The 17 Must Play Family Holiday Games

Nothing says family more than sitting down on holiday to play a game. The odd bit of cheating from Grandma, the bending of the rules from Uncle, it's all part of the fun of spending quality time together. To help make this magic happen, here's our list of the 17 must play family holiday games.

Codenames: A word-based guessing game where players try to guess the words their teammate describes, trying to avoid words that belong to the opposing team.

Uno: A classic card game where players match numbers and colors, aiming to be the first to play all their cards.

Ticket to Ride: A board game in which players collect cards of various types of train cars and use them to claim railway routes on a map.

Pictionary: Players draw an image representing a word or phrase, while their teammates try to guess what it is.

Monopoly: The classic property-trading board game where players buy, sell, and trade properties while aiming to bankrupt their opponents.

Scrabble: Word game where players use letter tiles to make words on a game board.

Heads Up!: A guessing game where players hold a card on their forehead and try to guess what it says based on their teammates' hints.

Bananagrams: A fast-paced word game where players race to create a grid of words using their letter tiles.

Jenga: If you're tired of having to explain the rules, then this is the game for you. Players take turns removing one block at a time from a tower and balancing it on top without knocking the tower over.

Spot It!: A card game in which players try to spot the one symbol that two cards have in common.

Twister: A physical game where players place their hands and feet on colored circles according to a spinner's instructions without falling over.

Telestrations: A mix between "Telephone" and "Pictionary". Players draw what they see and guess what they think it is, leading to hilarious outcomes.

Boggle: Players try to find as many words as possible by connecting adjacent letters on a grid.

Carcassonne: A tile-placement game where players draw and place a tile with a piece of southern French landscape on it. The tile might feature a city, a road, a cloister, grassland, or some combination thereof, and it must be placed adjacent to tiles that have already been played, in such a way that cities are connected to cities, roads to roads, etcetera.

Sushi Go!: A card-passing game where players aim to pick the best combination of sushi dishes as they whiz by.

Charades: Players act out a word or phrase without speaking, while their teammates try to guess what it is.

Werewolf (or Mafia): A game of deceit. Players are secretly assigned roles as villagers or werewolves, and the group must find and eliminate the werewolves before they take over the village.