Another new game we’ve recently played during Family Game Night is Blurt. Blurt was a pretty fun board game, especially if you like vocabulary words. You have to get just the right word to win; for example, even if your clue describes a marsh, if the word is swamp, that’s the word you have to “blurt”! (This actually happened while we played.)

Blurt is described as “The Webster’s Game of Word Racing.” Each player gets a turn to read off a card. While he or she is reading, the other players have to blurt out what the word means—this can be done while the clue is being read or after it is read—and whoever gets the word right gets to move forward. Play continues around the circle as each player gets to read a card and the rest get to guess the word. Since we had too many players, we played in teams (which, as you’ll find if you have game nights with groups, is really easy to do with most games).

For example, a card might read, “A partially dried grape.” The answer, of course, is raisin. The first person who answers the clue correctly wins that word. Most clues are longer than this phrase, however.

If you can’t tell who said the word first—or if two people really said it in unison, as was what happened with our group last weekend—you can devise your own way to settle the “tie.” We played rock, paper, scissors to get our points (it was my mom’s first time playing that, can you believe it?), but you could easily make it into a drinking game, redo match, or anything else you’d like to do, depending on your group and appropriate age levels.

Blurt is family safe and even comes with a junior edition for kids to play. It’s also considered educational, since it’s about word meanings—but even more importantly, it’s fun! It’s pretty accessible, easy to explain and start playing, and can be played by most people. The game includes a game board, dice, clue cards, and pawn pieces.

Next month, I’ll be able to review Tribond, another new game we recently purchased bud did not get a chance to play during this month’s game night. (We also played Trivial Pursuit this month, though it was a long, drawn out game that none of us enjoyed all that much! I think it depends on which version you get…)