The best reason to go to your parents' house for the holidays is...

BOARD GAMES. And at the Knight household we go old school, pulling out ones from the 80's when board game invention was at its height.

Here's the inventory of games played so far (in order of most fun to slightly less most fun):

1) BANDU
This game is probably less known than the origins of carrot cake. Wrongfully overshadowed by the blast-off fame of Jenga, the object of Bandu is to stack up the assorted objects and be the last tower standing. But where the difference comes in is that every object is awkwardly shaped making this not only the thinking man's Jenga, but one of the best drinking games of all time.



2) CLUE
We're going back to the basics. Clue is the origin of all things awesome and you could not have grown up in the U.S. without having Professor Plum, Colonel Mustard and Miss Scarlet a part of your vocabulary. We brought out the who-done-it game in a recent family trip to the Oregon coast and then my brother and his wife surprised us by bringing the updated version home for the holidays. It is nice to know that not much has changed since the game was first released in 1948 other than a few murder weapons (a trophy?) and rooms (the final guessing room has changed from a stairway to a pool).



3) GUESS WHO
The suggested age of this deduction game is 4-12 and rightfully so. I have fond memories of asking "Does your person wear glasses?" and then proudly flipping down all those classless losers who weren't important enough to be picked at random from a pile of cards. But unfortunately at 26 this game has become a bit less challenging where after two rounds of guesses a winner is clearly defined. Nostalgia wins over game play.



4) PICTIONARY
Because yelling "banana hammock" at the top of your lungs is rarely socially acceptable.