Ransom Notes - The Ridiculous Word Magnet Party Game, 3+ Players

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Once everyone has read their entry, a judge for the round is randomly chosen, and he decides whose entry is funniest and best, and that person wins the round. Everyone replenishes their word magnets and they play another round. Whoever wins five rounds wins the game. Cipher Academy: Each student in class 1-A introduces themselves by filling out a blank "introduction crossword", so that its answer spells out their name. Throughout the early manga chapters, each student's crossword is shown to the reader. The crossword of one of the students, who is called "Anonymity Requested" and insists on hiding her identity, is filled not with her handwriting, but with cut-out characters. I dearly wish I had taken more pictures, but here are two entries for the prompt “Summarize the Star Wars movies:” So aside from potentially running out of word magnets and not having more displays to show your sentences on I’m sure you could play with a bigger player count than 6.

Turn your game nights into hours of ever-fresh hilarity, tears, and drop your face with the word magnet party game that will have your friends creating unbelievably terrible phrases you'll never forget! Once you painstakingly separated all the magnetic words. And some are tiny! My poor chubby little fingers could not cope with I or it’s and other 1 to 4 letter words. Grab a handful aiming for around 75 but you don’t have to count, unless you know, you have to, in which case this is going to be a looooong game! Laying out the words in your play area can be a little time consuming and I’ve not yet found a method that works well for grouping and finding words easily to use so I’ve tended to group by word length. Grab your magnetic board and you’re ready to begin. To determine who will be the judge for the round, spin the bottom of the box which you placed in the middle of the table. Along one of the sides of the box it says “you’re the judge”. The player that is closest to where this side of the box is pointing becomes the judge for the current round. The box has been spun. The player that the “you’re the judge” side is pointing towards, becomes the judge for the current round.

Examples:

In "Little Girl Lost", the ransom note for the Senator's daughter is made from letters cut from a newspaper. Ponch detects a strange odour on the paper which the lab later identifies as brewer's malt. Throughout the game you cannot replenish the word magnets in front of you. Thus the players have less words to choose from as the game progresses. The game is structured so there’s not one person who’s “it” and has to sit out the fun. They also stipulated that whoever is judge of the round may chose his own answer as the winner, but it had better be awfully good; and the other players can unanimously overrule him, if necessary. Some of the funniest answers were just a word or two. I love family games, but I’m horrible at learning new rules. Here are a few other games I’ve reviewed:

We played with kids ages 12 and up (younger than the suggested age). In theory, you could play with younger kids, but even though the play is simple, it can be surprisingly mentally taxing (unless some inspiration jumps out at you), and I don’t think younger kids would have understood the point, or had fun with it. Ransom notes are perfect for adult game nights, quirky holiday gifts, and hilarious birthday gifts for smart people. The game is rated 17+ for mature content, but can easily be made family-friendly by removing some of the prompt cards. Regular readers will know I don’t have a problem with racy humor! There was just a slightly forced, smirky feel to it, and I wish they had just chosen more neutral words, and let the double entendres arise more naturally, because they’re funnier that way. I like deciding when I want to make a dirty joke, rather than getting buffaloed into it because we’re at a party and that’s how you have to act. Possibly I am overstating this issue, because I am a mom who was playing a game with several teenage daughters, and I may have been on high alert.

In Things to Come endless world war causes society to break down to such an extent that a newspaper is shown with all the words printed in random fonts, implying that a complete letterpress font with all the letters in it couldn't be found. The newspaper looks incredibly creepy as a result, which very effectively portrays societal breakdown.

Al Bundy sent one of these to his TV hero Psycho Dad on Married... with Children. He spells "Psycho" with the words S-Y-K-O, claiming that it's impossible to find "P"s and "H"s in USA Today.

We enjoyed playing the game but it was quite fiddly and whilst I can see why the magnetic words were so small bigger would have been better for my clumsy fingers. 75ish words is a lot to look through when on a time constraint to make up phrases. This meant that some players, mostly me because I still wanted relatively perfect sentences, could take a longer time causing other players to be left waiting for them to finish. If you want a little bit of fun this could be the game to include in your evening… though the pieces are small so you may still be finding them weeks later if not properly accounted for during each phase of gameplay.