Game Night
A GUEST POST BY ANYA MATANOVIC
Game nights are a joyous time in our family. Every Christmas season, my mom would head to Uncle’s Games and bring home a new one for the family, and we’d find a night around the holidays to learn and play it together.
My sister, Katya, is now the queen of finding great games for every personality and occasion. Last summer, when my husband, daughter, and I were visiting my family in Seattle and the whole crew was together - kids, parents and grandparents - she pulled out a new one.
In Blank Slate, a card is drawn with a cue, like “___ LIGHT” or “PAPER ___.” Everyone secretly writes a word to complete the phrase - NIGHT light, PAPER airplane - and then reveals their answers to each other. The goal is to match exactly one other person: three points for a perfect pair, fewer if more people match, and none if no one does. First to 25 points wins. Simple!
The first card was drawn. I wrote down a word thinking, Oh no, I can’t think of any other word but I know everyone is going to choose this same one…
But… they didn’t! What became immediately apparent was that every one of us was convinced someone else - if not everyone else - would choose the same word. Instead, the variety of answers was enormous. Every round ended with some version of: “Oh! I never even thought of that.” I walked away from each round genuinely amazed at the collective intelligence and creativity of the group. I had thought of one answer - but suddenly there were ten, all equally interesting!
My family has since bought our own Blank Slate and pulled it out with all kinds of friends. Without fail, it’s a hit. It works across ages, personalities, energy levels, and moods. People laugh. People are surprised. The scoring doesn’t even really matter.
Only later did I notice something else magical about this game.
This past fall, I was observing my father guide a group of students at the University of Washington through the facilitation of a collaborative, democratic process. Toward the end, someone commented that she was struck by how different everyone’s ideas were. She had come in convinced hers would be obvious and top of mind for everyone, and instead found herself genuinely delighted by the range of perspectives in the room. It felt very familiar.
Blank Slate works the same way. You play it because it’s a silly, easy way to spend an evening with friends. But the structure of the game quietly does something very specific: it reveals how limited our assumptions are about how others think. If we could all harness that openness to others’ ideas, our democratic engagement would thrive. In my father’s work, democratic and collaborative processes are not about persuading people to think differently. They are about designing experiences that make our collective intelligence visible.
So yes - go get this game! Bring it to a family gathering. Play it with friends as you ring in the new year. Play it with people you know well, or people you’re just getting to know.
It’s a joyful reminder that a room full of people holds more intelligence than any one person does on their own.
Happy 2026! To joy, laughter and hope!
-Anya
Blank Slate is published by The Op Games and can be found at many local, independent game stores, as well as through national retailers.
