The last year as seen us play loads of board games together as a family. We’ve found them a fantastic way of getting people of all ages together, laughing and bonding in a way that sitting in front of the TV just can’t compete with. We’re also using them as a bit of a stealth way of educating the kids. Whether it be understanding the concept of taking turns for the younger children, or building the older ones’ general knowledge, board games are an excellent way of doing both as a family. When I saw Smart Ass at Blog On I knew that it would be perfect for that general knowledge building for the older kids.
Smart Ass is all about showing off if you know the answer. Or even if you just think you do. It’s perfectly acceptable to shout out the answer and totally goes against the way that some kids feel that it’s not right to be seen to be smart.
How to play Smart Ass
In Smart Ass the aim of the game is to be first around the board working out Who Am I? What Am I? or Where Am I? The first player to reach the end is the ultimate Smart Ass.
Designed for 2 to 6 players and for ages 12 to adult, play starts with the oldest Smart Ass player who is the Reader and will read the first question. This first player rolls the Jumbo Category Die to determine which category the first question will be from. This could be one of the following:
- Blue – What Am I?
- Green – Where Am I?
- Orange – Who Am I?
Each question card lists 8 clue on it. Starting at the top of the list the player reads down the clues and other players can shout out an answer at any time. But, players only get one go at answering each question. So, if they get it wrong they’re frozen out responding to the rest of the clues.
Once someone gets the right answer that player (the one who got it right) rolls the Jumbo Movement Die and it tells them how many places to move their playing piece around the board.
Play then goes back to the player on the left of the first player, and you repeat the steps above, just moving round the players after each movement on the board.
Special Spaces on the Smart Ass Board
- Dumb Ass – this is a penalty space. If you land on this you can’t answer the next questions. Basically, it’s like missing a turn.
- Hard Ass – there are a separate pile of Hard Ass questions as this is effectively a bonus question space. Only the player who has landed on this space gets to answer the Hard Ass question. If they get it right then they can roll the Jumbo Movement Die again for a bonus move. If they answer incorrectly then play just moves on as if it had never happened!
- Kick Ass Space – this is a basically the same as landing on a “go back” space. If you land on this then you have to move back three spaces on the board.
The winner of the game is the first person to land on “The End” and you don’t need a correct number on the Jumbo Movement Die to do so. They are the ultimate Smart Ass.
What we thought of Smart Ass
It’s quite possible that we’re all a bit thick, but we actually found the questions in Smart Ass were actually quite difficult. Yet, we could do all the Smart Ass questions! Not sure what that really says about our levels of general knowledge.
We enjoyed the game, and there were certainly quite a few laughs as we tried desperately to guess some of the answers. Even more as we then had to google who some of the people were to help explain them to other players.
One thing we would say about Smart Ass is that we think it could do with there being more spaces on the playing board. Once one player is on a roll the game can a actually finish quite quickly. In a way that’s good as it means each game can be relatively short, but with a playing age of 12 and up I felt that each one could go on for longer really.
Smart Ass is certainly a good addition to our selection of general knowledge games though. And it seems that 13 year olds aren’t too old for a bit of a laugh at calling someone a “Smart Ass”!
Smart Ass is available in high street toy shops or can also be bought online here. It has an RRP of £19.99, but can sometimes be found cheaper online.
Disclaimer: We were sent a copy of Smart Ass for the purposes of this review. All opinions remain my own. This post contains affiliate links.