Trivia Meets Blackjack in Party Game Blind Jack

Guess the numerical answer to trivia questions, and keep going until you believe answers total up to a final score you’re happy with. But if that total goes over 21, your team automatically loses!

Published by Blue Orange Games, Blind Jack is a 15-minute party game designed for 2-12 players.

Gameplay

Players split into teams of up to three players. Each card in the deck has a trivia question on one side with an answer on the back. Answers will always be a number from 0-10.

On a team’s turn, they look at the top question on the deck. They guess what they believe the answer to be, and hold the question up as they answer so that the opponents can see the answer. They then place the card in front of themselves, still being sure not to look at the answer. It is now the next team’s turn.

After a team has answered two questions, they may choose not to answer a question after looking at the question on the top of the deck. If they do so, they are finished for the rest of the round. After all teams are done, the round ends.

The teams then flip over the cards in front of themselves and add the combined values of all the answers. If a team’s total goes over 21, they automatically lose. Otherwise, the team closest to 21 wins the game.

Review

This is a clever trivia party game, with some intriguing push-your-luck elements. Players can track their opponents’ scores while constantly having to wonder how far they themselves might be off with their guesses. Maybe you know the other team has stopped with only 15 points, do you go for another question to hedge your bets? But what if you’ve wildly underestimated one of your answers?

There is also a nice range of questions. They cover a variety of topics and several popped up that one or more players actually knew the answer to, some we had no idea and were just wildly guessing on, and a few we had an idea of a general range, but were still very much guessing. This range in answers was perfect for the game and the goal of reaching 21 as closely as possible without going over.

The game is well-made, generally. We liked the quality of the cards. You are supposed to be able to use a tracker that is part of the box insert, together with tiny cubes, to track the current combined total of your team’s guesses, but we found it pretty fiddly to use and the cubes kept sliding off. One side of the insert’s tracker didn’t work at all. It was a nice idea, but ultimately was more trouble than it was worth to use.

We had a ton of fun with Blind Jack and played many rounds of it back-to-back. Games do run pretty fast, and there are some concerns over how quickly you could get through all the questions in the deck. But this is a very enjoyable party game that felt fresh, and that’s extremely accessible for players of various experience levels.

Pros: Great trivia questions chosen, unique push-your-luck mechanic for this genre of game, very accessible

Cons: Potentially could run through the cards quickly, the box insert tracker doesn’t work well

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.