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Charty Party: All Ages Edition from Very Special Games expands graph-pairing fun for smarties young and old. The original Charty Party is very much a grownup game with some adult references on its cards, but this all-ages edition makes the game suitable for anyone. Literacy in deciphering graphs and incorporating data is a valuable skill throughout life, and Charty Party makes practicing those skills fun with a wave of laughter in every match.
Charty Party: All Ages Edition plays the same way as the original Charty Party. Players are dealt a hand of orange Y-axis cards, and in each round a judge draws a chart card with a labeled X-axis. Players must choose their funniest card to match with the X-axis, using their knowledge of graphs to create a hilarious pairing based on the line function.
For example, with an X-axis marking “school level” from pre-K to college with a huge peak in middle school, players might place “likelihood your friends have to quietly apologize for your behavior” or “percentage of your weight that is hair gel” on the Y-axis for laughs.
Other X-axes are even sillier, such as “proximity to closest spider” and “intensity of friendship” from “just met” to “OMG BFF!!!!” The player whose Y-axis card is funniest keeps the chart card, playing toward an agreed-upon total number for the win.
Diversifying Forms
In addition to line graphs, Charty Party: All Ages Edition brings in some scatter graphs and a few bar graphs to make things even more interesting. These allow for more interpretation, such as a graph with increasing bars on days of the week with the highest on Friday and Saturday before dropping to Sunday, so that players can tinker with weekend thoughts. The scatter graphs like “newest technology you use” allow for outliers that players can point to in making more jokes to go along with their Y-axis cards, like the one person high up on the 3D printer while everyone else is low on the graph in “how disappointed your ancestors would be if they could see you now” for how badly they mess it up.
Learning While Playing
Charty Party: All Ages Edition is an effective learning tool for those looking to become more familiar with graphs. The box set includes a “Classroom Activity Ideas” paper with suggestions to incorporate the axis-matching game into formal learning. In addition to the typical gameplay, these ideas can prompt students to explain their answers or determine unique scales for their Y-axis cards. Other ideas challenge students to choose which of three options wouldn’t belong with anticipated data flow or create data-collection plans to show how they would conduct a study to test these results.
Charty Party: All Ages Edition is a card-pairing party game for three or more players of any age able to read the cards and interpret graphs. Games can last however long players want by changing the number of chart cards needed to win, from a quick game with a low number or a marathon with a high number. Either way, players will feel smarter after stretching their mental muscles while they laugh.
