Best Fit! - XP123

By Steven J. Metsker and William C. Wake (William.Wake@acm.org).

Inspired by the commercial game Apples to Apples(tm).

This framegame provides a way to practice classification.

Before-Class Setup

Pick a topic area (e.g., historical figures in computer science)
Choose five adjectives that could apply to those figures (e.g., “influential,” “under-appreciated,” “confusing,” “innovative,” and “ahead of their time”)
For each player, have four white and one red file card.

In-Class Setup

Break into groups of 5.
Give each group 20 white file cards and 5 red file cards.
Have each group legibly print the names of 20 examples of the topic area, one on each white card (e.g., “Knuth,” “von Neumann,” “Hopper,” etc.). The players can come up with them in parallel; it won’t hurt if there are a couple duplicates.
Each group shuffles the cards face-down, and deals four cards per player.
Put up the list of adjectives. Have the team write one on each red card, then shuffle the red deck face-down.

Play

In each round, one player will be the judge, the others will play. The judge role shifts one to the left after each round. This way, everybody gets a chance to be judge once.
The judge flips over a red card and reads it. The players (but not the judge) each look in their hand for the card that best exemplifies that adjective, and puts that card out onto the table.
The last player’s card does not count. (So if there are 5 people in the group, there will three cards played.)

Betty, Charlie, Deena, and Abe play a card in that order. Abe’s card doesn’t count. Edgar is the judge, so he didn’t play a card.

The judge decides which of the played cards is the best example, and awards the red card to the player who played it. (It stays on the table in front of them.) Players can argue their case to the judge, but the judge has the decision.

The adjective was “influential”; and Knuth, Turing, Gates, and Engelbart are played. The judge thinks it’s a close call between Turing and Engelbart, but decides that the player who played Turing gets the red card.

Each player takes their white card back into their hand, the judge role moves one to the left, and the next round begins.
Play until all five red cards have been played. The winner is the one who has the most red cards.

Variations

You could write the adjective cards in advance.
You could let the players write out the adjectives before they write the noun cards.
You could drop the “last card played can’t win” rule. (It makes the game more competitive, but it also keeps it from stalling while someone takes a long time to decide.)
You could let anybody pick up a white card after a round (rather than giving it back to the person to whom it was dealt originally).
You could build up a larger deck and let people replenish their hand from it.