CAIRA: I’m Caira Blackwell.
ROSIE: I’m Rosie Guerin. And you’re listening to The Wirecutter Show.
Hey, Caira.
CAIRA: Rosie.
ROSIE: Hey.
CAIRA: Hi.
ROSIE: We’re in the summer.
CAIRA: Yeah. It’s time to party, I think.
ROSIE: Party, oh boy! We’re going to be outside. Somebody inevitably, whether you’re in the park, whether you’re at the beach, whatever, somebody’s pulling out a game.
CAIRA: Oh, 100%.
ROSIE: Are you a game person?
CAIRA: I love games.
ROSIE: Do you love a lawn game?
CAIRA: I do, except for cornhole. I feel like it’s overplayed.
ROSIE: And frankly, what else is there beyond cornhole?
CAIRA: Exactly. And I get it. Everybody knows it and therefore it’s easier to just whip out and nobody has to learn the rules. But Rosie, I’m tired of cornhole.
ROSIE: And I mean, I guess there’s bocce old school.
CAIRA: Yeah, I guess.
ROSIE: When we were kids, we had an old croquet set that once a summer we would take out and that was really fun. But-
CAIRA: How posh of you?
ROSIE: It is. Yeah. True posh. Not terribly portable.
CAIRA: No.
ROSIE: Not an easy setup. There’s got to be more.
CAIRA: I think I’m ready to try something new and that is why we’re here today. We’re going to be bringing on James Austin, A.K.A. James Games.
ROSIE: James Games.
CAIRA: Love him. He’s a staff writer covering games and hobbies here at Wirecutter and he joined us last year to talk about board games and tabletop games for any kind of game night. Today he’s going to tell us about some outdoor games that you’ve hopefully never heard of that you can just whip out all summer long, get out in the sun, away from the screens and play something new. Or maybe you’ve even got a 4th of July gathering planned for tomorrow. Now will be a fun time to just run to a store and try one out.
ROSIE: I’m always excited to talk to James and I love that conveniently we have someone to talk about every topic.
CAIRA: I know. Oh, I love it.
ROSIE: James, welcome back.
JAMES: Hey, thanks for having me. I’m happy to be back.
CAIRA: James Games. We’re always so excited to have you on. And today we’re talking about lawn games. So I think when most people think about outdoor games, they think of things like cornhole, Frisbee, or just kicking or throwing a ball around. And before we even get to the other games that you might recommend, James, we would love for you to actually just explain what cornhole is.
JAMES: Yes. So cornhole, if you’ve ever been to a football tailgate or a brewery anytime past 2010, you’ve probably seen cornhole, two boards on either side of the playing field with a hole sort of in the top center. Goal is to try to throw beanbags through the middle of the hole. That’s it. We don’t really know why it’s called cornhole, by the way. It’s sort of like we assume it’s because people in the Midwest had corn and filled bags with it, but the history of corn hole-like games goes back to the mid 1800s. So it’s kind of a-
ROSIE: Oh, really?
JAMES: Yeah, usually beanbags was the main component for a while and then corn sort of became the medium of choice when the Midwest kind of took it up. And it became popular there.
ROSIE: I do love a bit of cornhole. For this lawn games guide that you wrote, James, you’ve got cornhole recommendations, but I want to know what intrigued you about looking beyond the classics.
JAMES: So I grew up in the shadow of a major college, the University of Central Florida, go Knights. So I went to a lot of tailgates as a child and then as a young adult and then as a college student. And cornhole was inevitable everywhere. It just became the game that everybody was accessible, could bring out. And it’s fun, but at a certain level, there’s got to be something else, right? There’s got to be more things. And so that sort of drove a little bit of that curiosity.
ROSIE: There’s got to be more to life than cornhole.
JAMES: Exactly.
ROSIE: What surprised you during the testing, James?
JAMES: I think what mostly surprised me, mostly in the research and then born out in the testing is that a lot of the games haven’t really evolved very far from throw a thing in another thing, which can’t knock it. It’s a easy thing to set up.
CAIRA: It’s tried and true.
JAMES: Exactly. But there’s not as much innovation in that in the outdoors games field as I expected. This started to change a little bit in the most recent testing, which is nice.
ROSIE: James, Caira and I are going to throw out some possible scenarios folks might encounter this summer and we want you to give your best recommendation for meeting the moment.
JAMES: Sounds good.
ROSIE: Okay. First scenario, a group of super competitive people, what’s the game you’re pulling out and how do you play?
JAMES: So my first instinct with this, and this is one of the reasons why it’s not recommended for most kind of game in our guide, is a game called spikeball, which if you’ve been in a public park, you’ve seen this. If you have a group of young people around a circle and are just manically yelling and hitting a ball towards it, that’s spikeball. It’s essentially a version of on the ground volleyball, for lack of a better term. The goal is you’re supposed to spike the ball against the net that everybody’s sort of surrounding, and the other team then has to volley it back and then spike it back down and it goes back and forth like a little volleyball match. Really fun if you aren’t over the age of 30 and not quite fit like your tester might be, but very fun if you’re really competitive and really want to have a physical sort of like, “We’re here to sweat.”
CAIRA: I could see that getting really intense very fast.
JAMES: Very much so.
ROSIE: This was brought to a family gathering that I had recently and intended I think for two four-year-olds, a five-year-old and an eight-year-old. And I don’t think it was the one.
JAMES: Yeah, I probably wouldn’t recommend it under mid-teens. It does require a fair amount of hand-eye coordination, which again, during our testing, I discovered I don’t have a lot of. So that was fun.
CAIRA: Okay. So that does lead into our next scenario though. What if you do have a mix of ages and physical abilities, but you just want everybody to play and hopefully they can learn it pretty quickly too?
JAMES: Yeah. So I think for the record, cornhole’s a great version of this. It’s very low-key, very casual, but if you’re looking for something a little bit out of that lane, something that’s also you might have seen at barbecues or tailgates is something called ladder golf. Usually it’s a frame of three bars of varying heights normally made out of PVC, but occasionally you’ll find like metal versions, the one we recommend is metal. And you’re throwing bolas, which are two balls tied with a string to try to get them wrapped around different bars for a certain amount of points. Yeah, a little bit different. Most people are not familiar with throwing bolas. The physics of it is just a thing they’re not used to. And there are a couple different approaches that you can take and try out, which is fun. You can kind of experiment, but it’s still very much the low level you can kind of play with a beer in your hand kind of game, because nobody really starts out being very good with it. You kind of just don’t have to be very competitive about it.
ROSIE: An even playing field to start.
JAMES: Exactly. Yeah.
CAIRA: I actually did play this game last 4th of July on the rooftop.
ROSIE: Is it fun?
CAIRA: Yeah. And I had a drink in my hand and I was throwing it around and it was great and it was the perfect… You don’t need a bunch of space to play this game and we were never at risk of even throwing it off the roof. It’s very contained.
JAMES: That was going to be my question. I’m terrified of playing throwing games on the roof.
CAIRA: Nobody did it and you know we played it all night so it was all levels of drunkness.
ROSIE: So how about a big group of people that are going to be hanging around for hours, something maybe with a little bit more strategy and teamwork, maybe this is played earlier in the evening?
JAMES: Yeah. So one of the games that I discovered in this testing, which I really came to love is a game called kubb, K-U-B-B.
ROSIE: Oh, I love kubb.
JAMES: Kubb is so good. it’s essentially you have two lines of kubbs, which are small wooden blocks and each team’s trying to throw pins to knock over the kubbs and then that team can throw the kubbs back onto the field in strategic places to try to make them more hard to hit. A little bit of a longer game than your normal like bag toss or ladder golf. Strategic feels strong, but it gives you some more choice in the way to play the game, which I really appreciate.
CAIRA: This game has a different name, doesn’t it? Don’t people call it like Viking something?
JAMES: It’s occasionally called Viking chess, which I looked into a little bit. It does seem to have Scandinavian roots. Whether that you associate that with Viking or not, it’s kind of up to you. But yeah, people do call it Viking chess every now and then. Maybe a little bit simplistic in terms of chess terms.
ROSIE: I used to get together with a big group of friends every Memorial Day weekend and one year one of the friends brought a kubb set and we just took to it and it became a thing that we played every year, so much so that she started to make her own kubb sets.-
JAMES: Oh, that’s so fun.
ROSIE: … and gave them to couples as the couples in the group got married-
CAIRA: Oh my God.
ROSIE: … that was the wedding present that she would gave.
JAMES: What a great wedding gift. That’s nice.
ROSIE: Yeah.
CAIRA: That’s so thoughtful.
Ok, we’re gonna take a quick break, and when we come back… more game scenarios and recommendations from James!
CAIRA: We’re back, with James Austin, who writes about games for Wirecutter. We’re tossing him different outdoor scenarios where we might want to play something new.
Okay. Next scenario I’m heading to a park or a camping trip with my partner and I don’t want to lug a big unwieldy game set with me the whole time.
JAMES: Yeah. So I will say Kubb is pretty good for that. It’s pretty contained, easy to travel around with. But one of our picks is called String Trees, which is sort of made for this packability small outdoor game. It’s essentially string shuffleboard. You have a string that you put up in between two trees or posts or whatever you have convenient, and you try to slide metal rings along it to get them into scoring zones. It’s a little bit of like trying to strategically block your opponent to make sure that when they throw their rings down, it hits yours into a more advantageous position. Really fun, packs up into a tiny little thing, really easy to travel with. Might also say that more traditional sort of like tabletop games that travel outside are really good for this. So hive or hive pocket, really easy to travel.
ROSIE: I love Hive.
JAMES: It’s such a good game.
ROSIE: I love Hive.
CAIRA: What is Hive?
JAMES: Hive is a chess-like game where you’re trying to move bug tiles around to surround your opponent’s queen tile. It’s really good. The pieces are plastic, really hard to damage, won’t blow off in the wind. Really great two-player game. And then Azul is another game that has a lot of very chunky components and travels fairly well.
ROSIE: My partner and I always travel with Hive. We played in the airport when we’re waiting for our plane and it’s just like, I call it fun chess because I actually hate chess, but I love hive fun chess.
CAIRA: Yeah.
JAMES: I believe the headline for Hive in one of our two player games picks is chess but fun, is my pitch for it, which is a little bit negging chess, which I shouldn’t, but yeah.
ROSIE: That is so funny. Okay. Here’s a scenario. How about you’re outside, you’re having a great time. The weather suddenly turns, but you have a garage or a basement or a covered patio. What game could possibly be played indoors where you still maybe need a little space?
JAMES: Yeah. So I think there is some level of how much do you care about damage to your inside space when you’re playing these. But as Caira pointed out, ladder golf, great for this sort of constrained space scenario. I have a bias where if I’m being chased back indoors at this point, I’d probably revert to more of my party game stuff, more like monikers, code names. But if you’re still looking for something active and standing up, ladder golf really does that well.
CAIRA: So what if I’m tailgating, so I don’t have a lot of room, but I want to mix it up instead of playing beer pong or cornhole.
JAMES: I really like a game called KanJam for tailgating, which is you have again, throwing things at other things, but in this case, the teams are throwing flying discs, so Frisbees at a trash can sized thing with an open top and a little slot in the front. And the goal is to try to get the Frisbee into the slot in the front, but if you miss, your teammate can kind of bounce the Frisbee to try to score it through the top and you get sort of extra points that way. Encourages a little bit more interaction for both sides of the team because you have the thrower and you have somebody who’s trying to bounce into the target area, whereas in like cornhole, ladder golf, it’s sort of you’re watching your teammate play for a little while and then you get to play back. So I kind of like that more interactive KanJam thing for Tailgate specifically because they can get rowdy and that’s fun.
ROSIE: And you don’t need that much space for KanJam?
JAMES: It varies. I have found that depending on the skill of the Frisbee thrower, it can actually be quite a close game. The angle of attack on Frisbee, if you’re bad at it needs to be fairly small.
ROSIE: Okay. So to that end, a scenario where I’m in a park, I’ve got lots of room, big lawn, but I don’t want to play Frisbee.
JAMES: Yeah. So the problem is that a lot of the games when I initially think of for this question is Frisbee based, so KanJam, Bottle Bash. But if you wanted to avoid Frisbee entirely, I think kubb’s great for a large space. You can set up a really big playing area, but honestly, and this is not in any of the guides, but it’s something I’ve done recently that I had a great time with, fly a cheap kite. It’s mostly running in my experience, but that’s the most running around in a park I’ve done recently and it was a ball, it was great.
CAIRA: Another scenario, what if I’m on a beach and I’m really not afraid to work up a good sweat?
ROSIE: I mean, kite number one.
JAMES: Kite also. Yeah, very good at this, but spikeball, I feel like is made for exactly that setting. It sort of encourages you to take suicidal dives into the sand in a way that I am less worried about dislocating my shoulder on some soft sand than I am on turf or pavement. And so you can get a little bit more into the physicality of spikeball if you’re at a beach setting. Plus, when you get hot and sweaty, just dumb into the ocean and then come back out.
ROSIE: James, thank you so much for joining us. We always have fun when you’re here.
JAMES: Happy to help. I always have a good time too.
ROSIE: We’re going to link to James’s reporting on outdoor games in the show notes and of course you can always find more on our website.
The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by me, Rosie Guerin, and produced by Abigail Keel. Engineering support from Maddy Masiello and Nick Pitman. Today’s episode was mixed by Catherine Anderson. Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Elisheba Ittoop, Rowan Niemisto, Catherine Anderson and Diane Wong. Cliff Levy is Wirecutter’s deputy publisher and general manager. Ben Frumin is Wirecutter’s editor in chief.
CAIRA: I’m Caira Blackwell.
ROSIE: And I’m Rosie Guerin. Thank you for listening.
