A dice toss to misery: which board game causes most family chaos?

For all but one player, every round brings disasters and setbacks. Properties are mortgaged. Bank balances dwindle to nothing. It’s like running a hospitality business under COVID restrictions.

Quietly, the evil little brother is doing his work. If there’s something to be sold at a profit, he’ll be there. If the ‘Chance’ card offers a windfall from the authorities, he’ll collect the cash, and hang on to it despite all entreaties.

It is almost like Monopoly turns every nine-year-old into Gerry Harvey.

The downtrodden, which includes everyone else in the family, must trudge around the board, collecting $200 for passing “Go”, before spending large amounts of time in jail for crimes they did not commit.

Two hours in, and it’s clear that Monopoly was invented by Marxists to expose the indignity and despair built into the capitalist system. It’s not for nothing that the game’s logo is a fat banker.

By the end of the afternoon, the 13-year-old is barricaded in her room, having overturned the board, while two of her older siblings are quietly whistling The Internationale and looking up the webpage of the Socialist Workers Alliance.

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Maybe Monopoly was a mistake.

Squatter may be a better idea. Mind you, Squatter is just Monopoly with sheep. It all seems lovely and bucolic until your stud ram dies, pests infest your crop, and all your bores dry up. One hour into the game and everyone in the household has sunk into a deep despondency, painfully aware of the constant perils faced by our farmers.

Two hours in, the older siblings resign from the Socialist Workers Alliance and join the National Party.

It’s at this point that someone, usually the grandfather, says: “Why don’t we try something more intellectual? How about a round of Scrabble?”

Only later does the family understand that he’s been planning this all week.

He puts down seven letters, a triumph not possible without his assertion that “ai” is a word. He’s been studying a “Scrabble dictionary”, otherwise known as “cheating”.

“It’s a three-toed South American sloth,” he says, and while the dictionary proves him correct, is it worth the permanent damage that’s been done to the love afforded to him by his family?

And why is he so particular about it having three toes? Do most South American sloths have only two toes? If you had two three-toed sloths – or for that matter, three two-toed sloths – would you be able to just add an “s” and get away with the word “ais”?

He probably thinks so.

Surely a round of charades will clear the air? Charades is always fun. Well, it’s fun until the grandfather is required to act out My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and makes the split-second decision to point at his wife’s bottom in order to illustrate the words “big” and “fat”.

It’s not worth the risk. So, what about cards?

What’s left of the family – those who are not now crying, getting divorced or attending a meeting of the National Party – break into two teams. The chosen game is called Five Hundred, in which you must make a bet based on what cards you believe are likely to be in your partner’s hand.

It will be 10pm before the game finishes and the exhausted parties retire to bed. But not before one partner has observed to the other: “I just can’t believe you didn’t realise the 10 of hearts was still out there. It was so obvious.”

Which brings me back to my point: don’t play games. Safer by far for the whole family just to sit in front of the television, staring vacantly into the middle distance, waiting for freedom.

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