Ghetto Scattergories

My roommate and I were sitting at home one night, wanting to play Scattergories. The problem was that we were broke. Our decision was to look for the actual Scattergories lists online (which proved to be a quite grueling task, to say the least), look for the instructions, and make our own, homemade version of the game using whatever we had at hand. So I am going to give you instructions on how to play Scattergories at home for free and make it a lot easier on anybody who finds themselves in the same predicament as we did.

First. One of the hardest things for us to do was to find the actual lists online that Scattergories uses. I ended up doing a ton of copying, pasting, and editing and eventually put together a full 18 list word document. So I am going to save you a ton of time and post my lists on here for you to copy. :) I will post them as either one follow-up entry or as 18 individual entries and then all you have to do is to copy and paste them onto your computer and print them out if you would like.

Second. The actual Scattergories game comes with an 18-sided die with one letter of the alphabet representing each side (the letters "Q", "U", "V", "X", "Y", and "Z" are NOT included on the die). So what we did was to cut out 18 squares of paper (each representing every other letter not listed above), and put them in a container. We then shake the container and take turns picking a letter out for each game (this represents the die).

Third. You will also need a timer. The actual game comes with a timer that can be adjusted for one, two, or three minutes. We use the timers on our cellphones and usually set them for three minutes but any type of timing device will do.

Lastly. If you do not know the instructions, then follow this: Pull the lists I have posted for you up on your computer or use the printed paper. Start out with "List 1" and work your way down to 18. For each list, you or another player will draw a letter out of the container. You will have your choice of one, two, or three minutes to come up with as many words that start with that letter for each of the twelve categories. Once the timer goes off, you just count and compare how many words that you got for each category with the other player/'s. If they came up with the same word as you then that word doesn't count toward your score. Whoever has the most words per list that start with the letter that you drew at the beginning wins that round. Also, you can only use a particular word once for each list. Even if it's in another category. Let's say perhaps you listed the word "oranges" in "things that grow" and also in the "fruits" section: you could only count one of those as a point.