My family has been working on purchasing a new board or card game every month this school year (2016-2017). During this implemented family-game-time game-collection-year, we have ended up with a game called DISORDER.
As a child, Trivial Pursuit (the Original) and Scrabble were the two most-played games in my home. I remember enjoying the family time and forced interaction of everyone. While we did not always 'play nicely' during game time, we certainly learned about each other, educated ourselves, challenged our minds, and slowed the isolation that often occurs when siblings reach the teenage years.
As a parent, I have always tried to play a game with my children at least once a week. When they were younger, it was easier since the games were simplistic and encouraged memorization and brain growth. However, now, with our children in double-digits, the games have reached a level of thought and analysis that tend to spotlight the parents' education, abilities, and exposure to the world versus the children's grade-level-knowledge. Therefore, unless a parent wants to lie by holding himself back from a win, game-time often ends with a parent-win. This can be discouraging after awhile.
However, the game DISORDER has helped to bridge the distance between educations of those playing in our family. DISORDER is a game of word creation and continual change. Players receive letter cards; however, the backside of the cards are the words WILD. This means that every card is both a letter and a wild card.
To play the game, players place these cards on the board to work on ONE word together. As the next player lays down a wild or letter card, each player then has to come up with a new word that could fit into that space using those letters (or wild) cards in the order in which they appear on the table. I know this seems confusing at first, but it is quite wonderful for continual word modification using suffixes, prefixes, making words plural, transforming words into adjectives and other parts of speech to not be the one who loses the round by actually spelling the word. The person who ends up spelling the word loses the round and receives the points showing on the cards placed on the table. This encourages the players to keep modifying the word--in their minds--by creating new words with the same number of letters, with the letter cards showing, and being able to choose whatever letters to use in the wildcard spaces.
An example of word manipulation is when my daughter brought up the concept of 'gruntled' as a word. As I mentioned earlier, to not be the person who actually spells the word, you want to keep adding to and adjusting the cards--in your mind--into different, longer words. We all know the word 'disgruntled,' and the assumption is that the use of 'dis' turns a word into the negative/opposite version: disassembled (opposite of assembled), disagreement (opposite of agreement), disabled (opposite of able), disarm (opposite of armed), disuse (opposite of use) and so on. However, when my daughter asked if 'gruntled' was a viable word, we had to really think about it. It made sense that it should be a word, given the traditional usage of 'dis' in the English language; however, it seemed awkward as a word.
I highly recommend that you give this game a try with your children--if they are in double digits. Children younger than 10 might not have the grammatical abilities to play the game competitively. DISORDER teaches grammatical skills and word manipulation in ways Scrabble never could, encourages fun family interaction, and makes it possible for everyone to do their best, without parents having to cheat by letting the kids win.
**I purchased my game through Hollar.com. They were selling it for $4! You can't beat that! If you are interested in learning more about the game or purchasing your own box, click HERE.
As a child, Trivial Pursuit (the Original) and Scrabble were the two most-played games in my home. I remember enjoying the family time and forced interaction of everyone. While we did not always 'play nicely' during game time, we certainly learned about each other, educated ourselves, challenged our minds, and slowed the isolation that often occurs when siblings reach the teenage years.
As a parent, I have always tried to play a game with my children at least once a week. When they were younger, it was easier since the games were simplistic and encouraged memorization and brain growth. However, now, with our children in double-digits, the games have reached a level of thought and analysis that tend to spotlight the parents' education, abilities, and exposure to the world versus the children's grade-level-knowledge. Therefore, unless a parent wants to lie by holding himself back from a win, game-time often ends with a parent-win. This can be discouraging after awhile.
However, the game DISORDER has helped to bridge the distance between educations of those playing in our family. DISORDER is a game of word creation and continual change. Players receive letter cards; however, the backside of the cards are the words WILD. This means that every card is both a letter and a wild card.
To play the game, players place these cards on the board to work on ONE word together. As the next player lays down a wild or letter card, each player then has to come up with a new word that could fit into that space using those letters (or wild) cards in the order in which they appear on the table. I know this seems confusing at first, but it is quite wonderful for continual word modification using suffixes, prefixes, making words plural, transforming words into adjectives and other parts of speech to not be the one who loses the round by actually spelling the word. The person who ends up spelling the word loses the round and receives the points showing on the cards placed on the table. This encourages the players to keep modifying the word--in their minds--by creating new words with the same number of letters, with the letter cards showing, and being able to choose whatever letters to use in the wildcard spaces.
An example of word manipulation is when my daughter brought up the concept of 'gruntled' as a word. As I mentioned earlier, to not be the person who actually spells the word, you want to keep adding to and adjusting the cards--in your mind--into different, longer words. We all know the word 'disgruntled,' and the assumption is that the use of 'dis' turns a word into the negative/opposite version: disassembled (opposite of assembled), disagreement (opposite of agreement), disabled (opposite of able), disarm (opposite of armed), disuse (opposite of use) and so on. However, when my daughter asked if 'gruntled' was a viable word, we had to really think about it. It made sense that it should be a word, given the traditional usage of 'dis' in the English language; however, it seemed awkward as a word.
Analytical Grammar (online) writes this about the words 'disgruntled'
and 'gruntled:'
Today's Lunchbox Lesson: DISGRUNTLED and GRUNTLEDDISGRUNTLED: an adjective, meaning angry or dissatisfied.
In many cases, the “dis-” prefix adds a negative element to a word, leading many people to ask if there is an opposite word, GRUNTLED. However, "dis-" has another function as well. Instead of being negative, the “dis-” prefix in “disgruntled” is an intensifier. It means “utterly” or “completely” and adds emphasis to the root.
Back in the 1600s “gruntling” meant “grumbling.” So if someone was "gruntling," they'd be even MORE upset if they were "disgruntling" --and it does look like “disgruntle” was a verb before it became an adjective and we started to use it to describe people’s emotions.
So is GRUNTLED a word? Interestingly, it has actually become one according to some dictionaries. Those say “gruntled” is a back-formation that people derived from “disgruntled.” In other words, so many people thought “disgruntled” should have the corresponding positive word, “gruntled,” that it emerged and was accepted. Granted, the word isn’t common, but the first known use of “gruntled” as an adjective to mean “in good humor” or “pleased” in the Oxford English Dictionary is attributed to P.G. Wodehouse, who included this sentence in his 1938 novel, "The Code of the Woosters":
"He spoke with a certain what-is-it in his voice, and I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled."
Given the information above and the concept of traditional 'dis' usage in the English language, we considered 'gruntled' a true word. The cards placed on the board at the time of her thoughts on 'gruntled' came when she would have completed the word GRUNT. Therefore, to avoid placing the last card for a word completion, she could have added a card to extend the word to plural (adding a 's' card or wild card to the 6th space on the table) or added a card to the 6th, 7th, or 8th spaces on the board. Then, if someone else did not want to be the person to lose by spelling gruntled, he could have added cards in front of the GRUNTLED spaces, once again adjusting the word, but into the negative version of DISGRUNTLED. The rules for DISORDER say that no proper nouns or abbreviations can be used; however, anything found in a dictionary is fair-game as a word to use.The Merriam-Webster online dictionary puts the first use in 1926, but doesn’t show the source. At any rate, GRUNTLED may one day become commonplace.
I highly recommend that you give this game a try with your children--if they are in double digits. Children younger than 10 might not have the grammatical abilities to play the game competitively. DISORDER teaches grammatical skills and word manipulation in ways Scrabble never could, encourages fun family interaction, and makes it possible for everyone to do their best, without parents having to cheat by letting the kids win.
**I purchased my game through Hollar.com. They were selling it for $4! You can't beat that! If you are interested in learning more about the game or purchasing your own box, click HERE.
