Official Rules of Scattergories

Let me preface these rules with the following statement.  I am the dominant force when it comes to Scattergories.  My partner Nina and I have never been defeated in a legitimate challenge for this position.  As a result, I feel it is my right and duty to dispense the official rules of Scattergories as it should be played.

Creativity is king.  If your response makes me laugh, chances are I will count it.  Nothing, and I mean nothing will ruin a game of Scattergories faster than playing by a restrictive set of allowed responses.  This game is meant to be played as a challenge of wit and humor, not as an experience in case law.  If I have to repeatedly justify all of my responses, I just won’t play with you anymore.  It is as simple as that.

Don’t be those guys.  Almost every time you play with a large group of people (more than pairs on a team), you end up with one group who constantly chooses ridiculous responses and acts mystified when they are unanimously rejected by everyone else.  Even worse, they generally refuse to admit defeat and continue to argue for answers they knew would not be accepted.  I admit, there is often a temptation to stretch for words, especially when you are not winning.  However, attaching adjectives, using obscure movie quotes, or obscene humor rarely works in your favor.  If nobody else the game is amused by your antics, you should stop.  Everyone else probably just considers you mentally retarded anyway.

Using generally accepted slang terms to refer to an item is perfectly legitimate.  Just because you wouldn’t find something in a dictionary, doesn’t mean it isn’t fair game in Scattergories.  After all, this isn’t Scrabble.  The other day someone rejected the word “gator” because the actual word is “alligator.”  This was especially ridiculous considering the University of Florida use a gator, not alligator as their mascot.  If you want to reject gator, then you should reject bunny as well, because the real term is rabbit.  See the point?  This should go as a supporting detail to number one, but it seems like lately people have been abusing this so much that it deserved its own mention.

Be gracious.  I understand that you might not see the connection between certain words.  However, everyone has their own opinion and word associations.  Please be generous.  The game is much more interesting when it is played open-ended.  I’m not saying you have to accept every word, but its not worth losing friends to protect a one point lead (unless its in revenge, then its completely justified).

Eliminating the same word written down for a category is legit.  It happens, people choose the same thing.  However, you need to be careful with how far you take this.  For example, if the category was ‘movies,’ and the letter was ‘a.’  Does it really seem like a good idea to discount American Beauty because someone else used An American In Paris?  That’s freaking ridiculous!  These are two entirely unrelated objects which happen to share a word.  Now, if the category was ‘cars,’ and the letter was ‘m.’  I would have no trouble eliminating the word Mazda when someone else played Mazda Miata, because they refer to essentially the same object (although the second team should still get points for Miata).

If the category contains the word “excuses” or “reasons,” you should just give up attempting to judge now.  There is no way that you can cross something off the list, unless it literally does not form an idea (see: the “that guy” paragraph above).  These categories are meant to illicit ridiculous responses, and in my humble opinion, the stranger the better.

Stay away from one person inside jokes.  Oftentimes when playing Scategories, there will come a time when someone chooses a word no one else understands the reasoning behind.  The person will then point to one specific person in the room, or even worse try to call a friend on their cellphone, and expect that one person is able to back up an inside joke and somehow make their ill-fated choice legitimate.  My rule of thumb is that if the joke doesn’t have relevance to at least one third of the members playing, you probably shouldn’t use it.  Note, this does not apply to commonly known things.  For example, I recently used “Kofi Anan” for president, because he was the president of the United Nations.  Most of the people in the game were not aware of this.  However, this is an easily researchable fact, it is not based on people’s experience, and could quickly be either confirmed or denied.  It’s not my fault if you can’t keep up with current events.  There is a difference.

Have fun.  Sure the game gets competitive, but as soon as you take it too seriously the fun quickly dissolves.  You all should just realize that I am going to win anyway, and roll with the punches.

Game on.