Ballsdurdash: Game Night at Ben and Allison’s House

October 9, 2011

On Saturday, a bunch of us went over to Ben and Allison’s new house for some food, drinks, and a fun game of Ballsdurdash. More on the game mechanics in just a moment.

When we showed up, Ben was cooking up a storm and had lots of taco ingredients available. This was a mouth-watering assortment of stuff, topped off with some home made guacamole from Chris.

Three awesome lego buildings. I’m imagining this growing over the years, with more structures being added… until it requires its own room. And then it moves to a garage. And then it requires its own building to contain all the lego buildings.

Also very much reminded of Allison’s Vertical Cities print.

Jane and Pete showed up with Baby Leo – and all of us were fawning all over the guy. It was great to see all three of them, and they were able to hang out with us up until the sun dipped below the horizon.

Liz made a pumpkin loaf as a desert (with cream cheese filling).

The Slang Dictionary – the essential book for playing a game of Ballsdurdash.

So let’s talk briefly about the game. For those who haven’t seen it mention on the blog, this is a game that dates back to 2003. It’s essentially just like the rules of the board game Balderdash – players try to guess the meaning of a given word, coming up with their own plausible definitions.

For our purposes though, instead of using a regular dictionary… we use Cassell’s Slang Dictionary.

The game goes like this: one player looks through the Slang Dictionary and selects a word. They then tell the other players what the word is, and everyone writes down their own definition on a slip of paper. The person who picked the word writes down the actual, real definition. All the slips are turned in, and the person who chose the word has to read all the definitions out loud.

This, actually, is one of the joys of the game: watching your friend try to keep a straight face, while saying some pretty lewd and incredibly inappropriate things. If the reader doesn’t keep a straight face, chances are they’re reading someone’s (fake) definition.

After all the definitions are read out loud… everyone goes around in a circle, and picks what they believe is the right definition. Points are broken down like this:

+1 point if you guess the correct definition.
+1 point if someone else guesses your fake definition.
+3 points to the person who chose the word, if no one picks the correct definition.

Ben and Allison had their traditional prize bag, chock full of dollar store goodness. There were drawings every few rounds for those in attendance, and a grand prize drawing for every 5 points scored in the game.

Alexandra won one of the first prizes of the evening – a mini desk.

Justin, with an awesome unicorn poster that has the potential to become even more awesome, with color.

I got one of these click-clack toys. I remember playing with these as a kid, but don’t recall trying to do anything more than flip them and watch them click away, like a blocky Slinky. There is apparently more fun to be had, if one is to believe the tagline: “Challenge Your Mind.”

TJ won some “Intimate Wipes.” Dollar Store, FTW!

Chris, trying on a fake tattoo sleeve. Since this was a dollar store purchase, there was only one sleeve for one arm.

Chris, showing off his manly new tats while clutching his novelty toothbrush. Nate and Renny look on, with approval.

Though there were several of us entered into the grand prize drawing (Chris was a powerful force in the game, and earned himself three chances)… Justin walked away with the grand prize. You can tell by the look on his face he’s totally excited to use his new overly-large, novelty universal remote.

// Edit: Chris, the ultimate games competitor that he is, just corrected me in that he earned four entries.

I didn’t end up taking video for a few reasons. First off, it was pretty dark outside while we were playing. Second – it just seemed a little more invasive. There were a lot of moments I wanted to capture on film, just because we were all crying laughing… but you really have to physically be present, to get a sense of how raunchy, wrong and ridiculous this game can get.

The first few rounds we played were good, but after people got the swing of things (and had a few more drinks in them)… it started to get pretty good. Lots of bodily fluids, lots of prolapsed body parts. We not only crossed a few lines, we peed all over them for good measure.

This is definitely a game to be played with friends, and for people who will forgive you the awful words that come out of your mouth. Again – sorry there’s no video, but it’s probably best we have no video evidence of what happened this evening.

If you want a sample of the game, check out the dictionary or take a look at this game from 2007.

Look – stop acting all put out like that. You’re making a face, and it looks like you’ve got something stuck up your cheese tube. So I didn’t post any video – big deal. No need to cockalize me because of that. Jeez…