Uno Flip and Mad Gab

Of the games in that 8-pack we got this weekend, it looks like the original owner just took out the Uno deck and donated the rest so we could get them.  The pack also included Uno Flip, which I wanted to take a look at.  I always felt that Uno could use some expansions, but since it's most entertaining cards -- the Reverse -- is useless in two player games, and we almost never have more players, we rarely play.

What's the twist in Uno Flip?  There's a Flip card, and one side of the deck is colored differently.  So, when you play the Flip card, you flip the deck and everyone flips their hands.  That sounds fun, but the only difference on the "dark side" is that the Draw One card is now a Draw Five card.  Really?  That's the only thing they could think of?  Okay, they also changed the Skip card to a Skip Everyone cards, but that would play the same either way in a two-player game.

Mad Gab was interesting in a surprising way.  And after reading rules for hours and testing a dozen games, it was markedly different, and "different" is a relief.

The shtick is that you are trying to solve word puzzles where some of the words are symbols.  It's more of a party game than we would normally play, but we usually just try out some of the puzzles or read some of the cards from these games to get a feel for it.  In this case, one player holds up a card to their partners, and the solution to the facing side can be seen by the person holding up the card, along with a list of what the symbols are.

Let's look at the one in the photo that has a picture of an elf, then "Habits" then a picture of a hoop.  The idea of the game is that you start saying what you think it says, and you sometimes end up saying the correct phrase even if you can't hear yourself saying it.  So in this case, Ann was saying "elf habits hoop", I coached her to relax and say it faster, and was literally saying the answer "alphabet soup" without realizing it.  

In another puzzle, the clues were "[pea] Tarp Ann".  I thought this would be a funny pick because it has "Ann" in it.  But Anne started with "plate tarp ann", and as the coach I could say, "not the plate, what's on the plate?"  Pea.  "pea tar pan?"  "peatarpin?"  The other reason I picked this one.  My last clue: "Character from our show."  We have been watching "Once Upon a Time."  So, the answer was "peatarpan ... oh, Peter Pan."

These puzzles are clever and very nicely illustrate some of the issues in forming and hearing words.

I imagine it would be a lot more fun at a family gathering with more people cheering or heckling along the way.  But I could see picking this up again sometime and working 20 of these puzzles by ourselves.  We don't need to keep score or call out a winner.  To us, just working puzzles or going through the motions and observing the quirks of each game is what we enjoy.