Last weekend, we did some entertaining -- friends yarbiedoll and I knew from college on Friday night and most of Saturday, and beeler and reba_quate Saturday night. We spent a lot of the time playing games and chatting. At one point Saturday night, yarbiedoll piped up with:

I really liked Pirates until I saw The KKK.

What could have made her say that? Well, it's all the fault of an awesome game called Apples to Apples. If you like words and have at least three friends who will play with you, you need this game. We played for hours.

The basic gist of the game involves matching nouns to an adjective that describes them. The players take turns being the judge. When it's your turn to be the judge, you flip over a green card (which contains an adjective) and the players all pick a red card (which contains a noun) from their hand of seven red cards. The object is to be the player that plays the noun which, in the judge's opinion, most closely matches the adjective for the round. In the case above, yarbiedoll was the judge and the adjective she revealed was "Rough." For a while, it looked like the person who played "Pirates" was going to win, but the last red card she turned over was "The KKK," which she thought was a better match. The conbinations between absurd nouns and adjectives are often hilarious and give players many opportunities to try to influence the judge's decision by playing cards in ways that most apeal to the judge. For example, no matter what the green card I reveal is, if I'm the judge you'll almost always win if you play the "Apple Pie" red card because I love apple pies so much. The decision of the judge is final, but feel free to try to influence the judge.

Anyway, a good time was had by all. Mad props to sethcohen and estherchaya for introducing me to Apples to Apples last year. It's the best game ever. If you like words, you'll agree.