Family Board Games

Family board games are a great way to bond with your whole clan. If you’re looking for some fun, try these classic board games!

Monopoly

The object of Monopoly is to make money — and to make your opponents go broke! Each square on the board is a different “property”. If you have enough money, you can buy a property and charge rent when others land there. The game ends when all but one player have gone bankrupt. The original game used street names from Atlantic City, New Jersey, but now different versions feature such locations as Las Vegas, Nevada, and London, England. The recent “world” edition features places from all around the globe and even uses electronic bank cards instead of pretend money.

Scrabble

Your school vocabulary words come in handy in Scrabble, a game in which you form words from groups of letters. You earn more points for playing rarely used letters like x and for placing words on double- and triple-score boxes. After all the letters are used up, the player with the highest score wins.

Checkers

One of the oldest games in the world, checkers can be played with almost anything. People have used coins or even rock as game pieces. Today, most people simply use a checker set and board. Two players set up 12 pieces each on a 64-square board and advance toward each other diagonally, capturing their opponent’s pieces by jumping over them. The winner is the one who captures all the other’s checkers.

Trivial Pursuit

Trivial Pursuit came out in the 1980s and became a big hit almost immediately. Players work their way around the board by correctly answering trivia questions that come from six different categories, including history and entertainment. The hugely popular game has inspired many versions, including ones dedicated to Star Wars and the 1980s.