Designed by: Nick Bentley
Take 23 letter tiles each, two blanks, flip a card over and play Stinker!
The cards each have an instruction on them that the players must quickly answer using their tiles to spell out a word or words. For instance, How to win in a sword fight without a sword, or the best movie elevator pitch. Once you’re done, you shout ‘Stinker’ – and when everyone bar one player has shouted, the remaining player is out of this round and becomes the judge instead: everyone reads out their answer, and the judge decides the winner: based on laughter, cleverness, or some entirely arbitrary reason best known to themselves – Stinker’s best played not worrying too much about scoring. The winner scores a point per letter (no points for blanks) – and do note that exact spelling is not considered necessary! If you need a Z for your word and have used both blanks already, it’s fine to turn an N sideways, or if you think you can get away with it flip a tile over to make a third blank.
Everyone then passes their letters on, and a new card is revealed. After a set number of rounds the game ends, and the player with the most points is the winner.
Stinker is a word game for those who feel intimidated by word games. The flexibility with your letters, turning Es into Ms and so forth, really helps keep the emphasis on fun and freedom. And there's something almost of a psychological test about the results - it often feels as though your subconscious has been revealed in some way. Great fun. I hope it becomes more widely available in the UK, as I had to buy it on Amazon. And apparently it's difficult to recreate with scrabble or banana grams tiles, as the ratios of letters is quite specific.
None, unless you get offended by people not choosing your answers.
MInimal to non-existent.
There's almost no rules, but Stinker might frustrate some who don't like playing under time pressure.
It's always the same type of experience, but an exceedingly fun one - for us at least!
3-6
Players
8+
Years
15-30
Mins
Sam says
I've played a lot of silly games, but this is possibly the silliest. I love it!