Know Thy Stuff and Know Thyself to Out-Trivia Your Opponents in ‘CDSK’
Test your smarts in a brand new trivia challenge where YOU get to decide the difficulty of the question before you have to answer it, but be careful — -your movement will be determined by how tough your question is! Will you push your luck and take big strides at the risk of not moving at all, or will you play it safe and take the slow and steady approach? Either way, it’s an all-out sprint to the finish, and whoever can show off the most Curious, Delightful, Seasoned Knowledge will take home the crown!
What Is CDSK?
CDSK is a general knowledge trivia party game from French-Canadian publisher Randolph Games, for 2–16 players, ages 14 and up, that takes about 20–45 minutes to play. The base game retails at $34.99 and is available for purchase via the Hachette Board Games website. CDSK features an incredibly wide variety of trivia categories and questions, meaning that there is almost certainly something in the box for everyone, although considering the base level of difficulty, the game might prove to be a challenge for those below the 14+ age suggestion.
CDSK was designed by Vincent Burger, with art from Fanny Saulnier, and was published by Randolph Games.
CDSK Components
54 Curious Trivia Cards (10 questions/card)
54 Delightful Trivia Cards (10 questions/card)
54 Seasoned Trivia Cards (10 questions/card)
54 Knowledge Trivia Cards (10 questions/card)
60 Challenge Cards
48 Hurry Up & Win Cards (double-sided)
1 Rulebook
1 Game Board (folds out from the box!)
With a fold-out board and clever storage, CDSK is ready to play at a moment’s notice! Photo: Alex Hart
The production of CDSK is proof that a little thought into the presentation of a game goes a long way. Despite this being an incredibly simple game with minimal components, the small touches like the fold-out board and the magnetic closure really elevate it to make the setup time almost nonexistent and truly give it the feeling of a “game night in a box.”
As with any trivia game, there will always be questions about its replayability but with the sheer volume of questions in the box, CDSK has great longevity compared to its peers. It has 540 unique questions for each of its four categories, and that’s not even counting the Challenge and Hurry Up & Win Cards! And the best part is, if you come across a question you’ve heard before, all you have to do is bump up your difficulty for a new challenge.
All in all, the production of CDSK does a great job of getting out of the way so that players can get to playing the game as soon as possible, plus it has an Express Start option that allows you to play an even quicker game! The color scheme and the art on the front are inviting, albeit a bit mysterious (not sure I would know this is a trivia game at first glance), but the real question is how does it play?
How to Play CDSK
You can download a copy of the rulebook here.
The Goal
The goal of CDSK is to be the first team to cross the finish line and correctly answer a final question before anyone else catches up. Each turn, teams will receive a question from different categories of trivia based on the space that they are currently on and will advance along the track only if they are able to answer correctly. Once a team has made it to the final space, aptly titled Hurry Up & Win, they will have to answer a final extra difficult challenge question! If they get it wrong, they’ll have to wait until their next turn to try again while all the other teams catch up. But if they manage to answer correctly, they take the victory!
Setup
The setup for CDSK is super simple — -first things first, flip open the box to reveal the board for the game. In doing so, you’ll also reveal the Trivia Cards that you’ll be using, and just like that, the game is set up! Take a moment to marvel at the simple but incredibly effective production of this game and then move to the next step, team selection.
Split all players into up to four teams of four players each. Try to keep things as even as possible of course and when in doubt, just make sure everyone is comfortable. Once the teams have been determined, you’ll move onto the most important step of all, picking your Playing Piece!
Team Wine Cork towers over the rest of the competition! Photo: Alex Hart
CDSK does not come with any player markers or pawns in the box. Instead, it encourages each team to find something small to place on the board to represent their team, which I have found to be one of the most fun challenges in the game. Will you be playing as Team Keychain? Or perhaps Team Loose Change? Or maybe even the perennial underdogs, Team Pocket Lint? The choice is yours!
Once each team has brought a token to the table, you’ll collectively decide whether to start on the Classic Start space or the Express Start space for a speedier game. When the decision’s been made, place all Playing Pieces in the corresponding space and you’re ready to go. The most ambitious team will go first. I’ll let you figure out how to determine that on your own! For now, let’s get into the gameplay.
Gameplay
CDSK is, at its core, a trivia party game so its gameplay is definitely reminiscent of those that have gone before. At the beginning of the game, regardless of which space the group chooses to start on, teams will choose one of the four categories from which to receive a Trivia Card, so let’s start by talking about these four categories — -Curious, Delightful, Seasoned, and Knowledge — -which also happen to make up the acronym for the name!
On your first turn, you get to choose your category but here, Team d20 will be answering a Knowledge Question. Photo: Alex Hart
The Curious Trivia Cards are going to be your general knowledge questions. This one probably has the most variety of categories that might come up, ranging anywhere from samurai, to Barbie dolls, to the year 2003, so you’ll probably have the same likelihood of drawing something you’re well-versed in vs. something you know nothing about.
The Delightful Trivia Cards are rooted in pop culture, featuring questions about movies, music, and sports. In this set, you’ll find categories focused on Brad Pitt, Pokémon, or even Major League Baseball. If you consider yourself a part of any sort of fandom, you’ll probably find something you’ll like in these Trivia Cards.
The Seasoned Trivia Cards have questions that are focused on “grown-up stuff,” whatever that means! Be it tidbits about taxes or fun facts about fossil fuels, if you can imagine your dad sharing this information with you unprompted, then it’s probably in these categories somewhere.
And lastly is the Knowledge Trivia Cards. Now you would think that these would be the general knowledge questions, but instead, this set hones in on your worldly knowledge of things like science, nature, history, or geography. In these cards, you’ll find categories about dinosaurs, American authors, and World War II. If you paid attention in school, you’ll knock this one out of the park.
The four trivia categories that make up CDSK! Photo: Alex Hart
Now that we’ve clarified the four categories, let’s talk about how a turn goes. On your turn, another team will draw a card that corresponds to the space that you’re currently on. Then they’ll read out the same intro: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how well do you know ?” At this point, it’s up to the question-receiving team to convene and decide how confident they feel about the questions at hand. The higher the team indicates on the 1 to 10 scale, the more difficult and obscure the question is likely to be.
Once the team has determined their lucky number, the reader will read the corresponding numbered question from the card. The receiving team has “around 31 seconds” to give their answer, according to the rulebook, but as long as you don’t draw it out too long, it’s fine to give some grace, especially on somebody’s first play. Once the answer is locked in, the reader will flip over the card to determine its validity. If the team’s answer is correct, they will now be able to move a number of spaces on the board equal to the difficulty of the question they just correctly answered. For all you strategists out there, that means that the harder the question, the higher the reward!
However, if your team was not successful in answering the question correctly, you simply remain in your current space and your turn ends, leaving you to pick up the pieces on your next turn with another question from a new category, albeit from the same Trivia Card set.
A look at the board with various Challenge Spaces at advantageous points. Photo: Alex Hart
Now you may have noticed that there are a few special spaces shaped like tickets scattered around the board. These are called Challenge Spaces, and they introduce a new type of trivia challenge that can really turn the game on its head! When a team begins their turn on a Challenge Space, instead of choosing from one of the four categories, their reader will instead choose from the deck of red Challenge Cards.
These Challenge Cards are often time-based and are filled with categories that could fit in any of the four main Trivia Card sets. They usually take the form of a rapid-fire question set pertaining to an obscure category, and if you can lock in and answer all of the questions right as a team inside the time limit, you have the chance to move forward up to ten spaces! There are no penalties for incorrect answers and you’ll only move one space for each correct guess but these challenges can give you the opportunity to take a big chunk out of the board without having to answer one super difficult question. Use them wisely!
Game End
Team Wine Cork can seal the win with a correct answer to this Hurry Up & Win question! Photo: Alex Hart
As soon as one team crosses the finish line and ends their turn on the Hurry Up & Win space, the end game has officially begun. The other teams will continue taking their turns to try and catch up to the leader, but once play comes back around to the first-place team, they’ll have the opportunity to end the game for good. On their turn, instead of choosing a specific category, their reader will grab a question from the stack of Hurry Up & Win Cards. These extra difficult questions run the gamut of subjects so you have to be ready for anything! If the first-place team can’t come up with the right answer, just like earlier in the game, their turn will end and they’ll have to stand by while everyone else catches up to them. But if the leading team, by sheer force of will, was able to answer their question correctly, then they win and are officially crowned champions of CDSK!
Why You Should Play CDSK
In my opinion, CDSK is what Trivial Pursuit wishes it could be. Sure, Trivial Pursuit is the best-selling trivia game of all time, but we can all agree it has several flaws that we sort of just put up with. For example, you might be amazing in the Sports and Leisure category, but once you get there, you may get a question that’s way out of your league. And when your opponent gets a question that’s a walk in the park? That can be incredibly frustrating. But in CDSK, the game gets out of the way and lets the real strategy be determined by the players. Don’t know the category very well? Just choose an easy question of lower difficulty to move you forward to a space that’s more your speed! Need to catch up quickly? Try landing on a Challenge Space and pressing your luck there!
The goal in CDSK is to always be moving forward, and the best part about it is that the game gives you agency to be able to do that, rather than feeling like you’re beholden to the luck of the draw. Obviously, some teams will end up with categories that they’re experts in; this is the inevitability of any trivia game. But because you get to determine your level of knowledge before each question, you can only know a little about a lot of things and still come out on top. As someone who considers themselves a jack of all trades, master of none, I really appreciated this element and I think it’ll make this game much more accessible to the general public.
One thing I also enjoyed about CDSK was how the questions were written and ordered. They managed to make the level 1 questions so laughably simple, that even if you’ve never heard of the category before, there’s still a very good chance that you’ll be able to stumble your way into a correct answer. For example, one of my favorite level one questions is, in a category about vegetables: “How many watermelons can the average person fit into their mouth?”
In the same way, the level 10 questions feel nigh on impossible and when someone manages to answer one correctly, it is a feat that seems almost Herculean. For example, I consider myself to be a fan of modern board games — -I do review them for GeekDad and elsewhere, after all — -but would I know what game won the 2021 Spiel des Jahres? Unlikely! (Spoiler alert: you can find our article on the 2021 SdJ winner here!)
Team Enamel Pin is poised to press their luck on a Challenge Space! Photo: Alex Hart
I also want to mention how much I love the Challenge Spaces as a catchup mechanism. Trivia games can oftentimes feel repetitive, with every turn just playing out as a call and response of questions and answers, but this challenge mechanic breathes life into the game, adding a little chaos and a lot of excitement as you see a team inch closer and closer to you with every correct answer. Very few trivia games boast a wrinkle that will have everyone involved on the edge of their seats, but these Challenge Spaces do just that and do it multiple times in a game. So fun!
With all that said, my one gripe about CDSK is its title. Sure, I understand that it’s the acronym for all of the different categories in the game, but before you’ve played the game, there’s no way for you to know that! Despite the quality of the contents, this game doesn’t really present itself on the shelf as a trivia game and I think that’s a big miss. I really think CDSK could go toe to toe with a game like Trivial Pursuit if it had a name and some branding that really leaned into the quiz show/trivia aspect of it, but as of now, I have to constantly explain the title (and remember it myself) when I’m pitching it to other people.
Although the acronym is explained upon opening the box, the somewhat obscure title leaves a lot to be desired. Photo: Alex Hart
All in all, though, CDSK was a pleasant surprise and one that would be a welcome addition to any gaming library. It sets up in seconds, you can start playing in minutes, and it has been a hit at every game night I’ve taken it to. And with so many questions on so many Trivia Cards, you’ll be playing this one over and over, discovering new categories and new trivia facts that will continue to blow your mind. So if you’re looking for an easy-to-learn trivia game with a twist that will have you shipping your dusty old copy of Trivial Pursuit to the nearest consignment store, then might I suggest CDSK?
For more information about CDSK, visit Hachette Board Games’ website.
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Disclosure: GeekDad received a copy of this game for review purposes.
