Christmas Day games

I forget where I read about the resurgence of the board game as a Christmas favourite. Maybe it’s true; maybe a tired hack needed to make up a few column inches before their festive frivolities. Nevertheless, if it is a trend we are almost up with it, with a twist. Boggle probably doesn’t constitute a true broad game in the classic Monopoly or Cluedo mould, but it is a tabletop game that engages the brain, particularly when playing in another language.

Our language teacher would have been so proud to see us and our Finnish friend battle our way through round after round of very foreign word play. While almost every word we saw had three or four letters Rowan and I both managed to hit six letters once. That wouldn’t be much in English but here it felt like a huge literary achievement. With dictionary on hand as adjudicator it was a vocabulary enhancing experience: probably my most educational hour of any Christmas Day ever!