You've Been Sentenced Game Giveaway

The review for this week is a strange but lovely coincidence. I was in our local toy store checking out new games and I noticed that the word game You've Been Sentenced was listed as a staff pick (and I happen to trust their staff very much). I was intrigued by the rave reviews so when the company approached me about trying out the game I was amazed at their fabulous timing and their mad ESP powers.

I was sent us a complimentary copy of You've Been Sentenced (along with their Twisted Fish card game) to check out and the verdict? Great game. Players use five-sided cards to build silly sentences for points such as "Abraham Lincoln punched the peppers" or "She threw the exploding lemon through the mattress."

I had to help our 7 year-old at first but then she got it and was right there with the rest of us. The biggest thing is that when you first begin the temptation is to try and use every card in your hand in one sentence and when you try to do that you end up with a lot of ungrammatically correct sentences followed by a lot of heated arguing and an end to family unity--all over whose sentence is legit and whose is not. We had to patiently explain that despite the desire to win at all costs and the satisfaction of pounding one's brother into the ground it is actually better strategy to concentrate on making a true sentence rather than one with seventeen illogical modifiers.

So once we got that down it was smooth. I like how it's a game that gets the kids learning about grammar without knowing it and the kids liked the silly factor. The basic game is fun and educational--you get to explain how sentences use that basic subject-verb-object structure--but it gets even better when you add the expansion decks that are filled with words around a unique theme: sci-fi, pop culture, food, sports and even a deck with Reader's Digest super words.

So you can get cards with "Darth Vader," "George Bush," "tortilla" or "dug out" which makes for even better sentences such as "Darth Vader smacked George Bush with a tortilla behind the dug out."

I guess the staff at our Over the Rainbow Toys know their games pretty well because I'd completely agree with their five-star rating. And as a beautiful conclusion to this story the good folks at McNeill Designs are offering five You've Been Sentenced games, each with a set of theme decks to five winners this weekend. You're going to love this!

* And the Twisted Fish game? Also great. It's a fun take on the classic Go Fish that you'll love. Go fish!

Here's how to win:

Before 12 am Monday morning go to the giveaway entry form on this page and enter your name and email. I will pick one of the names at random, contact the winner via their email and publish the winner's first name and home town in next Tuesday's post. See the bottom of the entry form for more details.

This giveaway is open to all readers with a U.S. address. Good luck!