It promised to be a bumper nine of us at one point, but unfortunately we lost Anja to fatigue. With Katy arriving a bit later - distracted by the Tour de France - just after 7.30 there were seven of us raring to go: Adam T, Ian, Laura, Joe, Martin, Gareth and myself (Sam). We kicked off with That's Not a Hat.
Each player gets a card with an image on it to start from a deck of distinct images. Then someone takes a new card from the deck, flips their first one over, and passes it to a neighbour (the back of the card instructs which way to pass). When they do, they say aloud the image that's on the card. The receiver then flips their own card over and passes that one, doing the same thing. And so ultimately all the cards are face-down and everyone's trying to remember what their own card is as well as keep track of what the card that's currently travelling around the table is.
If you doubt the accuracy of what the card you've been passed was described as, you can challenge and flip the card over. The loser keeps the revealed card and we go again. First to three lost challenges is the loser, which in our case was... Laura, I think? She seemed to enjoy it despite that. Fun!
We still had some pre-Katy time so busted out Not that Movie, which regaled us with dubiously-monikered cinema such as Pulp in the Hole. In our first round everyone chose the same movie except me. My crestfallen shame was to be diluted though as first Adam, then Ian, fell foul of the same fate.
I think we only got the perfect score once, aided in no small part by the reviews seeming to very much suggest a particular movie:
Then, with Katy imminent, we decided she'd be fine with playing Mille Fiori so Joe Ian and Laura began setting it up. The rest of us tried our hands at Martin's new fave, Hooky. Has Andrew explained this before? I think he has, but with two newbies in Adam and I Martin ran through the simple rules.
Simple rules, but a brow-furrowing experience as everyone tries to figure out what letters everyone else has in order to then figure out what the three 'missing' letters are. We lapsed into long pauses whilst at the other end of the table, the pace was brisker and the mood more buoyant. Katy looks like she's hating here, but I think that's just the curse of my camera.
Hooky ended after an intense hour with all of us throwing up our hands in various degrees of confusion and disgust. It transpired that Martin's workings-out had been thrown by Gareth assuming 'smarm' was spelled 'smalm' due no doubt to his psychological preoccupation with Malmsbury. "It's the only word we didn't spell aloud" Gareth lamented, which was oddly true. I have to say though, smalm made no difference to me. I was chucking stones in the dark at this point, which proved good enough to claim second:
Martin 35
Sam 24
Gareth 23
Adam 8
I enjoyed trying it out, but for my tastes (not to mention brain) it's a bit more like work than fun. It's a curious theme, too, for such a brain-exercising puzzle.
Mille Fiori ended now too, and Katy definitely enjoyed it:
Katy 213
Ian 204
Joe 190
Laura 152
And we split groups again, with Joe, Martin, Katy and Adam playing Inside Job, new to Katy.
The rest of us Quantum. A learning experience for Gareth, but his ability to absorb rules and Quantum's exceptions largely being printed on cards meant we were off and running inside ten minutes.
Laura took an early lead and found herself targeted. I found myself with multiple '3' ships and used them to go around being a pain in the arse for everyone, getting my dominance up to 6 and drawing level. But on the other side of the board both Ian and Gareth did likewise.
Gareth found a great card combo of deploying for free and removing a ship to gain an extra action. As the game rapidly escalated, I got a belated ass-kicking myself and Ian snuck in ahead of Laura, who was poised to get a cube down. As Ian was primed to win on his next turn - if left unmolested - Gareth snuck in ahead of all of us for a debut victory!
Laura now left us, bound for bed. At the other end of the table, they were still playing Inside Job, but promised us they were on the verge of finishing. We had a couple plays of Win Lose or Banana while we waited, with both Gareth (winner) and Ian (winner) successfully identifying the banana (me) on each occasion. I just have a trusting face.
I think it was around this time that, a propos Inside Job's intel, someone spoonerised their way to 'suiting floatcases'. It may have been Gareth again?
Either way, Inside Job's third play ended with:
Katy insider loses
Martin insider wins
Martin insider wins again
Joe was forlorn. "Everyone always suspects me" he said, which I found surprising, as I feel Joe's face is of the largely trustworthy kind (like mine). Adam left to drive home and we remainders gathered into a single group for So Clover. The grumbling was pronounced with this one, especially from Martin despite sitting down last and finishing first. And we did struggle with this opening clover, as there seemed to be not so much too few possibilities as too many. A 3 to begin.
After that however we picked up speed with a fairly rapid bunch of sixes, with Katy spotting that Capital Garbage went well with my clue of 'bankers'. There were some excellent clues from everyone and even a mid-game googling after Martin threw us with a word we were unfamiliar with (sward).
We stumbled slightly at the end but still pulled off a more-than-decent 31/36 to finish the night with a flourish.
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