The Anti-Stereotype Party Game

Nothing takes the fun out of a game like the telltale whiff of edutainment. You played with Legos because you wanted to build your own world, not spatial skills. You played Oregon Trail because you wanted to tempt death by dysentery, not learn about manifest destiny. And yet, subliminally, you did learn, just by playing.

That’s the idea behind Buffalo, a card game created by Dartmouth’s Tiltfactor Lab and funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation. The rules are simple: Start by drawing one card from the adjective deck (e.g., “old,” “Caucasian,” “eco-friendly”) and one from the noun deck (e.g., “scientist,” “superhero,” “feminist”). Then, all players race to shout out a real person or fictional character who fits the bill. For the combination of “blond” and “supermodel,” for instance, you might name Heidi Klum; for “dead,” “male,” and “musician,” you might name Kurt Cobain. The first player to make a match with two or more cards takes those cards, and if everyone is stumped, or “buffaloed,” you draw another noun and adjective pair and try again. The player with the most cards wins.