So, the conversation is dragging a bit as you spend your third night around the dinner table on holiday en famille. Too much attention is being paid to the children’s refusal to try spaghetti vongole and twizzle it around on their fork, and too little effort is being made to listen to Granny’s sightseeing highlights.

The day on the beach has turned everyone’s brains into jellyfish, and you just can’t think of any thing new to say to those all-too familiar faces. This is the moment to whip out of your bag a couple of fail-safe games that will get everyone’s interest and adrenaline going again.

These are my five firm favourites, all of which can be bought online or improvised on the spot. If you’ve got any more, feel free to share them below.

Snatch £14.99

Easily my favourite word game because it comes out of the handbag like an elegant giant Smarties tube, and dispatches its plastic letters on the table with a satisfying clatter. I played it at a table in Italy last week with two 6 year-olds, a 7-year-old and a 4-year-old, and nearly lost as they turned the word “win” into “wine” (worrying, I know).

It’s designed for older players (or at least those that can spell) but the fact that they pestered me to play it again and again shows that it’s suitable for all ages. Based on a Victorian parlour game, players take it in turn to turn over letters until someone can make a three-letter word, which they keep. Then the fun starts.

If a letter is then turned over which can be added to the three-letter word, another player may “snatch” the word from its existing owner by adding or rearranging letters. So “cat” can be snatched and made into “cart” with the addition of an ‘r’, and snatched back later if a “k” makes it into “track”. The winner is the person with the most words and letters at the end. It is a game to wipe the smuggest of grins off any player.

Junior Who Wants to Be a Millionaire

Until we were introduced to this book, my husband and I would sit around the table trying to think of suitable quiz questions, and watch our children dissolve in tears and shouts of “unfair!” after two rounds. Now, we set up the chairs alongside each other, group children by the ages (questions are set according to age and easiness) and put on all the affectations of Chris Tarrant the QuizMeister, saying gravely “Is that your final answer? Are you sure?”

The children love it because with correct answers they “win” big sums of money and leave their chair £500,000 richer. It also shows you who, if any of them, has been listening at school. Available on Amazon from only 1p (new and used).

Articulate £24.99

More for grown-ups and older children, this is a proper board game that does take up a bit of space in the suitcase. Played against the clock, it is like Trivial Pursuit on speed, and the sinking egg timer gives it its edge. You divide into two teams, and the first “describer” from the team turns over a card and has a minute to describe as fast as possible to his team mates what’s on the card without actually saying the word.

So in the category of “People and Places” he may get “Istanbul” (“used to be called ‘Byzantium’) or John Prescott (‘used to be known as ‘Two Jags’) and each card won moves you around the board. It’s more fun than Triv because of the pace, and really brings out the competitive types. Great to play against another family or couple.

Unhappy Families £7.50 This is basic Happy Families with a bit of a twist – all the family groups have been given a modern middle-class morality – so you are begging for Seth Blameless the Therapist to be “at home” or Leonie Soap-on-Wye the Rural Entrepreneur, drawn holding a bunch of cakes.

It makes it a children’s game where grown-ups can appreciate the wit and cartoons, rather like watching Shrek for the double entendres at the cinema. It also makes the list because it is the size of a mobile phone, so is easy to slip into the handbag.

Kick the Bucket

If you are staying somewhere with plenty of hedges and trees around (ideal in French gites with barns to hide in we’ve found), then this is one game that can include toddlers and their fathers. It does require a little running, so is best played pre-prandial, and needs at least one grown-up to be the finder.

An upturned bucket or can is placed on the ground, and the “finder” counts to 20 while everyone goes to hide. Once he’s reached 20 he comes looking, being careful not to stray too far from the bucket. If he sees someone hiding, they both chase back to the bucket to kick it first.

If the finder wins, the hider is out, if the hider wins, he frees himself and anyone else who’s been captured up to that moment. Then the finding grown-up has to count to 20 again, and everyone goes off to hide once more.

Small children have been able to circumnavigate a whole field of tall grass to avoid being caught, and squeal with delight when they stick it to the grown-ups in their victory runs for the bucket.

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