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In this article, you can read about the basic rules of the board game Beyond Balderdash and learn how to play. The object of the game is to fool other players into picking your answer to earn the most points.

Setup

Set out the board. Give each player scrap pieces of paper and a pen or pencil. Each player chooses a marker and places it on the start step of the board. Each player rolls the die. The highest player becomes the first leader of the round. The leader draws a card from the front of the holder and picks a category and reads it aloud. Keeping sure to keep the answer on the reverse side hidden.

The leader then writes the answer on a piece of paper. Every other player now creates a bluff answer to the category that was read. Writes it down along with their name on the paper and gives it to the leader.

The leader proofreads all the submissions to make sure he can read them all. Then mixes them up and reads them aloud. Players should not declare which one is theirs. All players must vote for which one they think is the real answer. The leader writes their initials on each card for each player who guesses it. Players may vote for their own but they do not receive any points for their own guess.

Earning Points

Once everyone has guessed, the leader reveals whose answer was whose and players received points.

A player receives one point for each guessed their bluff received. A player receives two points if they guess the correct answer. The leader receives three points if no player guesses the correct answer. If a player submitted an answer that is really close to the real answer they receive three points and their answer is removed from play for the round.

They do not cast a vote in guessing the correct answer. If more than one player has an answer that is close to the real answer, then every player who wrote a close answer receives three points. The card is discarded and the leader draws a new card and the game continues.

The five categories are as follows:

Words – What is the definition.

People – What is this person famous for.

Initials – What does this stand for.

Movies – What is this film about.

Dates – what happened on that day.

instead of picking a category you may play that the leader rolls a die to determine the category 1 is words 2 is people 3 is initials 4 is movies 5 is dates and 6 is the leader picks the category of his choice. The first player to reach the top of the stairs wins the game.