Most of us are familiar with Baba Ali. We’ve watched his videos on Ummahfilms.com or Youtube or we’ve seen him live at a fundraiser or conference. We’ve laughed, sometimes almost so much that we’ve cried, while listening to Baba Ali’s comedic style of relating everyday experiences in the lives of American Muslims, while also imparting important moral lessons. What you might not know is that Baba Ali’s talents expand beyond comedy. In 2004, Baba Ali, whose real name is Ali Ardekani, released his first board game called “Mecca to Medina”. Last year he came up with a totally different game concept and released the “wacky word game” known as “Kalimaat”.
Kalimaat, which means “words” in Arabic, is a word-guessing and memory game. In the game, there are two teams each composed of two players. In the first round, each team designates a clue-giver and a guesser. The clue-giver picks up a card listing ten words and has one minute to give clues to his teammate who try and guess the words. When the guesser figures out a word, he does not say it out loud, rather, he remembers it in his mind. Once the one-minute time is up, the guesser has 30 seconds to call out all of the words he can remember. For each word he gets correct, the team gets one point. After the 30 seconds, the opposing team has a chance to recall any words not mentioned. After each team has done one round of clue-giving and guessing, the team players switch roles for the next round. The game continues in this fashion until either team reaches 15 points.
The game sounds simple enough, right? WRONG! I played the game with several relatives and found it to be both fun and challenging. The words listed on the cards are fairly simple, including “DVD”, “entrance”, and “InshaAllah”. So, giving clues and guessing the words is not the most difficult part of the game; rather, having to remember all of the words that one guesses correctly is quite a challenge. After playing the game, one participant exclaimed, “My head hurts!” I played with relatives ranging from ages 7 to 50 and all agreed it was quite a mental task.
From my experience playing the game, I identified a couple of drawbacks. First, there is an option to use a deck of cards in which each card contains a “cultural” word from a Muslim country (the other deck of cards includes Islamic words). This could be problematic if one or both players are unfamiliar with that culture. Because you have the option not to choose those cards and only use the cards with “Islamic” words, this should not be a big problem. The second drawback we noticed is that the game is made for exactly four players – no more and no less. This is a bit too restricitive. Because the game moves quickly and is relatively short (ends at 15 points), we came up with a solution in the case of too many players. I found that playing in a sort of tournament style would work best. So, if there are three teams of two-players, two teams would play first and the winning team would keep playing until one of the other teams wins. . Despite these minor drawbacks, the game received positive reviews from all who played.
Playing the game is a great way to bring relatives and friends of all ages together for some fun, quality time. In many instances, watching how others try various techniques to focus on memorizing their words or how others sigh and exclaim when the mental challenge becomes just too much will cause lots of laughter and memories for the players. While offering a good time to those who play, Kalimaat also provides mental stimulation and a chance to sharpen one’s short-term memory skills. To all the huffazh and hifzh students, don’t assume this game will be a breeze for you – it was still quite a challenge for players with a lot of Qur’an memorized!
Kalimaat is simple with not too many pieces or a board or too many rules. It’s a straightforward game that moves quickly allowing for a good time, whether you want to play for 10 minutes or 2 hours.
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