The guessing game

One of our favorite family pastimes of late is “the guessing game,” invented by Will as a spin-off of the tired old “Why did the chicken cross the road” question, which Will seems to never tire of.
In fact, he used to always launch the game with that question.

“Why did the chicken cross the road?” he’d ask.

“To get to the other side,” Rob or I would reply, except for the rare occasion when we’d bother to try to be more inventive.

“Yep,” Will would say. “Now it’s your turn.”

And that’s the cue for the game to actually get new and interesting.

We’ll pose questions back and forth like Why did the bus stop at the beach? Why did the squirrel run up the tree? Why did the bear go to sleep?

And often the asker and the guesser have different answers in mind. Sometimes we’re close though.

“Why did the duck say cock-a-doodle-doo?” I asked Will during one recent game in the car.

“Because he wanted to be a rooster,” Will said.

“That’s pretty close,” I said. “Because he was raised by a hen and a rooster so all he ever heard each morning was cock-a-doodle-doo and pretty soon he started saying it too.”

(In the guessing game, the asker always owns the “right” answer.)

Rob likes to get punny as the questioner:

"Why did the newspaper want to be green?" he asked the other day.

Will was too baffled too guess.

"Because it didn't want to be read," Rob said.

But my favorite rounds come when Will poses a question and we guess right.

“Why did the ball go so high up into the sky?” he asked me during that same game in the car.

“Because a boy named Will had incredibly strong arms so when he threw the ball it went a mile into the sky,” I guessed.

“Oh man,” he said, slapping his forehead in disbelief, “You guessed it!”

I’m starting to love the game as much as Will. And I think we’ll rely on it some as a time-killer as we attempt another nutty road trip to Colorado this summer.

What invented games do you play with your kids?