw them anyway (and I was a secondary school teacher first, so I can assure you they will), they might as well draw them to amuse us all.

In all my years of gaming, I have always stated perfectly straight-faced that there is one game – the best game of all time – that never fails to have players whooping with joy every single time.  When I get out the box, everyone laughs, because it looks so childish – but do not be fooled, this is an incredibly enjoyable game for everyone.  There are two levels of difficulty, so you can play against children and still compete hard. It’s fast-paced, intense and completely absorbing. I speak of course, of Loopin’ Louie, the undisputed best board game of all time. (Quite seriously, I would hope that in all but the most tragic of hospital scenarios it would raise a smile and distract from pain, and it’s also easy to wipe clean).