Jacob Davenport

On each turn there will be one judge and the rest of the players will be writers. Pick someone to be the judge for the first turn. Each player will get to be the judge once.

Create a Question
On your turn as judge, take a Question card and two Noun cards from the card box. Put the Noun cards to the right of the Question card in whatever order you prefer, and then read the resulting riddle to the group. For example, if the Question is “Why is … better than …” and the two Nouns are “an alligator” and “an English teacher”, the riddle can be either “Why is an alligator better than an English teacher?” or “Why is an English teacher better than an alligator?” Your choice.

Write Down Answers
Next flip over the sand timer. The other players have two minutes to write down their answers to the riddle. They should put only one answer per piece of paper but may write as many or as few answers as they like. Once time runs out, players may finish an answer they have started writing, but they may not start any others.

Pick Your Favorites
You now get to judge the answers. Select someone else in the group to read the answers out loud, so that you will not know who submitted which answer. That player should collect all the answers and mix them up, then read them. You can ask for repeats as necessary. Choose your two favorite answers; writers of those answers each win one of the two Noun cards used in the riddle. If the same person wrote both winning answers, that person wins both Noun cards. The Noun cards indicate a player’s score. Place the Question card behind the other Question cards in the card box.

Keep Going
Pass your turn as judge to the next person. Play so that everyone gets a turn at judging. The person with the most Noun cards at the end is the winner.

Notes
When it is your turn to judge, feel free to submit your own answers, just for fun. Naturally you may not vote for your own answers, even if they are very good.

When judging answers, it usually helps to split the answers into “maybe” and “no” piles as they are read, and then reread the “maybe” pile until you get down to two answers.

If two or more people submit the exact same answer, and the judge picks it, take out extra Noun cards and give one to each player. Although more than one person may have scored for the same answer, it still counts as only one winner. The judge must pick a different answer as the second winner.