Thanksgiving Family Games That Bring Everyone to the Table 

Get everyone talking

What Would You Choose? Kids & Family is a deck of funny, silly and sometimes tricky dilemmas, the would-you-rather kind. There are no wrong answers, so a five-year-old and her grandfather start on equal terms. It sets up in under a minute, and its 95 waterproof cards hold 500 questions. Ages 5 and up.

For faster questions, try Rapid Fire Premium Family Conversation Cards: 250 cards with more than 500 questions in five categories. Players take turns answering against a one-minute clock, and the cards are full of conversation starters. Ages 8 and up.

Find out which generation knows more

Who Knows Generations Better? sorts its questions by generation, giving Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha rounds of their own. Six mini decks hold 600 questions on 300 cards about trends, history, science, entertainment, sports and pop culture. Play team against team or head to head, and expect a few friendly debates about whose decade was best. For more ideas, see what happens when four generations play the same game.

Act it out

Express & Guess Charades for Kids turns charades into a race against the clock. Players act out, explain and guess funny words and phrases before the 60-second timer runs out, and a surprise chaos die adds unexpected challenges, so no two rounds feel the same. There are 200 cards, and you play in teams, so split the room into kids versus grown-ups and see who wins.

Hold a family sing-off

Who Knows Music Better? packs four games into one box: World’s Greatest Hits, ’90s & 2000s Hip-Hop & R&B, Back to ’90s R&B, and ’90s & 2000s Lyrics. That’s 1,610 questions and challenges, from trivia to lyric rounds to sing-offs. The songs lean toward the years when today’s parents were teenagers, so for once Mom and Dad get to be the experts.

Take on a challenge

The Challenge Game Set comes with 250 illustrated challenge cards in five categories and three difficulty levels, plus the cups, balls, buttons and dice the tasks call for. Hand the easiest cards to the youngest players and the hardest ones to the grown-ups, and everyone gets a fair shot at winning.

Play something fast

Don’t BEE Last takes about a minute to learn: everyone slaps the card, and whoever slaps last loses. A game lasts 10 to 20 minutes, and the deck has 72 cards. It’s for two to six players, ages 7 and up. Just keep the pie plates out of slapping range.

Put on a family quiz

Teens and grown-ups who like a real challenge can try Where Did I Learn That?, a four-deck set with 2,000 questions, 500 each in geography, history, science and universal knowledge. Play solo, in teams or against the clock, and add one house rule: whoever answers correctly picks the category for the next player.

For a more classroom-style quiz, there’s Who Knows It Better?, with four decks on biology, physics and astronomy, culture and literature, and economics and finance. It’s for ages 12 and up, with a one-minute clock on every turn.

Build a puzzle together

A big jigsaw puzzle can stay out all weekend, and anyone can add a few pieces whenever they walk by. If your family watches the Thanksgiving parade, keep the New York theme going with the 1,000-piece New York detective puzzle, a busy cityscape full of landmarks and hidden clues. Once it’s built, there are 21 detective cases to solve, which makes it one of our puzzles that keep going after the last piece. With younger kids, try the Grand Museum puzzle and its 301 hidden tasks and seek-and-find challenges. Both finish at 31.5 by 23.5 inches, so set them up on a card table instead of the dining table.