Unplug Play

MATCHMAKER,
MATCHMAKER

HOW CONFIDENT ARE YOU IN EACH OF YOUR SELECTIONS?

Each player comes up with five categories that will lead to many possible answers (see pages 1–9 for ideas) and places them in a hat or facedown on a table mixed in with all of the others.

Players earn points based on how confident they are in each of their items showing up on the majority of the lists of the other players in the game.

Player 1 picks a random category from the hat and reads it aloud. Once a category is selected, each player has up to two minutes to make his or her list and there is no talking until everyone is done. Each player lists a total of five items related to that category. The five items should be placed on the list in order of confidence. The first selection should be the one a player is positive will be listed by most players, and the last selection should be the one a player is least positive about most players including on their lists. If for any reason a player cannot come up with five items in a given category, the ordering will remain the same, but he or she will have fewer chances to score.

When time is up, players take turns reading items on their lists, beginning with the selections placed by everyone in the number 5 position and ending with the selections placed by everyone in the number 1 position. Players keep track of the points earned at each level (see “Scoring”).

Play continues as players take turns picking out categories, listing five items for each category and adding up their scores in each round.

In order to get points for each selection, players’ choices must match with MORE THAN HALF of the players in the game. A player’s number 1 selection, when matched with more than half of the players, earns 10 points. The number 2 selection earns 8 points; number 3 earns 6 points; number 4 earns 4 points; and number 5 earns 2 points. Again, if a player does not have five items listed, he or she will not be able to earn points for the missing lower levels.

IMPORTANT: You receive NO POINTS for an item on your list that isn’t listed by more than half of the players in your group!

Say the first category chosen was Popular comedians and Player 1 put Chris Rock first on his list. If more than half of the total players in the game had Chris Rock anywhere on their lists, Player 1 would receive 10 points. However, not everyone who had Chris Rock would necessarily get 10 points. If one of those players put Chris Rock as number 3, that player would only get 6 points. If another player put Chris Rock as number 5, that player would only get 2 points. If only half or less than half of the players in the game had Chris Rock, then nobody would get points for that comedian.

This is an important and rather fun addition to this game. Once players have decided on their list of five selections in the category, they may choose to make some bonus selections and decide to place additional bets on those. A bonus selection is an item a player did NOT put on his or her list that the player believes is probably on ONE of the other players’ lists of five.

For example, with the “Popular comedians” category above, if Player 2 strongly feels that ONE person in her group would put down Jay Leno as one of their top five (AND ONLY ONE!), then she may make a side bet on her page of up to 20 points that it will happen. If she bet 4 points that Jay Leno would be on just ONE of the other player’s top five and she was right, she would earn an additional 4 points in that round. However, if nobody or more than one person in the group had Jay Leno in their list of five, then Player 2 would lose the points she wagered!

IMPORTANT: You may bet on as many additional items for each category as you’d like, but you may not total more than 20 points in your combined side bets. You will reveal the results of your side bets after all players have read their top five lists.