Quelf

This weekend saw the advent of a new party activity. Last week, I had been perusing through Amazon.com and I stumbled upon a game I had never heard before......Quelf. "Hmmmm.....," I thought to myself. "This looks interesting." I read the reviews and within a couple of minutes, I had placed my order (with the addition of the Piano/Vocal book for the musical Hairspray in order to qualify for "free" shipping).
On Saturday, Patrick and I ventured to the house of Nate Gross' fiancé. It was to be a classic games night. The invite mentioned bringing your own games, so I brought Quelf. After a few quick games of Fluxx (another great card game), we had enough players to play Quelf. I don't think I have laughed so hard in my life!


Quelf is what happens when someone couldn't decide whether to play Cranium, Curses, Trivial Pursuit, or Imaginiff. They think, "Why not combine all of these games into one?" So that's basically what they did.
In the course of the game, Patrick was cursed with having to say 'yes, sir' (or ma'am) every time he was addressed. His neighbor was then directed to perform a Shakespearian sonnet (pure improvisation) towards Patrick professing his undying love. Patrick could only say "yes, sir". It was pretty amazing. And every time someone landed on a red square, the last person to yell, "Quelf in the land of the farm," had to move back a couple of spaces. My favorite was , "what's 1111111 x 1111111?" The answer was 123454321 or something like that. It said that if you got the question wrong, you are normal and may advance another two spaces. If you got it right, it said something along the lines of, 'what kind of freak are you?" Good times.

We did finish the night playing a couple of rounds of Bang!, but this post is not about that.

Sunday morning, Patrick suggested that I invite Andrew and Nancy to play Quelf with us. I readily complied. It happened that yesterday was also my niece's half-birthday yesterday. This may not have been such a big event, but Rachel has yet to turn one, so Nancy made a cake and brought their family over to our house.

We ate dinner and settled in for our game of Quelf. It was just as good as Saturday. Nancy was cursed with having to put the game box under her shirt. She put it in her back and we called her 'square butt'. That was nothing compared with Patrick, however. He was cursed with having to put his thumbs in his mouth while it wasn't his turn and if he spoke, he had to touch his shoulders. The card was kind and gave him the hint of crossing his arms.

Garion had to do a rain dance while the timer ran out. Nancy had to do disco dancing (with the square butt) and Garion kept flipping the timer while her back was turned so it never ran out. I don't think I've cried that hard for a while. :)

So, that is Quelf. It is probably one of the best games I've ever played. As we were leaving Caroline's on Saturday, Nate told me, "Don't bother bringing this game the next time you come over......I'll already own it."