indoor games

When it's more comfortable inside than outside, it's time to play games.

A colleague recently brought to my attention a story that appeared in The Times a few years ago about the late 1900s board game Group Therapy 1960, in which players take turns drawing cards that pose intimate questions and psychological challenges. (Example: "You have been accused of over-intellectualizing your complexes. Respond - without falling victim to this criticism.")

Story author, Juli Weiner, insists that the game is great fun, that any awkwardness is ironically dispelled by the fact that everything about the game is awkward, and therefore nothing about it is. There are only misfires, she explains, "when someone refuses to give themselves permission to be awkward - the psychological equivalent of being the only person in the sauna clinging to the towel".

This is my kind of good time. As a child, I loved the board game Scruples and "The Book of Questions", social experiments disguised as board games. As an adult, I find corporate icebreakers mildly exciting - What's your favorite cereal? What was your first job? — anything that allows people to avoid small talk and talk about themselves.

I'm thinking about games because it's too hot for picnics , long walks and bike rides , for the usual summer pastimes. Group therapy and its ilk may be too emotionally heavy for family game night, but, as many have found in the early months of the pandemic, it doesn't take much to create hours of diversion. .

When you're more comfortable indoors than outdoors, when you've streamed all there is to stream, try a game of Charades or Celebrity, low-tech entertainment that only requires your wits and a few rules. Maybe a chatty board game like Scattergories or Taboo? Or go old school: Monopoly. One. A playing card game.

For solitary pursuits, The Times has a bunch of great games that I swear I'd recommend even if I didn't work here. I have a thing for crossword puzzles (I'm part of the team that tests them before publication), but most people I know are addicted to spelling. The weekly news quiz, written by my colleagues at The Morning, is a nerdy delight. (And Internet sensation Wordle will soon be a board game.)

Although it seems like everywhere you turn, normal behavior is exhaustingly gamified (see: Waze, exercise trackers), there's always fun inventing games from scratch as inspiration strikes. As any child who has ever dared to make the bed in less than three minutes can attest, a challenge makes things interesting.

What are your favorite games? Tell me about them.

Learn more

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From Wirecutter, "The Best Two-Player Board Games".