I finally got the chance to play one of the only party games I've been looking forward to playing for a long time now. I gathered my four oldest kids (ages 7, 7, 8, and 10), and my wife and her sister together for a quick game, anxious to try it out.

We dove right in without any explanation from me other than, "write down the answer to this first question on your marker boards". The first question had to do with guessing the weight of the largest gold nugget ever found, and our answers were wildly different. However, it turned out that they were all lower than the real amount a rather surprising answer to the question. I didn't benefit from that question, but in the next few questions, I gained a significant lead on the others. I tried to pick questions which would appeal to the kids, but none of us ever really "knew" what the right answer would be, which meant there were a couple of times where all of our answers were too small. It became apparent that betting on the top 4-for-1 space was a good way to go, which I took advantage of.

Everyone really seemed to enjoy the game. When I first explained how the betting worked after the guesses were written down, their eyes seemed to light up with excitement. The kids were very engaged, and all of us really cared about what the answer might turn out to be, unlike most other trivia games where the answer has less impact on the game, and is quickly forgottten. Even the younger ones had no trouble understanding the concept of putting a pair of 5-point tokens, or 1 10-point token on the board against the answers they thought had the best chance.

Even though we were having fun, after 6 questions my 6 opponents all had only about as many points as they had started with or signficantly less. I was pleased to know that I was doing signficantly better than anyone else, with 115 points. This sense of satisfaction was not because I felt like I had to win the game, but because I had been very curious to see how well someone who is relatively good at answering trivia questions would do in this game against children, and was hoping that the one with more knowledge would have a better chance of actually winning. It looked like that would be proven true - until the last question.

The last card asked "If you weigh 100 pounds as measured on the earth, how much would you weigh on the moon?". I thought this question would have the best chance of someone nailing the answer among the 7 questions asked. I myself was quite sure of the answer - I knew that it had to be between 60 and 70 pounds. My 10-year-old actually blurted out something about reading in a science book that things on the moon weigh about 1/6th of their earth weight, but I reminded her to keep her answers to herself and honestly let everyone know that I really didn't think that was true. The "All-In" rule brought out more chips in this last round. I put twenty points worth each on the highest 2 answers (100 and 70). My 8 year-old boy decided to go for it, and put all 65 of his points against one card - his own answer of zero pounds. I felt sorry for him, and tried to convince him to do something else, but I didn't press it as I knew that sometimes a kid has to learn the hard way. The next highest answer was 20

I haven't been so shocked at an answer to a trivia question in a long time: ! Then I realized what this meant for the eight-year-old who I had pitied seconds before, and my wife started shelling out 260 points-worth of chips to him.

Not only did I not win, I didn't even come in second.

Final scores:
8-year-old: 325 points
My wife's sister :80
Me: 75
One 7-year-old: 50
The other 7-year-old: 45
My wife: 45
10-year-old: 20

This is a great trivia game! I'm definitely bringing this one out with my non-gaming relatives this Christmas. It's obvious that someone who knows their facts can do well, and will probably do better than anyone else. But everyone stays in the game until the very end, and there's a good chance that a younger person can pull out the win. If nothing else, a child can place the same bets as a wiser adult and come out with a similar score. Whether I am actually wiser than my younger children may be up for debate however.

The whole "weight on the moon" thing is actually ambiguous. Weight can be used to mean mass or force; weight in mass does not change between the moon and earth, weight in force is about 1/6 on the moon vs. earth.

In Metrics this is easier, kilograms is mass (and thus a 100kg man will weight 100kg on the moon), while Newtons is a force, so a 100N man will weigh 16.6N on the moon. But "pounds" can be either force or mass.

Uhhhh...I'm kind of off topic, aren't I? OK, sorry, I'll go away now...

Civilized people measure weight in pounds though, and understand what was meant. It's only those barbarian people that use the metric system that can't seem to understand the difference and have to make everything confusing.

Wits & Wagers is a fantasticly great game. It has been a blast every single time I've played it. The hype is true. Spread the word.

Go Liberia and Myanmar!

-MMM

Also, the answer "16.6" sounds a lot like someone just took the 100 pounds and multiplied by the approximation "one sixth" that every (clever) school child knows. I suspect that the answer is not truly accurate to that level of precision.

If you believe wikipedia, the "equatorial surface gravity" of the moon is 1.622 m/s^2 and that of Earth is 9.78033. (But the Earth's "average" gravity is 9.80665.) The rest is left as an exercise for the reader.

Yes, this has always bothered me! I could not find a source that had the type of accuracy that I was looking for. I did triple source the answer (which made me feel like I was doing my job), but it seemed like each of the sources was using the 1/6th rule for its answer.

Even if measured at sea level, the weight on Earth would be slightly different depending where it was measured due to the non-circular shape of the earth. So I assume the correct weight on Earth would have to be measured at sea-level on the equator. But there is no sea-level on the moon, so I am not sure what altitude the "correct" measurement would be taken from.

Since I could not find any sources that answered these questions, I figured the school child answer would suffice. Anyhow, everyone told me I was making the question too confusing when I tried to clarify these ambiguities...

to which the only appropriate answer is: "DUH!"

Which, funnily enough, means the answer calculates as 16.58 pounds, or 16.6 if you're writing a single decimal place.