Author: Lawrence

So there I was last Tuesday night, watching Sarah have what I can only describe as a minor breakdown over a board game. We’re talking about a woman who handles corporate acquisitions for a living, reduced to near-tears because she’d spent an hour building a strategy in Tzolkin based on completely misunderstanding how the gears work. The worst part? I’ve been there. We’ve all been there.

Tzolkin is this Mayan-themed worker placement game that looks innocent enough when you first see it set up, but then you notice the gears. Actual plastic gears that rotate every turn, carrying your workers along whether you’re ready or not. It’s like someone took a perfectly reasonable euro game and added this mechanical time bomb that just… ticks away at your plans.

I bought this game maybe six years ago after reading all these glowing reviews on BoardGameGeek. Everyone was calling it brilliant, innovative, a masterpiece of design. What they didn’t mention was how it would make me feel like an idiot for the first dozen plays. See, I’m used to worker placement games where you can sit back, survey the board, maybe grab a sip of beer while you think through your options. Tzolkin doesn’t give you that luxury.

The central gear – they call it Tzolkin – connects to five smaller gears, each representing different locations where you can place workers. But here’s the thing that scrambled my brain initially: when you place a worker, you’re not choosing what action to take right now. You’re choosing what action you want to take several turns from now, after that worker has been carried around by the gear rotation.

Let me tell you about my first game. I thought I was being smart, placing workers early on the gear to get them into action quickly. Wrong move. Completely wrong. My workers kept getting spit out before they’d gained enough “teeth” – that’s the currency you accumulate as workers ride the gears – to do anything useful. Meanwhile, Linda was placing workers on higher-numbered spaces, letting them ride longer to build up resources for big plays. She crushed me. Like, it wasn’t even close.

That’s when I realized this isn’t just worker placement with a fancy gimmick. The gear mechanism changes everything about how you need to think. In most worker placement games, you’re thinking one turn ahead, maybe two. In Tzolkin, you’re constantly calculating where workers will be three, four, even five turns in the future.

I developed this habit – probably looks obsessive to anyone watching – where I trace the gear rotation with my finger before placing any worker. Count the spaces, figure out exactly where that worker will be each turn until I plan to remove it. Sounds simple, right? But you’d be amazed how many people skip this step and then act surprised when their worker ends up somewhere useless.

Crystal skulls caused me endless frustration early on. They’re these safe point-scoring opportunities that seem like no-brainers when you’re learning the game. I’d collect skulls constantly, thinking I was being efficient, building up a steady point base. What I didn’t realize was that every turn spent collecting skulls was a turn not spent on temple advancement or resource development. Skulls are fine – sometimes necessary – but they can become a trap if you’re not careful.

The temples, though… that’s where this game gets really interesting. Each of the four temple tracks represents different types of advancement – agriculture, resources, architecture, theology. Moving up these tracks doesn’t just give you points, it unlocks better actions and more efficient ways to use resources. I remember the game where this finally clicked for me. Instead of spreading my efforts around like I usually did, I focused almost entirely on the resource temple. By the end of the game, I was converting resources so efficiently that other players couldn’t keep up.

Here’s what I wish I’d understood sooner: Tzolkin rewards focus and punishes dabbling. You can’t do everything well in one game. Pick a strategy – temple advancement, monument building, resource cycling – and commit to it. The players who try to keep all options open usually end up accomplishing nothing particularly well.

Monument building is probably the most misunderstood part of this game. I see people treating monuments like expensive point purchases, but they’re actually engine pieces that fundamentally change how your economy works. There’s one monument that gives you resources whenever you advance on temple tracks. Another gives you bonus actions. These aren’t just points – they’re game-changers that affect every subsequent turn.

My advice to anyone learning Tzolkin? Pick one monument early and plan your entire strategy around getting it. Don’t hedge your bets. The resources required are substantial, and trying to keep multiple monument options open usually means ending up with none of them. I learned this the hard way in a four-player game where I spent the entire game “keeping my options open” and finished dead last.

Resource management in this game requires thinking in cycles rather than individual turns. Corn feeds your workers, but corn also converts to other resources. Wood and stone build monuments, but they also advance temples. Gold seems scarce until you understand the conversion patterns, then suddenly you’re generating more than you know what to do with.

The calendar track is another element that took me way too long to appreciate. Moving up the calendar gives you points, sure, but more importantly, it gives you additional actions on future turns. Players who ignore calendar advancement find themselves constantly starved for actions while others are taking multiple actions per turn. It’s this snowball effect that can completely change the game’s momentum.

Endgame timing in Tzolkin is brutal and completely different from other worker placement games. You can’t just leave workers on the board hoping to retrieve them later – if they’re still there when the game ends, they’re worthless. I’ve lost games by huge margins because I miscalculated the final gear rotation and left half my workforce stranded on the gears.

Now I have this endgame ritual: count exactly how many turns remain, trace where each worker will be when the game ends, calculate whether I can afford new placements or need to focus on retrieval. It sounds mechanical, but it’s the difference between a satisfying finish and watching your carefully laid plans collapse in the final turns.

What makes Tzolkin so demanding – and so rewarding once you figure it out – is that the gears don’t care about your plans. They advance relentlessly, creating this constant pressure that transforms every decision into a calculated risk. You can’t fight the gears; you have to learn to work with them, to dance with their rhythm rather than struggle against it.

Sarah eventually figured out her mistake that Tuesday night, adjusted her strategy, and actually ended up winning the game. But those first few moments of realization – when she understood how badly she’d misread the situation – that’s the Tzolkin experience right there. This game will humble you, frustrate you, make you question your basic understanding of worker placement mechanics. And then, when it all finally clicks, you’ll understand why people call it a masterpiece.

So there I was last Thursday night, setting up Castles of Burgundy for what I figured would be our usual session when my friend Sarah shows up with this expansion I’d been eyeing for months. The Cloisters expansion, still in shrink wrap on my shelf where it’d been sitting since I impulse-bought it at my local game store. You know how it is – you find a game you love and somehow adding new stuff feels like… work? Like you’re messing with perfection or something.

Man, was I wrong about that.

I’ve owned the base game for probably six years now, bought it right after reading about it on BoardGameGeek. Classic Stefan Feld design, dice placement, all that good stuff. Played it maybe fifty times with Linda and our regular gaming group, thought I had it pretty well figured out. Efficient city building, grab animals when you can, pay attention to what knowledge tiles are available. Standard strategy that worked most of the time.

Then we crack open this expansion and suddenly everything I thought I knew gets turned upside down.

The monastery boards look innocent enough when you’re setting up. Just some new tiles, some additional scoring opportunities, nothing too crazy. But here’s what took me three complete games to really understand – these aren’t just bonus point engines you tack onto your regular strategy. They’re timing mechanisms that completely change how you approach the entire game.

First game with it, I’m playing against Mike who’s been into Castles of Burgundy since it came out in 2011. Guy knows every knowledge tile by heart, usually crushes me. I stick to my usual approach – build efficient cities, collect animals, try to complete regions for those completion bonuses. Meanwhile Mike grabs two monasteries early and I’m thinking “whatever, I’ll focus on the main board.”

Big mistake. Huge.

By round three I’m ahead on points feeling pretty good about myself, then Mike starts completing these monastery chains and I watch my lead evaporate. The scoring swing was something like forty points, which in this game might as well be a death sentence. I got absolutely demolished and couldn’t figure out what happened.

That’s when I realized monastery strategy isn’t about completing them fast. It’s about completing them at the right time. The scoring is nice, sure, but the real power comes from the tile selection advantages. Complete a monastery and you get to take tiles from specific depots, meaning you can grab exactly what you need instead of hoping your dice cooperate with whatever’s available.

This completely changes your relationship with dice rolls, which honestly was my biggest complaint about the base game. Bad dice could just ruin your turn sometimes, leave you with nothing useful to do. With monasteries, bad dice become opportunities. Can’t place anything useful on your main board? Work on monastery requirements. Suddenly those frustrating rolls where you can’t do what you planned become productive turns.

I’ve been playing this expansion for about eight months now, maybe thirty games total, and I’m still discovering new interactions. There’s this beautiful cascade effect you can set up where completing one monastery gives you exactly what you need for the next phase. I watched Sarah pull off this sequence last month where she completed three monasteries in two rounds and gained like sixty points plus perfect positioning for the final scoring. Just incredible to watch.

But here’s the trap – and I fell into it hard during my first dozen games. Monasteries look like guaranteed points and they kind of are, but they demand serious resource investment. You can get so focused on monastery completion that you neglect basic board development. I’ve done this more times than I care to admit, chasing monastery bonuses while my opponents quietly build efficient engines that outscore me in the end.

The key insight that really improved my play is treating monasteries as acceleration tools rather than primary strategies. They should amplify what you’re already doing well, not dictate your entire approach. If you’re naturally good at animal collection, find monasteries that reward that. If you excel at city building, look for combinations that support expansion.

Perfect example – there’s a monastery that requires four different animal types. New players see this and immediately start hoarding animals, completely wrong approach. The smart play is pursuing this only if you were already planning heavy animal collection for other reasons. The monastery becomes a bonus for doing what you wanted to do anyway.

The expansion adds new knowledge tiles too, some obviously powerful, others that seem mediocre until you understand monastery interactions. There’s one tile that lets you treat any die as one value higher, sounds minor until you realize how many monastery requirements become trivial with that flexibility. I grabbed that tile in a game last week and it let me complete two monasteries I never would’ve finished otherwise.

I’ve developed this approach I call “flexible specialization” – probably sounds fancier than it is. Pick one core strategy based on your starting setup, but identify two or three monastery paths that could complement it. Let the dice and available tiles determine which path to pursue. This has improved my win rate significantly because I’m not locked into rigid plans that fall apart when the game doesn’t cooperate.

Reading other players’ monastery intentions becomes crucial too. Unlike city building which happens on your individual board, monastery completion affects shared resources. If two players are pursuing similar strategies, someone’s getting squeezed out. Learning to recognize these conflicts early and pivot appropriately separates good players from mediocre ones.

The social dynamics change in interesting ways. Base game rewards efficiency and careful planning, but monastery strategies often require calculated risks. You might need to grab a tile that doesn’t help immediately because it’s crucial for monastery completion three turns away. This creates opportunities for aggressive players to pressure more cautious opponents by competing for key resources.

Linda was skeptical when I first brought this expansion to our weekly game night. She’d gotten comfortable with the base game, knew what she was doing, didn’t want to learn new rules. But after playing it a few times she admits it feels like the complete version of what Castles of Burgundy was trying to achieve. More interconnected, more strategic depth, but still the same core game we enjoyed.

My advice for anyone considering this expansion – treat your first few games as learning experiences rather than trying to win. Focus on understanding how different monasteries work and how they might fit into various strategies. The expansion rewards system knowledge more than quick tactical thinking, so time invested in understanding pays off long-term.

After all these games, the Cloisters expansion has become my preferred way to play. It maintains everything I loved about the original while adding meaningful strategic depth that doesn’t feel like complexity for its own sake. Every new element serves a purpose, creates interesting decisions, and the learning curve is manageable enough that you can jump right in.

I can’t imagine going back to the base game now. This feels like the definitive version, the way Feld intended it to be played. If you enjoy Castles of Burgundy and want to rediscover why you fell in love with it in the first place, this expansion is absolutely worth adding to your collection.

So there I was last Tuesday at Desert Sky Games – our usual spot for game night – when Rick pulls out his beat-up copy of Agricola. Nothing unusual there, we’ve probably played it fifty times over the years. But then he sets down this expansion box I’d never seen before. “Anyone brave enough to try the Artifex deck?” he asks with this little grin that immediately made me suspicious.

I mean, I consider myself pretty decent at Agricola. Been playing it for maybe eight years now, own my own copy plus a couple other expansions. Know the card combinations, understand the scoring, can usually hold my own against the regulars at game night. But man, this deck absolutely humbled me in ways I didn’t think were possible after all this time.

The thing about regular Agricola is you develop these comfortable routines, you know? Grab the Forester early if you can, maybe shoot for the Chief occupation if you’re going heavy on improvements. There’s this nice predictable flow where you can plan three or four rounds ahead, especially once you know the cards well. I’ve gotten used to that rhythm – it’s part of what I love about the game.

Well, forget all that with these cards. The Artifex deck is basically designed to mess with every assumption you’ve built up about how Agricola works. Instead of cards that just help you do your own thing better, these cards are all about what other players are doing. And not in a friendly way, either.

There’s this one minor improvement – I think it was called Shared Granary or something like that – that gives you grain whenever another player builds a room. Sounds harmless, right? Wrong. I played it early thinking I’d get a nice steady trickle of resources. What actually happened was everyone else started paying way more attention to when and how they expanded their houses. Suddenly my expansion plans became everyone’s business because they didn’t want to feed me free grain.

Rick ended up delaying his house expansion for three full rounds just to avoid triggering my card. Three rounds! In Agricola! That’s like… okay, imagine you’re trying to bake a cake but every time you add an ingredient, your neighbor gets a free cookie. You’d probably start being real careful about when you add those ingredients, even if it meant your cake suffered. That’s what happened to our game.

But here’s where it gets really interesting – and frustrating. I started adjusting my strategy to work around everyone else adjusting their strategies around my cards. It became this weird psychological chess match layered on top of the farming game. Linda was watching us play and just shook her head. “You guys are making this way too complicated,” she said, and honestly, she wasn’t wrong.

The occupations are even worse. There’s this Baker card that gets stronger based on how much grain other players have stored up. So now I’m not just managing my own grain supply, I’m constantly checking everyone else’s grain situation and trying to time my harvests to minimize the Baker’s benefit. It’s exhausting in the best possible way.

What really threw me was how it changed the whole tempo of the game. Usually in Agricola, you can kind of ignore what other players are doing unless they’re blocking action spaces you need. Your farm is your farm, their farm is their farm. But with these cards, suddenly everyone’s farm affects everyone else’s farm in these weird indirect ways.

I watched Sarah completely restructure her entire strategy around one minor improvement that made vegetables worth more points, but only if you had exactly three fields. She spent four rounds trying to get her field count just right, passed up better scoring opportunities, even took suboptimal actions just to qualify for this bonus. And you know what? She still lost because the opportunity cost was too high. The card wasn’t the problem – trying to force her strategy around the card was the problem.

That taught me something important about this expansion. The successful players aren’t the ones who avoid the interactive effects or the ones who chase every possible benefit. They’re the ones who stay flexible enough to take advantage of opportunities when they naturally arise. It’s like… okay, you know how in insurance we always tell people not to buy coverage they don’t need just because it’s available? Same principle applies here.

After probably twenty games with this deck now – yeah, I liked it enough to buy my own copy, much to Linda’s eye-rolling – I’ve figured out a few things. First, you need to maintain bigger resource stockpiles than usual because the interaction effects can create sudden opportunities or requirements. Second, early expansion works better than in the base game because the benefits compound through all the interconnected cards. And third, you absolutely cannot tunnel-vision on your own farm anymore.

The draft phase becomes this whole different beast too. You’re not just thinking “this card helps me,” you’re thinking “this card helps me, hurts them, combos with that other card I might see later, and signals that I’m going for this strategy.” It’s like when I’m putting together insurance packages and have to consider how each piece affects all the other pieces. Except it’s farming cards, which is honestly way more fun than explaining deductibles.

What’s funny is how this expansion reveals things about your regular gaming group. Turns out Mike is really good at this interactive style – he was making these brilliant plays where he’d benefit from other players’ actions while minimizing their benefits from his. Meanwhile, Janet struggled because she likes the pure puzzle optimization of regular Agricola and found all the player interaction distracting.

I’ve started mixing maybe half Artifex cards with regular cards when we introduce new players to the expansion. Full Artifex is like throwing someone into the deep end – technically they won’t drown, but they probably won’t have much fun either. But once people get used to the extra layer of complexity, most seem to enjoy it.

The expansion really shines with four or five players who know the base game well and enjoy tactical adaptation. If your group is full of people who like to plan everything out ten moves in advance, this might drive them crazy. But if you want more player interaction and less predictable games, it’s absolutely worth picking up.

Fair warning though – this thing will make you question every Agricola strategy you thought you understood. I’m still discovering new card combinations and interaction effects. My copy is already showing wear from all the play it’s gotten, which I guess is the mark of a good expansion. Just don’t expect to win your first few games while you’re figuring out this whole new layer of complexity.

So here’s the thing – I’ve been collecting board games for fifteen years now, and I thought I had Monopoly figured out completely. Buy properties, build monopolies, collect rent until everyone else goes bankrupt. Simple enough, right? Then my buddy Dave brings over this Sea of Thieves edition he picked up at Target, and I’m thinking great, another themed Monopoly that’s basically the same game with pirates slapped on top. Man, was I completely wrong about that.

First game we played, I went in with my usual Monopoly strategy. You know, trying to grab those orange and red properties, building up cash flow, the whole traditional approach. Meanwhile Dave and his son are doing all this voyage stuff and collecting doubloons, and I’m sitting there wondering what the heck is going on. By the time I figured out this wasn’t regular Monopoly with a pirate costume, they’d already sailed past me. Literally and figuratively.

The voyage system changes everything. Instead of just rolling dice and hoping you don’t land on Boardwalk with three houses, you’re actually choosing your own adventure. Pick a voyage card, follow the instructions, collect your rewards or face the consequences. It’s like someone took the basic Monopoly framework and turned it into something that actually requires decision-making beyond “should I buy this property or not?”

I’ve played this thing probably forty times now – yeah, I know, I have a problem – and I’m still finding new strategies. The early game is all about figuring out what kind of pirate you want to be. Are you going aggressive, stealing from other players? Playing it safe with merchant runs? Going for the big treasure hunts? I’ve tried all of them, and honestly, the best approach depends entirely on what everyone else is doing.

Here’s what took me way too long to figure out: timing is everything with the combat stuff. I spent my first few games either being too aggressive too early, making myself a target, or being too passive and missing opportunities. The sweet spot is building up quietly while other players are fighting each other, then striking when they’re weakened. It’s like poker in a weird way – you need to read the table and know when to make your move.

The doubloon economy is brilliant, actually. Regular Monopoly money is pretty predictable – you pass Go, you collect rent, you pay expenses. But doubloons come from everywhere. Completing voyages, winning battles, finding treasure, making deals with other players. And you can spend them on ship upgrades, hiring crew, buying information. It gives you way more interesting choices than just “buy property, pay rent.”

I learned the hard way that those merchant ship upgrades everyone ignores are actually incredible. While other players are fighting over treasure maps and trying to steal from each other, I started quietly upgrading my merchant capabilities. Boring, right? Except by the endgame I’m generating twice as much income per turn as the flashy pirates. Linda watched one of these games and said it reminded her of how I approach insurance sales – steady, consistent progress beats dramatic gestures most of the time.

The combat system isn’t just about having the biggest ship either, which surprised me. I’ve won battles with smaller vessels by understanding the dice probabilities better. Most players don’t bother learning the odds, they just roll and hope. But when you know you have a 60% chance of winning versus a 30% chance, you make different decisions about when to fight and when to run.

One thing I really appreciate is the alliance mechanics. You can team up with another player for a specific voyage, split the rewards, then go back to being competitors. It reminds me of those negotiation-heavy games where the real skill is in structuring deals that benefit you more than the other person realizes. I’ve made some partnerships that looked fair on the surface but were actually pretty heavily tilted in my favor.

Resource management becomes huge in the mid-game. I have this personal rule now – never let your doubloons drop below fifty unless you’re making a final winning push. Too many times I’ve seen players spend everything immediately, then get caught unable to afford something important. Or worse, they can’t take advantage of a great opportunity because they’re broke.

The late game is where this really shines though. Unlike regular Monopoly where it’s usually obvious who’s winning, this version keeps you guessing. That player in last place might be one voyage away from victory if they’ve been quietly working toward a specific goal. I’ve pulled off a few surprise wins this way, and I’ve been shocked by them too.

Weather events and the special cards add just enough randomness to keep things interesting without making it pure luck. The key is adapting when these disruptions happen instead of sticking stubbornly to your original plan. I remember one game where a storm card completely changed the board state, scattered everyone’s ships, and the player who adjusted fastest ended up winning.

What really gets me is how different the game feels with different player counts. Three players is almost a completely different game than six players. Smaller groups reward steady building and careful planning. Larger groups often require bold, risky moves because you need to stand out from the crowd. I’ve had to develop separate strategies for different group sizes.

The negotiation aspect is way more aggressive than other games in my collection. The pirate theme gives everyone permission to be a little more cutthroat in their dealing. People expect some backstabbing and betrayal, which makes for more interesting social dynamics if you lean into the role-playing aspect.

After all these plays, I still discover new strategic interactions. Just last week I realized you can use the information tokens in combination with certain voyage cards to set up moves three turns in advance. The replay value is genuinely impressive – each game develops its own story based on player choices and random events.

I’ve played this more than any other Monopoly variant in my collection, and that’s saying something because I own probably eight different versions. It’s one of those rare themed games that actually improves on the original formula instead of just changing the artwork. If you’re looking for something that feels familiar but requires completely different thinking, this pirate adventure delivers exactly that experience. Just don’t go in expecting regular Monopoly with a fancy coat of paint – you’ll get destroyed like I did that first game.

You know what’s embarrassing? I bought 5 Second Rule probably eight years ago thinking it’d be this fun, easy party game. Wrong. First time we played it at one of our regular game nights, I completely froze when Linda asked me to name three breakfast foods. Breakfast foods! I eat breakfast every single day, but apparently under pressure my brain just decided that food doesn’t exist.

The thing about 5 Second Rule that nobody warns you about is how it makes you feel like an idiot. You’re sitting there, that little timer making its annoying marble sound, and suddenly you can’t remember a single thing that fits the category. I once got “things with wheels” and spent three seconds trying to remember what a car was called. A car! It’s not like I don’t drive one every day to work.

But here’s what happened that got me hooked despite the humiliation. We were playing at my friend Dave’s house, and his teenage son just demolished all of us adults. Kid was rattling off answers like he had them memorized. That got me thinking – maybe there’s actually some strategy to this stupid game beyond just hoping your brain doesn’t shut down.

So I started paying attention to how people played, especially the ones who consistently won. Turns out the good players weren’t necessarily smarter or more knowledgeable. They had patterns. They’d always start with the same types of answers for similar categories. It wasn’t about being creative or impressive – it was about being fast and reliable.

That’s when I developed what I call my “boring answer system.” For every category that might come up, I needed three completely predictable answers that I could spit out without thinking. Animals? Dog, cat, bird. Every time. Countries? USA, Mexico, Canada. Foods? Pizza, hamburger, chicken. These aren’t interesting answers, but interesting wasn’t getting me points.

The breakthrough came about three years into playing regularly. We were at this little game tournament at Samurai Comics here in Phoenix – nothing serious, just local folks competing for store credit. I’d been practicing my default lists, felt pretty confident. Then they hit me with “things that are bumpy” and my prepared lists were useless. I sat there frantically trying to make my animal list work somehow before finally stammering “road, pickle, golf ball.” Won that round, barely.

That’s when I realized the default list thing only gets you so far. You need flexibility within the system. Instead of just memorizing specific lists, I started thinking in broader categories that could overlap. Kitchen stuff, outdoor stuff, things you wear, parts of your body, emotions. Each one becomes like a mental file folder I can grab from quickly.

Say you get “things that are yellow” – that doesn’t match any of my standard categories exactly, but I can pull from food (banana, corn), objects (school bus, pencil), or nature (sun, flower). Having these broader mental folders means I’m never starting completely from scratch, even with weird categories.

The physical part of playing matters way more than I expected. I used to death-grip that little timer button, which actually made me slower somehow. Now I barely touch it, just resting my thumb there ready to press. Same thing with how I sit – hunched over the table holding my breath like it’s life or death just makes everything harder.

Breathing is actually huge. Most people, myself included for years, hold their breath when the timer starts. Your brain needs oxygen to work fast. Now I take one deep breath right when they read the category, then give my answers on the exhale. Sounds ridiculous but it genuinely helps.

Here’s something I learned playing with different groups over the years. With family or casual friends, obvious answers work fine. Nobody’s trying to be difficult. But when you’re playing with competitive board gamers, they’ll challenge borderline answers just to mess with you. Got to factor that in.

I’ve found there’s a sweet spot for answer specificity in competitive games. You want to be specific enough that nobody questions it, but not so specific that you waste time thinking. For “things in a garage,” say “toolbox” instead of “tools” but don’t go crazy with “metric socket wrench set.” One level more specific than obvious usually works.

The practice part is where I probably went overboard. Started doing mental category games everywhere – waiting in line at the insurance office, walking around the neighborhood, during commercial breaks watching TV. Five things that are cold. Five things made of metal. Five things you’d find at a birthday party. Linda thinks I’m nuts, but it builds those mental pathways you need when the pressure’s on.

That timer creates artificial stress that genuinely changes how your brain works. Under time pressure, you lose access to memory networks that work fine normally. That’s why easy stuff becomes impossible. The solution is making your go-to answers so automatic they bypass the parts of your brain that freeze up.

One trick I picked up watching really good players is externalizing your thinking. Instead of trying to silently come up with three perfect answers, start saying related words out loud while you think. For “things that fly,” you might say “wings… sky… birds…” and those trigger words help you find actual answers. Sounds weird but it works.

Don’t try to think of all three answers before saying any of them either. I wasted years doing that. Now I just blurt out my first solid answer and let that help trigger the second and third. Often saying something out loud helps your brain find the next thing.

My biggest advice is to start with categories that feel natural to you and build confidence before tackling harder ones. Everyone’s brain works differently with different topics. Mine happens to click with household objects, animals, and food items. Yours might be movies, sports, or whatever. Figure out your strengths and use those to build momentum in games.

The weird thing is, after all these years and probably three hundred games of 5 Second Rule, I still lose regularly. Amy destroys me every time she visits, especially on pop culture categories. But that panic response I used to get is mostly gone now. When someone suggests breaking out 5 Second Rule, I actually get excited instead of dreading it. Plus I’ve gotten pretty good at “things you’d find in an insurance office” thanks to thirty years of practice there.

These days my biggest problem is that I’ve gotten so used to my default answers that sometimes I say them even when they don’t quite fit. Last week I said “dog, cat, bird” for “things that are red” before my brain caught up. But hey, cardinals are birds and they’re red, so it worked out anyway.