The Thankful Game

We play a lot of games in our family. Not only do we play a lot of games, but we invent a lot of games. An idea for a Thanksgiving-themed game popped into my head recently. I created a game sheet, then waited until my mom was in town for a visit to try it out, believing (correctly) that the game would be better with more than 3 people.

Here's the game sheet. To save paper, I printed two on one sheet and then cut them apart.  

To play, each person needs a game sheet and a pencil. One at a time, someone selects a letter of the alphabet (we used Scrabble tiles) and announces the letter.  

Then each person has to write something they are thankful for that starts with that letter. For example, when the letter S was turned over, I could have written that I was thankful for scrapbooking. However, the goal is to match as many other people's answers as possible. While I am certainly thankful for scrapbooking, I knew that there was no way that Steve, Trevor or Mom would write that, so it made more sense for me to pick something that one or more of the rest of them might mention, like spring or snow or s'mores.  

When each person has written down their item, you go around the table (or floor, in our case) with each person announcing, "I am thankful for _______." Then you score that letter. If your answer didn't match anyone else's, you get a zero for that letter. If you matched one other person, you earn 2 points because there were a total of 2 people who gave that answer. If you were one of four people who gave the same answer, you would earn 4 points. The total number of points possible is always the same as the number of people playing. It is not possible to earn 1 point.  

You then move on to the next player, who selects a letter. Continue until all the letters are used, then add up the scores. The person with the highest score wins.  

It was really fun. At first, my mom was dominating. She went for about half the alphabet without earning a single zero, then she got her first zero while the rest of us were matching each other more frequently. In the end, Steve and I tied for first place with 33 points.  

While playing with four people was fun, I think it would be even better with a larger group. If you'd like to play, you can click here to print a copy of my game sheet. Let me know if you end up playing it. I'd love to hear what you think!


  1. This is so clever and fun!! LOVE it!! :)

  2. How creative! I think that would definitely be a challenge trying to think of what the others would say and a great way to not only get to know people but to see just how well you already know them!

  3. What a great idea!! I loveeeeeeeeee it!!!!!

  4. Sounds like a fun family game!

