We played a fun, different game tonight: Apples to Apples. Here's how it works. Your hand consists of five nouns. A card is overturned which has an adjective on the back--you have to match one of your nouns to that adjective, and the player whose turn it is to be the judge picks what they consider to be the best match. Repeat.

Judging from the two games we played, poets seem to be better at this game. I don't know why that is, but I'm not happy about it. I usually fell way behind immediately, and then started to catch up as the game went on and my Surrealist matches became more and more attractive to the judge.

My only criticism of the game is that the selection of nouns and adjectives seems a little off--a little too G-rated, in a way. The game was at its best when the matches were truly out of the blue, and yet oddly right--which didn't happen enough, because too many of the cards were just generic words. Still, I'd play it again.

I was talking recently with someone about board games. It seems hard for a board game to break into the ranks of the true classics: stuff like chess, Scrabble, checkers, Monopoly, Risk, Trivial Pursuit. What's the last new board game that truly become a classic? Pictionary? Taboo? Balderdash?

It's the same problem that my father once identified with rock music: Broadly speaking, all our icon slots are all filled up already. Nobody can break in.