I have always loved playing along at home to the TV game show Pointless as presented by Alexander Armstrong on BBC 2. When I saw that a board game based on the show had been released by University Games I knew I had to get it. I purchased the game from Amazon for £17.99.

If you have seen the game on TV you will know that it runs a bit like Family Fortunes in reverse. The basic premise is that 100 people are surveyed on a number of different categories, and the aim of the game is to find the least popular answer. For example if you are asked to name English speaking countries the most obvious and worst answer is likely to be England and more obscure and better answer would be Angola. The game is played over 3 rounds and then there is a final end game.

The game tries to stick closely to the format of TV show which in many ways is its down fall. We found that the board that comes with the game was completely redundant as you tend to just tell the team what score they have achieved rather than wasting time running the counter down the countdown board.

The whole game seems to have too many irrelevant fiddly bits. There seems to be too many bits of punched out card board to use a score markers when you already have a score sheet. The card wallets you get are also really fiddly and it is difficult the put the cards in without looking at the answers - it is really difficult to play the game without a quiz master.

The category cards whilst varied are also mostly made up of questions from the TV version so if you are a fan of the show you will most likely remember the Pointless answers.

If you are playing in 2 teams the rounds are pretty pointless as the previous scores you have received do not really matter and act more as elimination rounds.

All in all I felt it was a lot of hassle and a lot of messing about with different card holders for this to be a really enjoyable game. Most of the time playing the game is spent fiddling about with cards, wallets and tokens rather than actually answering questions and playing the game.

This is a great TV show that does not transfer to board game.

**Playing the game**

Scoring - you receive the number of points on the answer card for each answer. If your answer is completely incorrect your recieve 100 points, if your answer scores 0 you receive a Pointless token.

Round 1 - A category is read out. Each team suggest the answer that they think will be the lowest scoring by writing it down on their answer pad. After each person has answer they declare it and then write down another answer and declare it. The card is taken out of the wallet to reveal the answers and each team receives the points as allocated on the card.

Round 2 - A question card is placed in the wallet and everyone is shown the possible answers through the window in the wallet. Each team as to choose an answer from the card in turns. After everyone has chosen their answer the card is removed from the wallet to reveal the scores for each answer and points are allocated accordingly.

Round 3 - Head to head game. A question card is placed in the wallet and each player has to write down and answer. The scores are revealed - the team with the lowest score is awarded a head to head token. Play continues like this until one team has collected 3 tokens.

Round 4 - End Game - If you are playing in more than 2 teams the team with the lowest score is out of the game. A question card is placed in the card wallet. The team with the most pointless tokens are allowed to give 3 answers to the question. The team with the next highest pointless tokens can give 2 answers and so on. The team that has the lowest scoring answer is the winner.