It’s not all that often that I contemplate the connection between Niall Horan of One Direction, the state of Colorado, the world’s largest rainforest, and Jackson, Mississippi.
But when I do ponder the link, it’s because I only have a few seconds to figure out that The Nile, The Amazon, The Colorado, and The Mississippi are all rivers before someone else shouts Dinkee and I’ve lost another round of trivia.
Dinkee, from the makers of Linkee at Bananagrams Inc., fires the brain on all kinds of cylinders as a fun trivia game designed for kids. Players divide up into teams (multi-player or single-player) and are tasked with trying to find the link between four questions on the card. Once they’ve figured it out, they yell “DINKEE” and, if correct, take the card, which has a letter on the back of it. If they’re incorrect, they must wait until the next card to start answering again. The team that spells “DINKEE” with all their question cards first wins the game.
The brightly colored box comes with four writing pads and mini pencils to jot down answers while trying to make the connections. This encourages players to figure out all the answers before shouting too early.
The game seems like it would be best played in teams, but kids could totally go head-to-head solo as well. There is a back-and-forth way of playing with just two people, but let’s be honest, games are always more fun when there are several people trying to shout over each other the whole time. I mean, the box labels Dinkee as “the shouty-outy trivia game” for a reason.
The age group of 8 and up seems fair, as the questions are definitely designed for kids, but having multi-player teams instead of just single-player ones would likely help kids feel more confident in participating. The game suggests writing down answers to the questions before connecting the link, but sharing those answers with younger players would keep them involved.
There are a few questions here and there that are tough, but I didn’t find an entire card that was completely baffling. Even when some of the cards did get a little tricky, everyone can still learn quick facts from them (I had no idea a vixen was another name for a female fox and not just for Santa’s trusty reindeer).
If a card does happen to stump everyone, the team reading the card can give clues until someone can connect the dots. There are also a couple of trading rules if a team has too many cards of the same letter or wants to prevent another team from taking too far of a lead.
Unlike other trivia games that leave players waiting during someone else’s turn, Dinkee keeps every player engaged for pretty much the entirety of the game. Whether it’s reading a card or yelling out the answers, there really isn’t much downtime to create a lull in family game night.
