BoardGameGeek (or whatever they're called now) has an obsessive userbase, who will have reviews, playthroughs, explanations of odd rules, photographs, etc etc.<p>For my recommendations:<p>Ticket to Ride: A fun game with a bit of "BLOCK THEM" competitiveness. You create routes from and to destinations by collecting cards. Fun and reasonably quick.<p>Puerto Rico : Maybe needs a bit of learning, but is really good fun. You need to play it a few times to work out a nice way to generate resources.<p>The Name Game: Get a bowl. Get some paper, and enough pens for everyone. People have a few minutes to write down a bunch of names - GW BUSH; SIMON COWELL; BART SIMPSON; POCAHONTAS; BILL GATES; etc etc. Then spit into teams. All the names go into the bowl. One player from a team has one minute to pull names from the bowl and describe them for the rest of the team to guess. Keep going until bowl is empty. Winning team is one with most points. The time pressure makes this fun. "YELLOW NAUGHTY BOY DON'T HAVE A COW" helps youngsters keep involved. I'm English, we play this when drunk which possibly helps.