I was hoping to pick up Wits&Wagers before the 2005 Christmas season after seeing it demoed on an internet video of a TV segment on board games. It seemed like the perfect kind of thing to take along on my yearly Christmas season tour of South-Western Ontario to see relatives and friends. I usually carry around a few games during my travels, and easy-to-learn, quick-to-play, laughter-inducing games are often favourites. Previous hits include Cranium, Apples To Apples, Time's Up.

Unfortunately, my FLGS did not get their shipment in on time, and I had to wait until the new year to pick up the game. Last Tuesday, J&J Cards And Collectibles was featured in the local newspaper and the article included a quote by yours truly. I took a few minutes at lunch time to go see the folks and J&J and found that Wits&Wagers had arrived. After chatting with the owners for a little while, I headed out with a copy of the game.

We jumped into the game immediately at work. I had read the rules in advance, so I already knew how everything was going to work. I didn't explain very much ahead of time to the rest of the players, choosing the explain-as-you-go approach, instead. That's very unlike me, but it seems suitable for this game. Sure enough, everyone was right into things from the get go.

We definitely had some good laughs at people's answers about the lenght of the Mississipi river and the number of #1 singles by Madonna. The only quibbles that came up were about the US-centric nature of the questions. The population of the US and the minimum age required to be in the Senate were questions likely more problematic to a Canadian audience. I kind of liked it, since it means that the answers were even more wild than they could have been. Since I think the best part of the game is the laughter and the banter, this is a bonus for me. But not everyone agreed.

The final question was all-in and everyone blew their entire stack on the number of #1 singles by Madonna in the 80's and 90's. The answers were close enough that most bets made it to the "smaller than all answers" slot or to the highest answer. When the correct answer was revealed, Saibal proved to have it right. But nobody had bet on Saibal's answer, so everyone lost their cash. Saibal won the game thanks to the bonus points for having the correct answer!

Everyone had a good laugh, and the game was requested again. Unfortunately, lunch hour was over so we put the game away for the day.

W&W is now a staple at lunch hour. The lunch table is getting more and more crowded every day. Well done, North Star Games!

The answer to this will likely change as we play more games. And, of course, it will likely differ depending on the groups that we play with. I plan on keeping your question in my mailbox and hopefully sending you and update when we get more games played.

So far, people haven't complained much about the use of the imperial system. Of course, all of my games so far have been with what I would describe as educated people. Not only are most people university graduates, but we work in an industry where we have to deal with measures in both metric and imperial units. Then again, the only imperial units that we have had come up are length units and I think that people have more difficulty with weights than with length measurements.

To summarize, I think that people have found US-centric questions more annoying than having to do conversions to imperial. SO FAR.

And, of course, I want to remind you that these are very, very mild complaints. Mostly, we have just been having fun.

Personally, I enjoy the fact that people are more likely to get the question wrong because we are not playing cutthroat, but just to enjoy ourselves and, likely, laugh at each other.