Simple game brings hysteria to our house

For Hanukkah this year my kids got a game called Chairs. It’s a very simple game with no real directions and no real game strategy other than a steady hand and a strong heart. The object of the game is to stack 24 colorful plastic chairs, one atop the other, into a big structural tower of chairs. It’s sort of like Jenga in reverse. Instead of removing pieces and trying not to make the structure fall down, with chairs you take turns adding the chairs to the pile until it falls. Sounds simple? Heh. Simple it is not.

We started playing this on the kitchen table, each of us taking a turn. We always got through three rounds each and then kaboom! the structure would tumble. At first we started willy-nilly, but then we started looking at the different kinds of chairs in the set, and trying to design the structure according to the chairs that would balance best. Well, that was faulty logic at best.

Then we tried to build a strong structure from the bottom guaranteeing (we thought) a better balance further up the pile. That kind of helped a bit, but once we got about 12 chairs piled up, the darn structure would tumble down. We would talk through each chair choice and discuss the pros and cons of the next move and then we’d agree that we had it this time, put the next chair on the pile and watch it collapse. And when it collapsed, so did we, in complete hysteria. I don’t think we have laughed so hard in years.

My poor daughter was the losing chair turn after turn, and she was laughing so hard at the end of the game that her hand was shaking too hard to continue. She had tears running down her cheeks and her brother was laughing so hard he couldn’t catch his breath. This is what I call a successful reaction to a fun game.

Chairs is an appropriate game for kids over around 6 years of age. Your kids have to have decent hand-eye coordination to play this game. It helps if adults do as well. Because you never know what chair will make the game tumble, it isn’t particularly frustrating for anyone, nor is there a ‘winner’ or a ‘loser’. As with many cooperative games, there develops a great team spirit and a comradery that allows kids and adults to play together in a real spirit of fun.

This is a great game. I highly recommend it and hope you try it out and let us know how you like it. Chairs retails for $14.95 and is widely available both online and in retail stores.