Review on Educational Insights Freeze Up 8920: Boost Learning with Engaging Freeze-Up Game by Anthony Cano

First let me say that I play games quite often and I have what most people consider a ridiculous amount of games. However, this game is too easy for adults. It's a shame because I like the concept. Decide on the number of teams first (we did 2 even though we were 8 otherwise it would have taken all night). Each team gets 60 seconds separately and time is deducted from each round until you finish. For example, if I were on my team, I would have 60 seconds. invent the first word. As soon as I say the word, I press stop and pass it on to the next person. This person has 60 seconds. Think of your first word. You hit stop and hand it back to me. I now have 57 seconds to find the next word since it took me 3 seconds. invent the first word. The second person has 58 seconds because it took 2 seconds. Think of your first word. And so on, back and forth, subtracting the time for each individual team based on how long it took them to come up with a word one after the other. You can play with 8 players. We did it in 2 teams of 4 because otherwise (in our opinion) it would take too long. So I said the first word, then Team 2 left, then someone from my team left, then another person from Team 2, etc. Pros: I like individual time for each team. I love the large number of teams you can have if you want (and if you do it like we do, the number of people that can play is endless). I really like the concept: Here is a category and here is a letter: think of a word that fits the category and start with the given letter (e.g. movie star, letter L). I love that you can click 'New Category' or 'New Letter' if you get stuck, but that takes 3 seconds off your time. This gives you a chance when you're stuck, so you don't run out of time on an impossible word, and discourages people from moving on to something easy. Problems: It's too easy. 90% of the time it took us between 1 (yes, 1) and 4 seconds to come up with a word (actually often less than 1 second because we thought of a word even before the countdown started; this got us confused at the beginning because we pressed stop, but the time kept running because we pressed before the countdown started and we didn't realize it at first). However, since it is random, you may get an impossible combination (example: horned animal, letter J). (Maybe it exists, but if it does, it's too obscure for this game.) Also, TOO SLOW between players. Between each player is whoever is higher, but not just "Player 2," but "Player 2, you're next!" in a slow, dramatic fashion. It also tells you how much time you have left (which is good, but speed it up!). It drove us all crazy. This is a much better game for younger kids (I've played with my sixth graders and it was harder for them, but not too hard most of the time). I'll leave it to my class because it's good for that age, but I don't think I'll be playing it with adults again any time soon.