One board game, well technically it's a card game, reigns supreme in our household these days. It's the only one all four of us agree to play without hesitation. And if I gave you one hundred guesses, you'd never come up with it. You may not even know it exists. Its simplicity is its beauty. It's old school and looks old school.
Care to fancy a hunch as to its name?
I give you R A C K O. Or as I like to call it, "Rackooooooooooh".
How do you play you ask? Let's ask Wikipedia:
Rack-O is a Milton Bradley sequential-matching card game with the objective of obtaining 10 numbers, in numerical order, in one's hand. Score may be kept on a separate piece of paper, based upon either a custom system or the system provided in the rule book. Rack-O allows between 2-4 players, and is recommended for players age 8 and up.[3] Rack-O was released in 1956 and is currently being produced by Winning Moves.
I played this game growing up and introduced it to the family. I also ate liverwurst toast with mustard, but that one has failed to catch on here.
Are the games intense? Yes. I remind them all that the only way to win is to be aggressive. If you wait, you lose.
With the increase in takeout dinners the past nine months, and the bickering from certain members of this family, who shall remain nameless, about where to go, I came up with an ingenious solution. Winner of Racko (first to win three games) has choice, no questions asked.
So far so good. The victories have been evenly split.
And competitive as hell.