The English Language: Not My Strong Suit

Baulderdash is "the hilarious bluffing game" for anyone aged 12 and up.

How to play:

One person picks a card and reads a word.

Everyone grabs a piece of paper and writes down a definition for the word, coming up with something that sounds sensible, and then initials the paper before handing it back to the reader.

The card picker and reader then reads all the definitions, including the right one.

Everyone else then guesses which one is the right one.

How to score:

Choosing the correct definition gets you points.

Having other people choose your definition gets you points.

Writing a definition that's close to the actual definition gets you points.

Now all this may seem like an advertisement for a good time. Note that this is not an endorsement. On the contrary, it is simply an explanation of why I should not be an English professor.

Eddie and I headed over to see J and C and D and D and their friends for board game night. Eddie likes the competition. I like the playing.

Fast forward to the end of the competition when all the playing was done. D had won. Eddie had come in second. Out of eight people, I came in last. Yeah, that's right. Last.

Not only was I last, I had moved only one space on the board from the beginning. Yeah, that's right. One space.

That means that I did not choose the correct definition, I did not write a definition close to the right one, and I had only one person guess that mine was the right one.

That means I suck at this game, which is really a game all about the English language, which should probably be my forte considering how many frickin years I went to school and how many frickin papers I grade.

However, I'd like to chalk the loss up to my creativity. In being overly creative, I came up with answers like [insert obscure word] is a buffet that serves only cold dishes and [insert obscure name] was a back up singer for Chaka Khan and [insert obscure company] originally dabbled in the rubber tree, amassing a small fortune.

See? All these things are very plausible considering the correct answers were things like [obscure state law] bans all roosters from crowing after 10 PM.

So at the end, with my sad little game piece sitting in the first spot after the START, there was Eddie, pointing, wondering why his wife's piece was left behind, gloating that he had come up with the answer that [insert obscure word] was a German carriage, which, by the way, no one else had chosen as the correct answer either. So there.