Qwirkle — Board Games for Kids and Grown-Ups and Grown-ups Who Are Still Kids Inside

Ladies and gentlemen, this game was introduced to our family in the last couple of years by our “Tricky” uncle. Every family has one. He smiles a little bit more, always has a twinkle in his eye and he tends to either make bad or dirty jokes or is an incessant punster, sometimes he will find coins behind your ears or something up his sleeve.

Our Breckenridge family has been blessed with at least two, the first was my Uncle Don, who got the “Tricky” moniker because he always visited my grandparents house with a new trick. Although to be honest, I can’t remember any other trick except the one where there’s a ball in a little plastic vase and then it vanishes. Regardless, Uncle Don always had a twinkle in his eyes and there was, as you can see in this photo a part of him that never grew up. And I don’t even think he was one of those “loosy goosy” personality types such Organic Freedom or Smart Freedom.

So. The baton was easily passed onto the next generation in the form of my Uncle Jay. He has a doctorate, I think in tomfoolery? But perhaps its theater or something like that. When I was in that horrid early teenager phase he taught himself to juggle and became part of a juggling troop. The World Emergency Circus I believe. Anyhow, he’s always had some kind of fun trick up his sleeve — silly wigs, balancing sticks, juggling, etc. and his great grand-nieces and nephews adore him the same way we adored Uncle Don.

Okay, so Qwirkle. Funny name huh? It is, isn’t it? So Tricky Uncle Jay brought it to Thanksgiving a couple of years ago and we’ve become a little addicted to it. It’s kind of our go to game these days and all those fun card games have gone by the wayside. (ALthough I did introduce two lovely 8 year olds to SPIT last weekend and they enjoyed it immensely) So what’s great about Qwirkle is you can have teams, which means the kids who are too little can start to learn and the older kids get emboldened by winning with a grown-up as you can see from this photo.

It’s kind of like a colorful cross between Dominoes and Scrabble, but no words. There’s no game board, you build the game out like Dominoes, building on the tiles the previous team or player laid out. The key is to get two to six of the same colored tiles (with different shapes) or two to six of the same kind of shapes (different colors.) We’re sure different types bring different strategies to the game, but in the end it’s just a lot of fun.