This That & Everything America Board Game: Rules for How to Play

Objective

The objective of This That & Everything America is for your team to score the most points by correctly guessing words after your teammates describe them.

Set Up

Place the cards in the middle of the table.
Choose which side of the cards you are going to play. You should play whichever side of the cards are face down.
Pick a player to be the scorekeeper. They will take the score pad and the pencil.
The players divide into two teams. The team that has the player that looks the most like the Statue of Liberty starts the game.

How to Play This That & Everything America

To start each round the current team chooses which of their players will be the “describer” for the current round. The players should take turns during the game taking on the role of the describer.

The describer takes the top card from the stack and looks at the side that was face down. They should study the words/phrases on the card so they can start to figure out how they can describe them.

An example card — For this round the describer will try to give a description of Wilt Chamberlain, Hot dog, Chuck E. Cheese’s, Breaking Bad, Pony Express, and Clive Cussler.

Once the player has had some time to look at the card, a player on the other team starts a 30 second timer. Once the describer starts to talk, the timer begins. The describer will then start describing one of the words/phrases on the card. You can do the words in any order. It is probably best if the describer starts with the words that they think their teammates are most likely to guess.

Describing the Words

The describer has a lot of leeway in how they can describe each word/phrase. The other players on their team should listen to the clues and try to figure out what they are describing. The other players can make as many guesses as they want. There is no punishment for an incorrect guess.

An example describing some of the words on a card — Here is an example card from the game. The current describer could describe some of the words as follows:
Football – This is the most popular sport in America where you try to score touchdowns.
Underground Railroad – A series of safe houses used to help enslaved African Americans escape in the United States.
Homer Simpson – The father in a long running animated show that regularly says “Doh”.

Some rules that must be followed when describing the word/phrase are as follows:

You can’t say any of the words or parts of the words printed on the card.
You can’t use “rhymes with” or “sounds like” to describe the word/phrase.
Your description cannot tell the other players what letter the word/phrase starts with.

Should you break any of these rules, your turn ends immediately.

Whenever one of your teammates guess the word/phrase, you will choose another from the card to start describing.

There are no specific rules saying that you can’t skip a word and move onto another if you are having trouble getting your teammates to guess the word. As there are no rules forbidding you changing the word you are describing, I see no reason why you couldn’t change to a new word even if your teammates haven’t guessed the previous word.

You will keep describing words and trying to guess them until the timer runs out. Next you will move onto the scoring phase.

Scoring

After the round ends, the players count up how many words/phrases they correctly guessed. The team scores one point for each correctly guessed word.

Should you successfully guess all six words/phrases on the card, you receive an additional bonus point.

Some of the cards feature an illustration on them. Each word with a picture you correctly guess is worth two points.

Word with a picture by it — This card features a picture next to the Wright Brothers. If the team correctly guesses the Wright Brothers, the players score two points for it.

Winning This That & Everything America

The game ends after both teams have played 13 rounds. Total the number of points each team scored in the game. The team that scored the most points wins the game.

Determining the final score — The game has ended. Team A got all of the words in rounds five and ten so they score a bonus point in those rounds. Team B scored a bonus point in round two. Since team A ended up scoring more points, they have won the game.

This That & Everything America FAQ

If you have any questions about how to play the game, leave a comment below on this post. I will try to answer any questions asked as best and as quickly as possible.

Components

100 Cards
Score Pad
30 Second Timer

Year: 2018 | Publisher: Outset Media

Genres: Party, Word

Ages: 12+ | Number of Players: 4+ | Length of Game: 20 minutes

Difficulty: Light | Strategy: Light | Luck: Moderate

For more board and card game rules/how to plays, check out our complete alphabetical list of card and board game rules posts.

Written By:

Eric Mortensen

Eric Mortensen is an owner and head writer on Geeky Hobbies since 2014. He is an avid board game player and collector with over 3,000 board and card games in his collection. Since 2014 he has written more than 1,100 board game how to play guides.