*Editor’s note: This and all the rest of the Games Adults Play that will be featured are for players 18+ only and are NFSW. Do not play in front of children unless you want them to asked weird questions or hear excessive cussing. *

*Title: Tossed Salad

Genre: charades/word guessing game

Manufacture: Goliath Games, under the Games Adults Play line

MSRP: $19.99

 

The game charades has been around for hundreds of years in one form or another. From the original form of the game where players acted out/mined the word, to modern renditions of the game such as Times Up!, Heads Up, Taboo!, Pictionary and many countless other variations of it, charades is a game that’s light hearted and let’s players let loose, be imaginative and act silly. Now we can add dirty, crude and delightfully disgusting to that list thanks to Games Adults Play take on charades, Tossed Salad.

 

Set up and rules

Everyone has played charades before at one point or another in their life. This makes the rules and set up really simple. First gather everyone in a circle into teams of two. Then have one person toss the salad bowl vigorously. That person’s team goes first. He/She then randomly picks a piece of paper (either green or orange), reads it to them self and tries to get their teammate to guess the word without using that word. The green pieces of paper are worth one point. As for the orange ones, the words on them are double entendres/innuendos, ie. dirty words. If picked, the player can decide to go with the clean meaning for one point, or go for the innuendo for three points. If they can’t describe the word, they can discard it and move to the next one. The team with the most correct words wins. This is the base version of the game. If players want to make the game more challenging, they can do one of two things: the first is to only say three words that describes the word drawn. The second is to go full charades and act out the words. There are even pieces of blank green papers if players want to get creative and add in their own words.

Initial thoughts

I’ll say this: my friends and I learned a few new words the night we played the game. We even learned other meanings to common, everyday words. Trying to describe the word that was picked without saying it was nerve wracking due to being timed. But it was also fun and interesting to find other phrases and words to describe it. Tossed Salad revealed the extent of out vocabulary to each other in a crude but hilarious way. After the first round of play we decided to change the rules a bit; on the second round of play we extended the time to two minutes, which gave a small cushion to decide if we wanted to skip the word or not. As for the third round we kept the original time limit of sixty seconds but used the traditional way of playing charades, which is picking one word at a time them trying to make the other person guess the word. It seemed that my friends like this combination of rules, so we stuck with it for the rest of game night.

Final thoughts

If Heads Up, Taboo!, Pictionary or even the original charades is too “plain ranch” for you, then Tossed Salad will add a bacony, savory flavor to game night. For people who don’t have an “alternative” vocabulary, they will have a hard time trying to come up with phrases to describe the picked word without giving it away. Not to mention the added pressure of having  such a short time limit. However I do feel that since Tossed Salad is a variation of charades, that it is easy to alter rules to make it even more enjoyable. So at your next game night with friends, surprise them with a healthy vocabulary treat in Tossed Salad.

 

8/10

*Editor’s note- Product description, pricing and links to buy product have been added to review*