Mocha With Linda hosts a weekly meme called Flashback Friday. She’ll post a question every Thursday, and then Friday we can link our answers up on her site. You can visit her site for more Flashbacks.

The prompt for today is:

Did you play many games when you were growing up? What were they? (Include outside games as well as board & card games.) Who did you generally play with? Did your entire family play games or just the kids? Were there any traditional games your family always played? What were your favorites? Are they still around today? What about puzzles? Was that a popular pastime at your house? Were puzzles saved for holidays or did you do them any time? Were they set out for anyone to work or just one person?

I am glad we had a week’s heads up on this one, because at first I could hardly think of any games. But after a while a few came to mind.

We did have Candyland when I was a child, and something like Sorry, only it wasn’t called that. Chinese checkers and regular checkers, of course. I do remember playing Chutes and Ladders, but I think it was different from the version we played when my sons were small.We played Concentration, like the Memory games, with regular playing cards. We played Life, Monopoly, and Yahtzee as I got a little older. Friends and I played a game called something like Dream Date (just looked it up — it is called Mystery Date — and they still make it!) where the guy you didn’t want to get was “the dud.” Probably not the best of games for a young girl’s psyche!

As for outdoor games, it seems we had a number of variations of tag. Regular tag, freeze tag (where you have to freeze in whatever pose you are in when you’re tagged until someone unfreezes you) and one of my favorites, statue tag. In that one someone swung the person around and they struck a pose as they were let go of and landed. Then “it” had to guess what they were supposed to be posing as. Other neighborhood games were Mother May I and Hide and Seek. Red Rover was played on the school playground and  7-Up and Simon Says were often played in school at recess on rainy days.

My grandmother loved card games and Canasta was her favorite. I often played with her but I don’t remember how it is played now. She also played several variations of Solitaire. We played Double Solitaire together often, something like Dutch Blitz but with regular playing cards.

Scrabble has been one of my favorite board games, but I don’t remember playing it growing up. I don’t remember where and with whom I first played it. I also liked Boggle and a game called Crossword Cubes which I wish they still made.

I don’t remember playing many games with my family as I grew up, but as all the siblings got older, we enjoyed games when we gathered together. Scattergories and Balderdash are the only two I remember, though I know we played several others.

When my own kids were small we played many of the same board games I did growing up as well as newer ones like Uno. As they got older we enjoyed games like Settlers of Cataan and its variation, Ticket to Ride, and Apples to Apples. My oldest and youngest love lengthy strategy games that take a couple of hours or more and played each other as well as a regular group of friends they got together with.

And though we still occasionally play board games, they mostly play video games now. I can’t handle any but the Wii — for some reason other video games bother my eyes. And my older kids and I play Scrabble via Facebook.

I do usually really enjoy games when we play, but somehow we don’t play them that often! I generally prefer games that are more than just chance or continually being knocked back to the beginning, like Sorry, but sometimes I’ll play those if someone else wants to.

Sometimes at church fellowships we’ve played group games like Outburst, Pictionary, and Guesstures. I like those just occasionally, but can’t handle too much noise and commotion for very long.

I really don’t remember any puzzles from my childhood. I used them a lot with my own kids when they were little, but only once when they were older did we have a big puzzle out that everyone worked on over several weeks. We just never seemed to get much into them, and to do all that work just to take it apart and put it back in the box seemed a waste to me. I know you can get a type of glue to hold it all together and frame it, but that just never appealed much to me.

How about you — what games did you grow up with?