Whimsical Times

I'll admit straight away that I'm one of those people who liked Cards Against Humanity. It appealed to my dark sense of human and worked in my group who aren't as into strategy games as I am and prefer something lighter.

The game does have its short falls and in the wrong group can easily offend, as I'm sure it was designed to. But if you remove the offensive cards you also remove a lot of the humour that the game is going for.

There have been many attempts recently that have tried to emulate Cards Against Humanity. Many of these fall short and others seem more inspired by it and it's success, Super Fight for instance.

Other than the dark and offensive humour, I liked that Cards Against Humanity had a judge and the answers were anonymous until a winner was chosen. This would stop king making, though sometimes if you know your friends well enough you could guess who played what.

After seeing a tweet by Wil Wheaton, he of Table Top fame, about another comedy word game I had to see if I could find it. That game is Word Whimsy by Cryptozoic Entertainment. After checking I couldn't find it in any UK retailers and getting it from the US would cost too much. So I kept it at the back of my mind while I slowly built up my board game collection.

Eventually the game began to appear in UK retailers websites but never in stock. I even asked at Thirsty Meeples (a board game cafe I highly recommend in Oxford) who had it on their website but alas they had sold out and didn't have a store copy to play.

Roll on another month and I spot it on Amazon, for a ridiculously low price, so I snatched it up and waited eagerly for its arrival.

When Word Whimsy turned up I was pleased to see that it had a lower player count than CAH (3-7, my gaming group is often three) and the same judge system. Better yet it comes with these great envelopes to put your answers in so the judge can shuffle them without knowing whose is whose.

One minor issue about the previously mentioned envelopes is that even though the game lets you use all seven cards to answer you can only fit five in the envelopes and even then it's a tight fit.

Much like CAH you get a hand of cards, seven, and one player who is a judge who picks a question card. The big difference and what has made this easily replace CAH, for me, are the cards you get.

Unlike CAH where the jokes are already written and the funniest answer can win any question, regardless of sense, in Word Whimsy you have a hand of nouns and adjectives. This means you're free to make an answer with one to seven (ahem...five) word answers.

I'll give you an example. Say the judge has the question “What would be a good metal band name?”. You would look at your hand of seven cards: NINJA, KITTEN, GOD, MONKEY, ZOMBIE, STICKY, BEARDED, for instance. Now you can pick any combination of these and put them in any order you wish. Already I'm sure many of you have come up with a great answer so I'll refrain from putting mine, and that is the beauty and simplicity of the game.

I could get the same words in multiple games but I know that each of them can be used to make different answers for different questions, or even the same question. You're also not forced to be offensive like in CAH. The game has words like SQUIRTING, HOLE and WEE and these can be used offensively, or not, the choice is yours and that choice and variety is really what makes the game great.

You also score every players answer, over twelve rounds, even a bad answer can get you one point, except in a seven player game where the last place gets nothing. Then at the end everyone adds up their score tokens and the winner, shockingly, is the one with the most points.

If you even remotely enjoyed a game of Card Against Humanity or perhaps you love it but have found that you can only laugh so many time at “Dick Fingers” then I would recommend this game. Or if CAH turned you off with its crude humour but you want to play a funny word game then I would recommend this to you too.

Word Whimsy is the new Cards Against Humanity, if you can find it get it.