Who Weird What

With “WHO WEIRD WHAT” the Austrian game publisher Piatnik has released a refreshingly different memory game for the whole family, ages eight and up. Simple to explain but quite challenging as the game progresses, this cooperative game—centred on memorising and retelling whimsical mini-stories—ensures carefree family time around the game table. Imaginative mnemonic devices and good communication help players accurately reproduce the randomly generated, thoroughly bizarre sentences and score points.

“The mermaid marries the washing machine” and nine other nonsensical sentences must be memorised together. These sentences are created by flipping over cards from the adjacent category card stacks labelled “WHO” “WEIRD,” and “WHAT” To succeed, players may use various memorisation strategies, such as mnemonic devices. Talking is allowed—and even encouraged—but writing things down or taking photos is not permitted.

How well the team has memorised the sentences becomes clear in Phase 2 when they retell the mini-stories. They have exactly three attempts to do so. To solve the riddle, the top card from the left stack—in the example, “The Mermaid”—is first revealed. Now the team can freely discuss how the sentence continues before the remaining cards of this mini-story are revealed for verification. Everything correct? Then you move right on to recalling the next sentence, and the team gets one step closer to victory. If something is wrong, the cards are set aside for a later retry. However, on this retry, the second card is revealed—that is, the middle part of the sentence being sought. If it still doesn’t work, the end of the sentence is revealed on the third and final attempt—in the example above, “the washing machine” - as a cue.

If you prefer a greater challenge, you can either aim for more than ten sentences or play the pro version with an additional fourth category. In this version, the mini-stories get longer, for example, “The alien dances around the pickle like he does every morning.” True pros can easily manage twelve or more sentences of this kind.

WHO WEIRD WHAT is a great—and above all, entertaining—way to train your concentration and memory in a playful manner. The 148 cards create countless funny combinations that, with a little practice, can be mastered in about 15 minutes across three different difficulty levels at —either with others or in the solo version.