Dumb Questions to Ask Your Friends: Can You Spot the Real Question?

All your friends announce an answer, then hand you a deck of five questions. Can you spot the real question they were answering, as you reveal the cards one at a time?

Published by Big Potato Games, Dumb Questions to Ask Your Friends is a 20-minute party game, designed for 3-8 players.

Gameplay

Players take turns being the guesser. The guesser chooses a category: players, animals, numbers, objects, food, or famous people. Five cards are drawn from the deck of that chosen category. The guesser closes his eyes, and one card is drawn from the five and shown to the other players. This question will pose a question such as what food should never appear on a pizza, or which famous person would you want to switch jobs with. The question that is revealed is the active question for the round. The five cards are then shuffled back together, and the guesser can open his eyes again. All the other players then announce their answers to the question.

The guesser takes the deck of five cards. He has a board with spaces numbered 0-4. He reveals the cards one at a time, and as he reveals them places them on one of the numbered spaces before drawing the next one. He places them based on how likely he believes it to be the active question, with the number four space being the most likely and the zero space being the least likely. Each space can only hold one card, and once a card is placed in a space it cannot be moved.

After all cards have been placed in one of the spaces, the other players reveal which was the active question and the guesser scores points equal to the space number that he placed the active question on. For example, if he placed it on the space numbered two, then he scores two points.

Depending on player count, each player takes on the role of guesser once or twice, then the game ends and the player with the most points wins.

Review

Dumb Questions to Ask Your Friends is an enjoyable party game. What really makes it is the mechanic of having the guesser reveal the questions one by one and having to rank them as he goes. Those moments when a question has already been given the top spot only for a better question card to be revealed, are fun and amusing, and also make the game a little suspenseful each time the guesser ranks a question or draws the next card.

Players never know if it’s going to be an easy or a hard round, since they never know in what order the question cards will be revealed, or even which other questions the active question is going up against. Answers that seem so obvious in a vacuum, can suddenly become a lot more vague when the other cards are drawn.

There are a couple of questions that may not work well for particular groups. In some situations, players may want to quickly check the question cards after they’ve already thought up an answer for the active question, but before handing them back to the guesser. For example, one card asks, ‘who would most likely go naked?’ which could make some players a little uncomfortable. But this of type card is definitely the exception.

We did really like the different categories and that the guesser can choose which category they wanted to draw from. There are a lot of question cards here, and the different combinations and the order they’re revealed in, lead to a lot of variety even once you know a lot of the questions in the decks.

This is a game that is about the experience the players are having and the laughter and conversations that result from it. Consequently, the scoring isn’t that important, but the fact remains that the scoring system just doesn’t work. Obviously, you should always play within the spirit of the game, but there is no actual motivation beyond that for players to give good answers to the questions. Additionally, if playing at higher player counts where each player is only the guesser once, it’s very possible to be out of the running on the very first round of the game. All of this could have been solved easily by making this a cooperative party game, with players working together towards a collective high score.

Dumb Questions to Ask Your Friends is a fun game that is a little different. There are one or two flaws, but nothing that really ruins the game since the core mechanics are enjoyable and very easy to learn, which is what is most important for a party game.

Pros: Placing the cards on the scale as they’re revealed is quite clever, range of questions and categories

Cons: Might need to remove a few cards based on your group, the scoring system doesn’t work

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.