Science Reviews

We (five college-educated adults, three with Master's degrees) found this game overly complicated and not very fun. Trivial pursuit is much more fun, and doesn't involve all the money banking. We also found quite a few errors in pronunciations provided--important in a spelling game.

"Oxford Dilemma" is a fun board game that challenges your knowledge of spelling, vocabulary, and trivia. In a typical turn, you will be asked to spell a word, based on a difficulty of 1 to 3, in one of four categories: geography, general (usually general vocabulary), famous (people, things), and science. If you spell it correctly, you have the opportunity to define it. Because the categories include geography, science, and famous, the requirement definition can really challenge your knowledge of trivia. Of course, there are sudden windfalls and pitfalls that occur as well, which can determine the outcome of the game.

We found the game fun and challenging. All of us are college-educated adults who consider ourselves of above-average intelligence, and most of us were pretty consistently challenged by some of the words/concepts. And we learned a lot!

We found some minor mistakes in the game - a spelling error, a typo in the pronunciation of a word - and at times we disputed the difficulty rating assigned a word or concept. Words we thought incredibly easy would be given a difficulty rating of "3," while people none of us had heard of (and our group encompassed all different types of interests) were in the "easy"
category. Also, I can see how this would be a frustrating game for those who aren't particularly strong in history, literature, or science.

Still, we enjoyed the game and look forward to playing it again soon!

With two lawyers and two teenagers at demanding high schools in the family, you'd think this would be a snap, but not at all. You'll become acquainted with geography you never heard of and people you never knew existed. Strategy is important, but there's enough variability on the roll of the dice to give everyone a chance at success.