Wit’s End Board Game – Ages 16 to Adult

I almost didn’t buy this game because of the negative reviews, but I’m glad I did. This was a Christmas gift for my mother, who loves trivia, and the family played it a few times Christmas night. Could we answer all the questions? No, but had we been able to I think we would have been disappointed. I have to wonder if those who didn’t like the game were individuals who are used to playing games like Trivial Pursuit and getting the majority of the questions correct, and therefore were disappointed when they couldn’t do so with Wit’s End. The board is not confusing, as stated in other reviews. With each roll of the die you can move in one of two directions, landing on either a question type or roll again. As long as you answer correctly, you continue your turn. These are pretty basic concepts for this type of game. Rather than collecting pieces of pie, you advance inward on the board, trying to get to the center, by answering a question correctly after you land on one of the squares where two levels connect. The questions are challenging—yeah, in some cases VERY challenging—but even when you get the answer wrong you feel like you’ve learned something, whereas with other games you either know (or care) about the topic or don’t. After each player made an attempt at his or her question, we’d then allow everyone else at the table to take a stab at it, just to see if any of us would have gotten it correct. The different questions on each card are not categories or subjects (e.g. entertainment, history, sports), but instead are different formats of questions, with the subjects being totally random. “Teasers” are fun rhyming riddles, “Odd1Out” and “Sequence” require you to select the one answer of the four that doesn’t belong or put three items in order, respectively. “Wildcards” can be of any format, but we found the vast majority of the questions we had were to decide whether each of two unrelated statements is true or false. In fact, if I were to have one criticism of Wit’s End it would be that there wasn’t enough variety in the “Wildcard” space, but that could have been the luck of the draw or our perception rather than an actual problem with the game. If you’re looking to show off how brilliant you are at trivia, Wit’s End may bruise your ego a bit. If you like a challenge, though, and have others of a similar mind to play against, this game can be a lot of fun.Read more

I suppose I should qualify my 5 star review by saying that two of us like this game and two hate it but I really like it A LOT. It is kind of like Trivial Pursuit, but there are different types of questions, which use different types of knowledge/intelligence to figure out–it’s not just about knowing facts (though that’s the biggest part of it). I cannot figure out why the others don’t like it and they haven’t been able to articulate what they find objectionable about this game. I think it is really fun.Read more

Pros: – Great for families that don’t feel comfortable with more complex games. – Good for a diverse age group. – Engaging even during other people’s turns, but not so much so that you couldn’t take a bathroom break quickly. – The questions are diverse, many different categories are covered. It’s also nice that some of the answers can be guessed (as in pick A B C or D), whereas other ones YOU must come up with the answer for. It makes it more challenging and a deterrent to auto-winning for some people who inherently are lucky and could win the game just picking answers. – Simple to learn, very straightforward rules and game play. – The game is fairly re-playable. Each card has several different categories, so even if you go through the whole stack, the next time around you may do a different section of the card, or outright not remember the answer anyway even if it’s something you had before. Hopefully they come out with an expansion though. – Shipping was fast and there were no issues with damaged box/bent cards/etc. Cons: – It could be hard or frustrating for a little kid to play. An older kid or preteen could be able to play though. The game says 16 to adult, but I’m sure a bit younger person that is used to trivia games could participate. – The board is pretty simple, it’s not the prettiest game in the world. Overall: The game is fun and great for a diverse group of people from all different backgrounds/different interests. I played at Christmas with family. We sometimes have a hard time playing board games together as anything more complex than this, Scrabble, Codenames, Monopoly, or generic puzzles are not liked and too complicated for them. I am a huge board game nerd and love extremely complex games, I was afraid this would be boring but I really enjoyed it. I would recommend it and may buy it again for other family members and friends. 5/5 stars.Read more