Articulate! is a party game one might call the word version of Charades. Someone is trying to convey the word on the card they drew, while someone else is trying to guess it. The difference is that in Articulate! the person conveying the word is doing so with… more words!
Play starts when the timer is upended. There are six categories on each card, and the active player will attempt to describe the word from the category their team’s token is on – for example, the Start space is Object – without using any form of the word itself. If their team guesses it, they get to draw another, and so forth until the timer runs out. They may also pass on one card per turn, unless they’re playing with house rules like we were; in our case it was twice. Occasionally, instead of categories a space corresponds to the spade symbol, which appears next to one random word on each card. I gather the official rules have special mechanics around this, but again, we were playing with house rules. We also didn’t use the spinner.
Once the timer runs out, the team counts how many cards they got right and moves their token that many spaces on the board. This determines what their category is next time! We found that the Person and World categories were UK-biased, so the others were easier for Mom and I to score high on. Especially Nature! Regardless of where you’re from, though, this is one of those games where the better you know your teammates, the more likely you are to do well. Especially if you can use shared fandoms to your advantage!
Victory, unsurprisingly, involves reaching the Finish space.
I also just discovered that Drumond Park (the company behind Articulate!) have all the cards for free on their website so that folks can play remotely! How cool is that?!
