Wits & Wagers Family from North Star Games, a TOS Crew Review

North Star Games sent me and some of my Crewmates a board game called Wits & Wagers Family.

The age range for Wits & Wagers Family is 8+ and for those of us with more than four in our families, Wits & Wagers is a 3-10 player game (woo hoo!).

The game is easy to learn, easy to set up, does not require a lot of reading and studying the rules before you begin. In a nutshell, you draw a card, read a question from the card, each player makes a guess at an answer, players compare answers, vote on the answer each player (or team) thinks is best using one or two Meeples, check the back of the question card for the correct answer, score.

We learned a lot of history and trivia when we played this game. There are 150 question cards; each card contains two questions (yes, that's a total of 300 questions). Each question is read aloud; each player or team of players guesses the answer (the answer is always a number, how much, how many, how long, how fast, what percent, etc) and then players vote (wager) on which answer is closest to the correct answer without going over.

Right off the bat, we were stumped - the first question we read was about Fruit Loops cereal. I don't buy Fruit Loops because one of my children can't have them (Fruit Loops are not gluten free). Didn't matter that we were stumped, because Wits & Wagers is a guessing game, and we were able to guess, and ultimately score our answers.

My homeschooler and I had fun naming all of the Disney Princessess as we tried to guess how many there are; there is lots of Disney trivia here.

On the answer side of each card, Wits & Wagers Family gives us additional info about something in the question. (Did you know that Joe Jonas auditioned for a part on Wizards of Waverly Place? I didn't, until we got to that card.)

I like the way the game uses kid-friendly questions. I like the fact that we can play a really short game for a child with a short attention span. I like the way the questions are worded, and we talked through the answers aloud, some together (yes, I know that is not the intent of the game, but the questions are worded for "we-go" and collaborating, too, and we are working on that at my house in our autism intervention, and this game is a wonderful activity for that).

We get to work on "guestimating" in a fun way, where we can not be close to the correct answer and still earn points (by voting for an answer we believe is better). Players gain practice and experience making appraisals in Wits & Wagers Family, too. Because a lot of the answers are impossible to know, there's a lot of guessing without pressure in a game, which leads to laughter, when you realize how far over or under your answer is.

I think that we may try to write some of our own questions for the game. Might be fun to measure people or items in our home in feet or inches and make up a question for "our" version of the game.

My teenager wants to play this game with a group of friends in teams. She says that will be "sooo much fun!"

Wits & Wagers Family is a keeper at our house.

Wits & Wagers Family retails for $19.99 and is available at major retailers in stores and online.

North Star Games has a facebook page here.

Read my Crewmates' experiences with Wits & Wagers Family HERE.

North Star Games sent me a Wits & Wagers Family game in exchange for my review and opinion about it. I was not paid for this review and am not obligated to provide a positive review.