NERD WORDS SCIENCE
Designer: Eric Slauson and John J. Coveyou | Artist: Tomasz Bogusz
Blending games with learning is a tricky balancing act: too much fun and the education gets lost, but not enough and it turns from being a game into tedious drudgery. Nerd Words Science hits the dividingline dead on and dances along it like a tightrope.
It’s a party-game of guessing science terms from one-word clues, which probably restricts it to a small subset of parties, and it’s not likely to be pulled out after Cards Against Humanity any time soon. But it handles larger groups well (it can cheerfully go higher than the stated 2-8 players) and it’s genuinely fun.
Players work in up to three teams. Each turn one chooses a science term from a card in their hand and gives the other teams a one-word clue to it, starting with one of the letters from the term. They write down their answers and get points if right, but if not then they get a second clue, then a third, and ultimately a fourth which must begin with the initial letter of the term.
It’s fast and clever, and it makes you feel clever. The structure forces you to think around areas of science in an intelligent way, to find synonyms or piece the clues together. A timer keeps things pacey. The dry-wipe boards are solidly constructed and should last a long time.
Two gripes. There are two different decks of science terms with different difficulties, but even the simpler one can be confounding and nigh-impossible to guess (‘vesicle’? ‘endocytosis’?), and the scoring system is over-fiddly, though on the other hand that does allow parents to throw the game in a convincing fashion so that the kids can feel good about winning and everyone can pretend this wasn’t actually homework.
An educational game that doesn’t feel like one is a rare thing, and Nerd Words Science is still fun if you left school ages ago. Expect to see versions for other subjects soon.
JAMES WALLIS