My brother and his family, from St. Louis was passing through our area this weekend on his way to Colonial Williamsburg, so my other brother and his family came down from Northern Virginia for a mini-reunion.

We played a game where each person writes down 5 answers for people to guess on slips of paper, and puts them in a bowl. The answers can be the names of famous people, or a movie title, or a character, or almost anything. Some can be quite easy, others could be rather obscure and difficult. The players are split into two teams, which sit alternately around in a circle with the role of clue-giver rotating around the circle.

The first round is similar to catch phrase or taboo where the clue-giver says almost any clue as long as he or she doesn't say any of the words on the slip of paper. For instance you might say "A tall monument in Paris" or "A movie. His name (pointing at Joe) against a mountain that spews lava" or "He's the First President". The clue-giver gets one minute to have their team guess as many answers as possible, which are tallied, and set aside. The the next play from the other team gets a turn.

Once the bowl of answers is empty, the second round starts, where all of the clues are returned to the bowl, and the game proceeds as before, but the clue-giver cannot speak, and instead must perform the answers charades-style. Again getting one minute to have their team guess as many as possible.

When the bowl is empty again, the answers are once again returned to the bowl, for the third round, where the clue-giver is only allowed to say a single, carefully chosen word to get their team to guess each answer. At first it might seem exceedingly difficult, but since everyone has seen all of the answers in the first two rounds, it can actually go surprising fast, with a team getting 10 answers in a single turn.

A couple of the answers or clues given were quite funny. One of my favorites was when the clue-giver said "I'm not sure who this is, I think she's one of a pair of tennis playing sisters" and someone on that team guessed "Vanessa Williams?" Which was the right answer. After that person's turn everyone laughingly pointed out that the sisters are Serena and Venus Williams, whereas Vanessa Williams, was an actress and singer and a former Miss America. Later though I got that answer during the second charades round, and couldn't think of how to act out "actress" or "Miss America" so I simply did a quick forehand, and a backhand, and some one quickly guessed "Vanessa Williams". In the third round, the obvious one-word clue for that answer was of course "Tennis"

Another funny answer was when someone misspelled "Pinocchio" as "Pinnocuccino" which we subsequently decided would be a good name for a fancy cappuccino-type drink, perhaps with Amaretto di Saronno and you make it with half-and-half but tell people it contains skim milk.