Party Game

In the Old West, the wily snake oil salesman had a special talent, getting the most skeptical customers to buy the most dubious products. Now it's your turn! Invent your own zany two-word products – Rumor Mirror! Burp Balloon! – and sell them to all types of wacky customers. If the round's customer buys your product, you win!

To set up Snake Oil, each player takes six purple word cards. The customer for the round draws a red customer card and announces it. Inventors quickly combine two purple word cards from their hand to form a crazy new product to sell to that customer. When ready, they put their two word cards face down on the table. In clockwise order, each inventor quickly pitches his or her product directly to the customer. The customer can end any pitch that goes longer than thirty seconds. The customer decides which product to buy and gives the inventor of that product the round's customer card as the prize. Inventors discard all used word cards and take two new word cards each. The player to the left of the customer becomes the next round's customer. Play repeats until each player has been the customer once.

Whoever collects the most customer cards wins.

In Faux•Cabulary, players create new words for descriptions that lack appropriate nomenclature by using randomly drawn "word segment" dice included in the game.

Each round, one player is the Wordmeister while the other players draw three word cubes at random from the box. The Wordmeister reads a Faux•Cabulary card out loud, e.g., "The compulsion to pop bubblewrap", then each player creates a word using 1-3 of his cubes – perhaps "Bust-O-Ific" – and conceals the word in a plastic holder. The Wordmeister mixes the words in their plastic holders (so that she doesn't know who created which word), reveals them one-by-one, then awards the card to whoever submitted the word that (in her mind) best matches the definition. Players then return all the dice, and the Wordmeister position rotates clockwise. Whoever claims the required number of Faux•Cabulary cards first wins!

In Jungle Speed, you must rely on your keen sense of observation and quick reflexes. It requires a steady hand -- which can be hard to maintain during the many fits of maniacal laughter! The wooden Totem sits in the middle of the table, waiting for the player with the fastest reflexes to snatch it up and win the game.

Each player is dealt a hand of cards. In order to win you must be the first player to get rid of all of your cards. Each turn, all of the players reveal one of their cards. If two cards are identical, those players must make a grab for the Totem. The faster player then gives their cards to their unfortunate adversary.

To add to the difficulty, certain cards are almost identical, which can trick a hapless player into grabbing the Totem by mistake -- a grave error. Other cards force all players to make a grab at once, change the method of play, or otherwise add to the difficulty.

'Background':
The Aboulou Tribe in Eastern Trisopotamia invented Jungle Speed to determine the shares of food each member received after a successful hunt approximately 3000 years ago. The Aboulous originally used eucalyptus leaves as cards for the game. These early games usually ended in bloody fights because, unfortunately, all of the cards were identical. This simple error nearly drove the tribe to extinction. This is why Jungle Speed remained unknown by the outside world until the 20th century, when 2 clever gamethropologists, Tom & Yako, replaced the leaves with the playing cards we now use today.

Jungle Jam, Медвед, and Prawo Dżungli are unauthorized reproductions of Jungle Speed/Arriba!

A clever repackaging of the parlor game Dictionary, Balderdash contains several cards with real words nobody has heard of. After one of those words has been read aloud, players try to come up with definitions that at least sound plausible, because points are later awarded for every opposing player who guessed that your definition was the correct one.

Versions of the game as a parlor game go back at least as far as 1970, although Balderdash itself was not published until 1984.

Mattel republished Balderdash in 2006 in a form that derives its gameplay from the sequel Beyond Balderdash.

Re-implemented by:

Beyond Balderdash / Absolute Balderdash
Kokkelimonke Jubileum

Re-implements:

Beyond Balderdash*

In a peculiar situation, this game was reimplemented by Beyond/Absolute Balderdash and then combined back into the original title (Balderdash) but with the rules and cards from Beyond/Absolute; while Tactic re-published their version of Beyond/Absolute combined with the original Balderdash and called it Kokkelimonke Jubileum.