Creating a home game from other games

[jmangin]

During various game nights I've used material from different party/trivia games in order to create a game that didn’t have an official home version. For example, I used words and definitions from Balderdash to play the front game from Wordplay and the cards from Taboo to play Hot Streak (using the taboo words as the key words players could not repeat). We’ve also used the list of words from Catch Phrase to play Go.

Have any of you done the same for other shows? I’m curious if there are any games that would offer material that could be used for the front game of Double Talk, or (other than looking up random words in a thesaurus) something that could be used for the bonus game of Wordplay.

[TLEberle]

I used Thingamajig to play Go. Isn't Taboo with the predetermined words Taboo, and hot Hot Streak as such?

[jmangin]

Isn't Taboo with the predetermined words Taboo, and hot Hot Streak as such?

The word at the top of the card was the one needed to be communicated to the other players. After one person said a key ("taboo") word, the team continued playing until a second player later used that same key word. The contestants weren't aware of earlier clues since they were wearing headphones before it was their turn to guess/describe the word to the next player.

[J.R.]

A few years back, I "hosted" Monopoly 1990 with a crossword puzzle book. Went over pretty well.

[TLEberle]

The word at the top of the card was the one needed to be communicated to the other players. After one person said a key ("taboo") word, the team continued playing until a second player later used that same key word. The contestants weren't aware of earlier clues since they were wearing headphones before it was their turn to guess/describe the word to the next player.

I'm impressed that you got three people wearing headphones at the same time, and glad to see that the game works. Get in.

Three earbuds, this dongle and it's Your Name Here's Hot Streak. Holy.

[Game Show Man]

The word at the top of the card was the one needed to be communicated to the other players. After one person said a key ("taboo") word, the team continued playing until a second player later used that same key word. The contestants weren't aware of earlier clues since they were wearing headphones before it was their turn to guess/describe the word to the next player.

I'm impressed that you got three people wearing headphones at the same time, and glad to see that the game works. Get in.

Headphone splitter FTW.  I did the same thing for GSC a number of years ago, only I used my own words.

[DJDustman]

Some of the cards in Taboo might be helpful for a Super Password night.

[pyrfan]

Not just game material itself -- I once turned a Toss Across board into a makeshift "Pyramid" Winner's Circle. Worked pretty well, too. And although I've never actually tried it, I bet the yellow answer board for the "Family Feud" home games would make a great Alphabetics set for "Password Plus."


Brendan

[JasonA1]

I bet the yellow answer board for the "Family Feud" home games would make a great Alphabetics set for "Password Plus."

Tried it - it does! And, with a (theoretical) maximum of four puzzles per match, it works for the main game as well.

-Jason

[aaron sica]

We used this at one of my GSC's - the top answer on the survery questions for "Family Feud" make great questions for Card Sharks.

[JasonA1]

the top answer on the survery questions for "Family Feud" make great questions for Card Sharks.

I suppose it works in a pinch for generating a number, but I used the 1980s PC game for the same purpose around that time. First thing I could see happening is that using the #1 answer narrows the guesses to an expected range.

-Jason

[jmangin]

Thought of another...TriBond for Knockout.

[Matt Ottinger]

This is a weird one because frankly, I don't think our demographic is likely to have three married couples over for game playing, but the questions in the Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus board game work perfectly for Tattletales.

[The Ol' Guy]

The most recent edition of TriBond (Will Shortz edition) contains some "which of these is different" cards in the mix. A few other games are out there with the same principle. If you ever run into an out-of-print edition of The Impostor from Great American Puzzle Factory, you'll have plenty of Knockout material. I can think of several out of print games that were adaptations of game shows. Talkin' Tango from Patch was basically the Chain Reaction bonus game/GO. A game called Vanity Chase is pretty much Bumper Stumpers, right down to the game cards looking like California license plates. I have a game here called In Other Words: Bible edition, which is similar to Double Talk/Shoot For The Stars (Toss Your Loaves Upon The Lakes - Cast Your Bread Upon The Waters). Like with Scattergories, Pictionary and other such games, I would figure the Bible Version would be an adaptation of a regular version. A websearch showed a game called In Other Words from the defunct New York Game Factory. I know this may not be a ton of help right now, but if you do a lot of second hand store/yard sale shopping, you can at least keep an eye out for these titles and check them out for yourself.

Watching the episode from the Game Show Vault has again encouraged me to re-build a home version of Winning Streak because of it's neat end game. So many ways to go...like using an old 30-square Concentration or Jeopardy board tilted sideways to give you the top and bottom rows of 6 squares, and either re-covering the game's original cover slides or just make new ones, along with letter cards. Or just sketch out a game board and use letter tiles from Scrabble for Juniors. I doubt if anybody has ever played all 12 available letters on the Streak board, but a logical idea would be to come up with a list of 12-letter words for the bonus so that every pick is potentially playable. In other words, there would be no such thing as a pick that can't be played because every letter can be found in at least one word. It's just a matter of whether you can think it out.

[clemon79]

In other words, there would be no such thing as a pick that can't be played because every letter can be found in at least one word. It's just a matter of whether you can think it out.

Hmm, never thought of that, but that's true, isn't it? You'd certainly want to play with a crossword solver or something like LeXpert, though, because you'd want to minimize the number of situations where the *only* right answer for a subset of the letters is that 12-letter base word.

(Also, I don't remember from the one episode, and even if I did see any others I would have been three years old: did any letters repeat? Like, did a situation come up where Bill would have to say "Okay, give me any word with an R, a T, two E's, and two N's"? No reason why you *couldn't* do that, but if the show didn't and you were looking for verite, that would a) greatly reduce the number of 12-letter base words that exist, and b) likely increase the number of situations that I describe above where the base word is the only right answer.)