Defying all logic, Abstracts is not an abstract game.

Teams.

One side has the Answer. It is a person, place or thing. The first team to have the guesser get a person place AND thing correct wins.

The other partner in each team has several cards in their hand, which are refreshed when used.

Its like Password(tm) in that the guessers kind of ask questions and the people who know the answer must respond as best they can.

Except the questions you are allowed to ask are only the ones on the cards.

And they were written by someone on drugs.

So when you see Geeklists comparing someone's pet to a game or their job to a game, its kind of like this. And it's just as hard for the question asker as the clue giver.

This is far harder to explain than to simply give an example.

The answer is: Arnold Schwarzenegger

The question asker has three questions in their hand:
If you were a household appliance, what would you be?
If you were a piece of clothing what would you be?
If you were a shape, what would you be?

WTF!?

OK, so it's the first round, and purely randomly, the asker picks the Clothing question.

The person who knows the answer than tries to think of a particularly Arnie piece of clothing, and imagines the iconic Terminator picture.

"Sunglasses." is the reply.

Knowing no other clues, the asker guesses A Traffic Cop. Wrong.

The next player goes. They look at their cards and ask:
If you were a piece of furniture what would you be?

At which point the person knowing the answer begins to cry, because no matter what they reply, it will be a clue that serves only to confuse both players. Going out on a limb, they choose to say "Weight Bench".

Not a bad clue, and it makes sense to the clue givers.

Sunglasses. Weight Bench. 

Now, the guesser ponders. "The Terminator" they guess.

Bzzzt. Close. Both clue givers roll their eyes, one in frustration, one in hope.

"If you were a body part, what would you be?"

Not wanting to lose the chain of thought connecting to Terminator, the clue giver plays a clever word game.

"I'll be back."

"Arnold Schwarzenegger?"

Win one Person point.

And so the game continues as players switch rolls.

This works well with creative and intelligent people and lends itself greatly to inside knowledge, when you give clues only your partner knows, but will be mystifying to the other team. Works great for couples on teams.

That's all there is to it. The confounding questions and annoying answers. If a card goes 10 guesses with no correct answer, it is given up on - maybe that playgroup just doesn't know enough about the Mason-Dixon line to describe in such a roundabout way.

Unfortunately, the game shows it’s age badly in the pop culturesque answers that are very specific to an age group.  Despite that, it remains my number one Information style game.

Great game for two couples to play.