I want to make one thing perfectly clear — I don’t like trivia games.

Of course, that’s when we’re talking about standard trivia games that most people are familiar with. The most popular of which is Trivial Pursuit.

To be honest, I detest Trivial Pursuit.

And I’ve tried to like it.

I even picked up copies of Lord of the Rings and Star Wars Trivial Pursuit games. But alas, I just don’t like the way the game plays. Thus, those games no longer grace our game closet. They’re gone.

That’s why I was a bit wary when we got a copy of Smart10 from Bananagrams.

Yet, once we pulled it out and played it, Smart10 became the hit group game this holiday break!

And I’m excited to tell you why.

 

How to play Smart10

Smart10 is a super simple game to play.

The goal is to be the first player or team to score 30 points. And points are awarded by getting correct answers each round without busting.

The game is a self-contained unit with 100 double-sided question cards. Each card has 10 possible answers. And all players get to answer every question.

The types of questions are varied:

• True/False – The answers are either “true” or “false”. Players must only select those that are correct for the question. Example: Which is an animal in the Chinese zodiac?
• Number – Players must guess the exact number or date. Example: Which number is missing from the band name?
• Century/Decade – Players must guess the correct century or decade. Example: In which century were they born?
• Order – Players guess the right order of the answers from 1 to 10. They don’t need to reveal them in order, but must correctly guess the position in the overall order. Example: Rank these countries by geographical size.
• Open – Players guess the correct word, name, etc. Example: What is a person with this phobia afraid of?

To begin a round, the start player (or team) reads the question aloud. Then that player chooses to either answer or pass.

If they choose to answer, they say their answer and then remove the peg next to their answer. If they’re correct, they keep the peg. If they’re wrong, they discard the peg and are out of the round.

If they choose to pass, they’re also out of the rest of the round.

They then pass the question unit to the next player/team who then can answer or pass.

When the unit comes back to players that have answered correctly previously, they can again choose to answer or pass. If they choose to answer again and are correct, they add that peg to their others.

However, if they’re wrong on their subsequent guesses, they lose all the pegs they’ve claimed this round.

Play continues this way until either everyone has answered incorrectly or passed (or all 10 pegs have been removed).

Once the round ends, players who didn’t answer incorrectly at all, count their pegs and tally their score.

Before switching out to the next question for a new round, players put all their pegs back in the unit. Then the question card is slid out and a new one is now presented for the next round.

The start player for the new round is the player to the left of the last round’s start player.

Players continue through multiple rounds until one player (or team) reaches 30 points and wins.

Players can also choose to play for a set amount of time and whoever has the high score after that time wins.

 

Can the whole family enjoy Smart10?

Speaking as a person who doesn’t like trivia games, Smart10 is awesome.

And like I mentioned at the beginning, it immediately became a hit in our family!

One of the things we love most is that the questions have multiple answers. So everyone gets a shot at guessing a correct answer for every question.

And if it’s a category you think you know well, you can take another guess when it comes back to you.

Which is another thing we like — the push-your-luck element!

Do you stick with the points you’ve earned already that round or do you push your luck and answer one more time? If you’re wrong, you’ll forfeit what you’ve already done that round.

There can also a bit of strategy involved when you know a category well. Choosing the “easier” answers first will preclude others from taking those when it’s their turn, giving you a chance to get more points when it comes back to you.

We also love how easy it is to play in teams.

Even though there are just 4 scoring spots on the unit, it really is a great party game.

And you can choose however you want to divide up the teams.

Sometimes you might want to have 3 or 4 teams whereas other times you may want to have a head-to-head 2 team battle.

So even if you have 8 people, it doesn’t mean you have to split into 4 teams of 2. You could do 2 teams of 4 or even a team of 2 against a team of 6.

The difference is that with just 2 players (or teams), the question will get passed back and forth more often, giving you more chances to answer the question and get more points. Whereas with 4 players (or teams), you may only get 2 chances in a round to guess an answer.

Lastly, the question unit itself is pretty sweet!

It’s so handy to pass around the table between players so they can make their guesses. And the pegs fit in nice and firmly. So they won’t accidentally fall out.

It’s also very durable and can withstand drops.

We also like that the unit has a method for keeping score built right in to the corners. Each has a shape to identify it (circle, square, triangle, star) so with all the passing around, players can still easily remember which corner holds their score.

All 100 double-side question cards also fit in nice and compactly. Plus, the corners are rounded on one side so it’s easy to tell which end slides in first.

When you’re done with a question, simply slide it off the top, flip it over and slide it back in under the deck.

The only issue we’ve run into is the side of the unit that opens to get the cards out. Since you change question cards every round, players have to pop it open and close it many times throughout the course of a game.

The game rule sheet shows how to open and close it, but it still can be a hassle. You have to pull it out a bit and then slide it up. And every time, you feel like you’re going to break something. Then when replacing it, you have to make sure to match the grooves up correctly first, then slide and snap it in.

In one game we resorted to just leaving that side of the unit open the whole game and just passed the unit carefully to the next team so the deck wouldn’t slide out in transit.

But that’s a minor quibble and doesn’t diminish the fun of the game play itself.

 

How does Smart10 score on our “Let’s Play Again” game meter?

Smart10 scores very high on our “let’s play again” game meter for all the reasons we just outlined.

It’s so easy to grab and play without any set up, the game flows quickly, and the questions are extremely varied.

Even if we don’t know a category very well, we get to take at least one guess. And with 10 options to choose from, the options are at least narrowed a bit.

But mostly it’s getting played repeatedly because it’s a fun way to test our knowledge.

And even with our repeated plays, we’re not worried about it getting low on the replay value because of the set 200 questions. That’s still a ton of questions. And by the time we hit a repeat question, we won’t recall every option on it. Sure, we may remember a point or two here and there (like which is the smallest country on the list or what age Heath Ledger was when he died), but it will still be a fun challenge.

We’ll happily recommend Smart10 for your family.

We’d like to thank Bananagrams for a review copy of Smart10.