Pyramid Magazine
Andy Vetromile
March 2004
USA

Out of the Box has made its name with small but clever and original games that are as much mental exercise as they are entertaining pastimes. That's what makes Michael Feldman's Whad'Ya Know?, a trivia quiz game, such an odd choice for their newest release. Based on the popular quiz show run by Michael Feldman on public radio, the object of the game is to be the first to reach a predetermined number of points by answering questions. Four to 10 players take turns playing the host; only the host is allowed to play with the included Bobblehead Feldman figurine. The two players on either side of the host are the contestants, and the remaining players are the audience.

The host pulls one of the question cards out, announces the category, and reads the question. Categories include Science, People, Places, Odds 'n' Ends, and Things You Should Have Learned in School. Each query offers three answers, and members of the audience must each secretly choose an answer with the A, B, and C cards they've been given. When everyone has selected one, the answers are revealed and the audience may now discuss the question with the contestants. The audience will try to get the contestants to agree with their answers, though the contestants need not do so, nor even wait for discussion. Once both contestants have also selected answers, the host reveals the right answer and points are awarded.

Anyone, contestant or audience member, who answered correctly gets a point. If the contestants both got it right, they and anyone who also got the correct answer scores an extra point. But if the contestants got it wrong, and they both supplied the same wrong answer, they score nothing -- and any audience members who gave the same wrong answer get a point. This means if you can convince the contestants to agree with your answer, particularly one you know to be wrong, you can gain points while depriving them of the same.
Tokens are given out for players to keep score. The more players you have, the fewer tokens needed to win and vice versa. Whoever reaches a predetermined total first wins. The numbers can be adjusted for a longer or shorter game, but an average game lasts about half an hour.

The game looks nice, the irony being that illustrator-by-trade John Kovalic had a heavier-than-usual hand in the game's design, and his drawing abilities were required the least. Hopefully consumers like bright colors and exaggerated designs, because the box seems to mimic a lot of Mr. Feldman's fashion sense, right down to the touristy button-up shirts. If there are any other visual holes in your mental picture in need of filling, the Bobblehead will take care of those. It's a nifty little Feldman statuette, and it's been sculpted with a loving hand (though it makes him look awfully old).

Then again, this could feed into the price tag. Whad'Ya Know costs the same as any of their other long-box games, but if they dispensed with the amusing but not-at-all-necessary Bobblehead and the scoring tokens (there's nothing here that can't be accounted for with good old pad and pencil), it would all fit into one of their small-size boxes (like My Word! and Gold Digger), possibly at a greatly reduced cost.

There are 200 quiz cards in the deck, with a question on both sides (the game even thoughtfully includes a divider card to keep previously asked questions separate from the fresh quizzes). The game is a party game -- or so the top-end 10 player limit would suggest -- but the scoring system seems to keep the number of cards needed for play fairly stable. Nonetheless, a few supplemental card sets like those for Apples to Apples would be a welcome sight in any upcoming releases announcements. The questions themselves appear to be designed to provoke more discussion than decision. There are a number of "What percentage of . . .?" questions only a statistician could love, and many obscure bits of information that earn the name "trivia."

By offering such questions, Out of the Box Publishing keeps up that level of player interaction that their more mechanically intellectual properties have fostered so handily. Even the trivia provides more trivia on each card in case the arguments didn't get heated enough. While not as surprisingly clever as some of the items on the Out of the Box manifest, Michael Feldman's Whad'Ya Know? is still a good variation on the umpteen iterations of Trivial Pursuit and friends. It adds strategy and player communication to the venerated trivia genre, and even at its inflated price it does so for less than the seemingly standardized $30-plus price tags on typical party games.

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