5WHP!
They say “brevity is the soul of wit” – and I’ve just set a record for the shortest SBGA News sub-heading ever. 5WHP indeed. That’s because on a cold night at Tara’s this July with a full complement of eight members, only three scored points – the other five Went Home Pointless – possibly a new record. The intermission entertainment was provided by the Zarubin sisters’ children who were having a cousins sleepover and made a video about it – good work guys, send us the YouTube link! Also welcome to Tara‘s newest family member Lenin, the cute but destructive Basenji, named after Valdimir Ilyich Lenin, not the differently spelled Beatle.
The games were Pictionary (main) and Pass the Pigs (backup). The advertised main – Six Second Scribble – was abandoned at the last minute as our host Nicole couldn’t find it, possibly buried somewhere as a result of moving house. There were significant modifications made to the old favourite Pictionary – and when I say old, I mean we were playing with Matt‘s family copy dating back to the mid 80s, the last time it had ever been out of the box. The modifications are an attempt to reduce inequalities imposed by the team draw system. It is a teams game, and graphical talents among us are highly variable, so by altering the partnerships during the game we sought to more evenly distribute talent pairings, and arrive at a final individual placement ladder that avoides the sharing of points. I think it worked well, but I would say that as I won. 🙂 Second was Wayne and third Nicole.
The backup Pass The Pigs was a close and fast game marked by many changes of leadership. At the last round (there were ten rounds with most players averaging six pigouts) I was trying to tip Wayne out of second place and needed 24 points to do so, and rolled 25 points of piggy goodness – but with encouragement from various spectators, took the fateful pigout risk and rolled one more time to score a double razorback 20 pointer – enough points to steal the win from Nicole. It could have gone either way. That’s the same three placegetters as in the main game, so Peter, Louise, Tara, Matt and Genelle all WHP.
Take a look at the score graph, it shows myself overtaking Louise, Nicole and Matt to lag 2nd placed Genelle by only 15 points, and Wayne has surged up to overtake Louise.