The Best Games To Play On Christmas Day

Monikers has been a surprise hit with my board game-playing friends, and it’s led to some hilarious exchanges as we try to get our teams to guess the answer. The aim is simply to rack up points by getting your team to guess what’s on your prompt cards, similar to Articulate or Taboo. The twist is that you use the same set of prompt cards three times over three rounds, with progressive restrictions on what you can use as a clue (first round: describe the card; second round; describe the card in one word; third round: use one action only). As the rules get more severe, the ludicrous mimes and incorrect guesses get only funnier and more bizarre.

The prompt cards lean heavily on popular culture and can be a bit risqué too, so this one’s for adults only. But you may discard as many prompt cards as you like before you settle on a set that you want to play with, so there’s no risk of being left high and dry to mime something you’ve never heard of. Monikers is suitable for 4-16 players, so it’s ideal for a crowded house at Christmas or New Year and sure to get everyone laughing.

Rebecca

There are lots of variations of this game, which is a bit like horizontal Jenga, set in the Antarctic. After a quick set-up, each player must knock through a piece of ice, without causing the floe to collapse and the penguin to fall in the water.

It’s great for kids who want to bash things to get rid of some pent-up energy, but also requires logical thinking, and is different from the normal card/dice-based games. Doesn't take long to play, so a nice game to keep everyone entertained in short bursts throughout the day.

Jenny

Professor Puzzle’s Main Course of Murder is a murder-mystery party game for four to eight players, that requires your wits and imagination! With ten different cases to choose from, one player as the detective, and the rest suspects, everybody must recount their alibis during interrogation.

The perpetrator hides in plain sight, and it’s up to the detective to track them down! Have you got the ability to think-on-your-feet and get away with murder, or will an innocent person be arrested for your crimes?

Becks

Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza is as bonkers to play as it is to say! It’s like that brain-scrambling test where you have to speak aloud the colour of the ink a word is printed in, but the word itself is the name of a different colour. Ouch.

The whole deck of cards is dealt out equally among all, then each player takes it in turns to lay an unseen card, whilst at the same time announcing, ‘Taco’; next card goes down with ‘Goat’; another card with ‘Cheese’ and so on, repeating the sequence until you make a word/picture match. When this happens, the last person to slam their hand down on the pile has to pick them up and add them to those they’re already holding. To win, get rid of all your cards. Simple, right? Sort of? Wrong!

It’s surprising how quickly the confusion kicks in and how hysterical that makes everyone. Hilarious. You can almost become giddy with it, which is a bit of a problem as hesitation and any mistake — even the merest hint of a mistimed slam — is punished. And we haven’t even mentioned the chaos a groundhog, gorilla or narwhal card creates…

Anyone can play, and the more the merrier, but avoid this game at all costs if you don’t like to laugh!

Cheryl

Whilst not the newest game around, you can always rely on Articulate to entertain a crowd. The gameplay is simple — just describe as many words on your card as you can in 30 seconds and be the first team to get round the board. It’s probably better suited for adults and older children, but given the team format, you can probably find a way to accommodate the whole family and still have plenty of laughs. If you’re quick on your feet, you’ll excel at this game. If you’re not, don’t worry — you’ll bring a lot to this game for other, often hilarious, reasons.

If you take your board games quite seriously, split up any couples when you form your teams. Otherwise, you too will get absolutely thrashed by your brother and sister-in-law who use their couple shorthand to beat everyone (eg ‘I bought you these flowers on your birthday… We had this meat for dinner last night… Where I went for Kevin’s stag do…’) and so on. Or you could just play the game and have fun — it really depends on how competitive you are!

B

Not your everyday game premise, Pass the Pigs involves rolling a pair of pigs onto a table to score points. Keep rolling until your turn ends and the reins are handed to the next player. Perfect your throwing technique to wrangle those porcine pieces into ever-more extravagant positions, and you’ll soon find your point tally soaring. The first person to reach 100 points wins the game. Sounds simple, right? Think again — if your pigs land on their sides but facing in opposite directions, you lose all your points for that round. So, the more you roll, the riskier it is to play. And you better hope they don’t ever touch, or else you could be eliminated from the game entirely. Ouch!

It’s a game I’ve been playing with my family for years. An annual treat for us, it’s great to play during a Christmas get-together and the perfect pick if you want to try something different. There’s no skill involved either, just a great deal of luck and a whole lot of risk-taking. And, once the festive tipples are had, you’ll have a blast trying to distinguish a Snouter from a Leaning Jowler… Who knew that throwing small model pigs could be so entertaining!

Victoria

You walk in the front door and hear the unmistakeable sound of your naughty cats scrambling to hide from you after they have been messing about. It is now your task to uncover what happened in the scenes leading up to your arrival — and why they happened! Players must use their knowledge and tact to conclusively uncover the truth, by working out the suspect, crime, place and motive.

The game starts with one randomly selected card from each category being placed aside – these are the secret details of the catty crime. The remaining cards are dealt out to the players, who each have a clue sheet. This can immediately be filled in with any facts you can deduce from your own hand, just as you would with a logic puzzle. Now the fun begins as everyone takes turns to ‘challenge’ their opponents to reveal one of the secrets on their cards. Then, by a process of elimination, you can work out which feline was the culprit, what scrape they landed themselves in, where they’ve gone to hide and the reason behind their antics. Was it Malcolm, now in the attic, who was climbing plants because he was bored? Or did Bubbles make a mess to get some attention and then conceal herself in a suitcase? You’ll soon work out that it pays to play tactically and ask questions about cards you already have in order to baffle your opponents. And make sure you have your reading glasses at the ready – the letters on the clue sheets are kitten-sized!

Stored in a convenient box, along with some pencils and plenty of clue sheets, this is a ‘pawsome’ game to take on holiday or to a family get-together. The purrfect stocking-filler for any cat lovers who enjoy games and puzzles.

Sonia

The premise is simple: What if bingo, but with birds? This luxury set from Laurence King replaces the traditional numbers with a range of birds, from the familiar to the exotic, all beautifully illustrated.

This game is a perfect for a family post-Christmas dinner, when you’re a bit too full to think properly about strategy, tactics, or how to make a word out of XVHJQII. Instead, you can sit back and sedately mark off your board, or take a turn as the caller. As well as learning a few new species, there are birds whose names are guaranteed to raise a chuckle (blue-footed booby, anyone?).

Though luck-based, the game is not without its moments of tension, as very often the coveted ’House!’ comes down to the last two or three tiles. Laurence King have a whole range of these, offering sets featuring Cats, Dogs, Bugs, Trees, Monkeys, Dinosaurs, and many more besides. For the Mystery fan, there’s even an Agatha Christie themed set!

Suitable for the whole family, and educational as they are entertaining, all these sets are a great option for anyone seeking an easy-going game on Christmas day.

Harry

If you’re pony at Pointless but fantastic at Family Fortunes, Herd Mentality could be for you. The object is to think like the crowd. What would most people say is the ‘best ice cream flavour’, their ‘favourite finger’, the ‘most boring sport to watch’ or the ‘worst place on the body to grow hair’? If your answer matches with one or more of the other players, you bag a cow token. Collect seven and you’re the winner.

It’s simple to set up, easy to play, with lots of laughs to be had as you moo-ve through the well-thought-out pack of question cards in this nicely presented game. And with 4-20 players aged 10+ able to get involved at any one time, it’s pretty much perfect for a festive family get together.

Cheryl