Rules
Rules

Is this mic on?

Is this mic on?

Feuding Families is a game based on a very popular, decades-long TV game show currently hosted by Steve Harvey.

Setup

There are two active teams. In our version, we have enough people for three teams, so one team will watch each round. We’ll rotate so each team goes twice in a row. Each team is composed of five or six people.

Objective

The objective is to score points by correctly guessing the top answers to a 100-person survey panel. The questions/prompts are simple, but tricky—answers are not always factually correct, but just whatever people think is correct.

Teams and team names are already assigned thanks to the magic of random generators on the internet.

Playing the Game

Two teams at a time are pitted against each other for a round. An example follows.

First, a player from each team goes head-to-head to determine which team “runs” the round. The prompt is revealed to both players at the same time, who must come up with an answer before the other. The player who gets the highest answer brings the round to their team (ties are broken by who answers first).

“Running” a round: When your team is running the round (i.e. your player got the highest response), each player on the team will take turns guessing the other responses. Teammates cannot help each other at this point. If a team gets all the responses—”clears the board”—they take all the points. However, if they get three wrong answers, the other team has a chance to steal!

When stealing, a team gets one guess to get another item on the board. This time, they can discuss and work together towards the answer. If they guess correctly, they steal all the revealed points. Otherwise, the team that ran the round wins the points.

Example: Team A & Team B

Team A & Team B are playing a round against each other.

For head to head, Team A sends Avery and Team B sends Blake to play. Harvey Host says out loud: “We asked 100 people: Name a house pet.” Blake is faster, and responds “Cat!” before Avery.

Harvey Host indicates this is fastest and calls to the board to see if that is a response. “Survey says…. Cat! Number two answer, 30 points.” At this point, Avery has a chance to guess the number one answer. Harvey Host says this, and Avery pauses before guessing, “Dog!”

This turns out to be the number one answer (45 points), so Team A gets to run the round. Harvey Host says there are five answers, and the first two have been revealed: Dog (45 points) and Cat (30 points). The next member of Team A, Addison, gets to guess without any help. Addison: “Goldfish”. Number three answer, 12 points.

The next member of Team A, Aubrey, is up to guess. They guess “Chinchilla”, which is incorrect. Team A has one strike. Alex and Austen both guess incorrectly as well, so Team A strikes out.

This gives Team B the chance to steal all 87 points with a correct guess. They huddle for a moment, then Blaine confidently declares: “Parrot!” Harvey Host looks at the survey and reveals “Parrot”, the number five answer, for three points. Team B has stolen the 87 points, plus the three points they gained with their guess, for 90 points total.

Harvey Host then reveals the fourth answer, “Snake” (10 points). Everyone on Team A is upset because snakes aren’t that common of pets!! But that doesn’t matter, because the answer is what the survey says, not what is factually accurate.

Strategy & Finer Points

Each category has between four and seven responses, and the points are generally between 95 and 100. No category has more than 100 points (each point represents a single survey response).

The people who responded to these questions are just random Americans! Do not trust them to be technically correct—this isn’t Jeopardy!

Answers do not have to be the exact wording, and it’s the host’s discretion to determine what is close enough. For instance, in the example above, “Parrot” was deemed close enough to “Bird” to count. If the answer had been “Dove” instead, “Parrot” may not have counted.

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