It can seem like the best board and card games require a group. But there are absorbing, competitive, and funny games to be found that are ideal—or even specifically made—for two people. And we found them. Enjoy!
Scrabble is one of the all-time great board games, one that can never really go out of style. It’s also plenty fun with only two people; in fact, you can plan out your moves further in advance, play some more mind games with your opponent and get a chance to flex your vocabulary even more than you would with a larger group. This particular set swivels, so you don’t have to awkwardly look at the board diagonally, and has a nice raised grid to hold your letter pieces in place.
Sometimes it can feel like you’ve exhausted all possible routes of conversation with your partner. But of course that isn’t ever true; sometimes you just need a little guide to take conversation to new places. Our Moments is a deck of conversation-starting cards that spans all kinds of different topics: it’ll let you discover how your partner sees the world, tell stories from their past and help you grow as a couple.
Codenames is one of the great four-player card games out there, in which you perform word associations to reveal enemy agents—it’s a little like a grown-up, James-Bond version of Guess Who. The two-player version of the game gets glowing reviews too. And unlike many games, this one is actually cooperative: you and a partner work together to uncover the bad guys and avoid the assassin.
Morels takes an activity that wouldn’t immediately seem ideal for a competitive game and somehow makes one that’s an enormous amount of fun. It’s a strategy game in which you go “out hunting” for different types of mushrooms, with the aim of getting more equipment (like pans, butter and storage baskets) to collect and cook those mushrooms—which earns you points. It’s a mellow, calming game, a casual experience that somehow does actually evoke the feeling of heading out into the woods and hunting for wild fungi.
