The Floor is Lava
Author: Ivan Brett
Date: 2018-07-11 23:00:00+00:00
Keywords: kindle; nonfiction; recreation
Publisher: Headline

Copyright © 2018 Ivan Brett

The right of Ivan Brett to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published as an Ebook in 2018 by

HEADLINE HOME

An imprint of HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

Every effort has been made to fulfil requirements with regard to reproducing copyright material. The author and publisher will be glad to rectify any omissions at the earliest opportunity.

Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
eISBN: 978 1 4722 5749 9

Copy editor: Lindsay Davies

Proof reader: Margaret Gilbey

Indexer: Caroline Wilding

HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

An Hachette UK Company

Carmelite House

50 Victoria Embankment

London EC4Y 0DZ
www.headline.co.uk
www.hachette.co.uk

To my mum, for all of this.

About the Author

IVAN was born in a bike shop, or so he thought for the vast majority of his childhood. It was these sorts of misunderstandings and mistakes that crafted him into the writer he is today. Ivan’s first book, published on his 21st birthday, was the multiple award-nominated Casper Candlewacks in Death By Pigeon. A love-letter to provincial England and the unique characters that inhabit its villages, this silly yet anarchic story was followed up with three more in the series: Casper Candlewacks in The Claws of Crime, Casper Candlewacks in Attack of the Brainiacs and Casper Candlewacks in The Time Travelling Toaster, all met with rave reviews.

A qualified primary teacher based in North London, Ivan splits his time between tutoring, writing and being nibbled by his cat. He has a lifelong obsession with cycling, comic books and, most importantly, games. Having employed hundreds of games to entertain himself, strengthen friendships and teach his classes, he has spent the last year collecting his favourites to share with the world in the form of The Floor is Lava.

Twitter: @IvanBrett

About the Book

The Floor is Lava is a must for any gathering of friends or family. Packed with 100 games, this is a how-to for turning time together into quality time together.

There are games to start a party, ideas to trigger conversation, story-telling setups and fiendish puzzles, plus physical challenges, activities to soothe a weary brain and plenty more. In short, there is something for everyone.

Here you’ll find games for every occasion:

• beating boredom in the car

• hosting a party

• cooling off in the summer holidays

• sitting around the dinner table

• digesting your Christmas turkey

• being trapped in the house on a rainy day

Now, jump up and get started – the floor is lava!

Contents

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT PAGE

DEDICATION

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ABOUT THE BOOK

INTRODUCTION

1. TRAFFIC JAMS

Car Cricket

Sail the Seven Seas

Where’s Voldemort?

Licence Plate Sentences

1-2-3-Spy

Pub Cricket

Cat Eats Mouse

How Did Liverpool Get Its Name?

Reg!

I’m in Business

2. THE KITCHEN TABLE

Crambo

Kim’s Game

Please Pass the . . .

Shut Your Eyes

Boink!

King Henry VIII’s Banquet

Six Degrees of Separation

What’s My Line?

Scat Memory

Hardest Game in the World

3. LONG, HOT SUMMER

Twenty-One Dares

Murder in Paradise

Preposition I-Spy

Don’t Finish the Word!

Top Ten of Everything

Story Tornado

Stupid Superheroes

What’s it Worth?

Genre Bender

Avagat

4. ONE-ON-ONE

Reflect Me

Blindfold Game

Squiggle Challenge

Fortunately/Unfortunately

Control the Robot

Boxes

Dice Football

Switch!

Hangman Mastermind

Lego Challenge

5. PARTY TIME

Clap Clap SQUAWK

Zip Bong

Bang!

Co-Op Musical Islands

Squashed Sardines

Who’s the Leader?

Chappy Tomato

Locked Box

Mafia

Pat Clap Click Click

6. CABIN FEVER

Sniffer Dog

Endless Sentence

Pan-Tapping

Silly Word Snowballs

The Floor Is Lava

The Silent Game

Disregarded Things

Monsters of the Nook and Cranny

Jumble

Double Acrostic

7. LONG GAMES FOR LONG JOURNEYS

The Questions Game

Buzz Words

Glom!

Yes/No/Black/White

Adjectival Animals

Similelarly

Celebritables

Essence

No, Mr Bond, I Expect You to Die

RPGs (Role-Playing Games)

8. AFTER DINNER

1000 Blank White Cards

Category Scramble

Would You Rather?

Wavy Gravy

Two Truths and a Lie

No More Dogs

Acrophobia

Fictionary

Botticelli

Hunt for the Pair

9. A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS

One-Word Story

Twenty Questions (a.k.a. Animal, Vegetable, Mineral)

Say What You See

The Exquisite Corpse

Identity Crisis

Letter Links

First Lines

Consequences

Brian! Brian?

Blabbermouth

10. JUST CHILL OUT

Word Association

Why?

Fit-It

A–Z of . . .

Word Ladders

Right on Target

Ten-to-One Story

Grow a Word

Write Against the Odds

Talk Like Shakespeare

APPENDIX

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INDEX

FOOTNOTES

INTRODUCTION

Is This a Game to You?

What is it about playing games? We spend our infancy learning through them, our childhood longing for them, our teenage years accusing people of them, then our adult life pretending they don’t exist. Being somebody who plays games, a gamer, I suppose, is either an insult or a badge of honour depending on who you ask, but it’s never just ‘normal’.

I’m going to admit something to you. I spend pretty much all my waking life playing games. I see how many green lights I can go through on my bike by cycling extra slow if I’m approaching a red. I tally my daily writing word count on a complicated spreadsheet and compete against previous weeks, just for the competition. I get to sleep by distracting my mind with a round of ‘A–Z of . . .’ (see here). I play this thing called ‘Pokey Sausage’ with my cat where we jab each other through the crack in the bathroom door.

The games I play split neatly into two categories: those that make mundane time less mundane, or those that bring people closer together. Playing my life, rather than living it, gives it a sort of structure. It imposes a bunch of unthreatening goals to help me get from point to point. It gives me a way to measure my successes and revel in my daily challenges. Also, playing my life is just more fun that not playing it. And I want to share that with you.

Why Does It Matter?

This book actually started as a manual to teach creative writing (don’t worry, it isn’t any more!) Then, without my permission, the book shifted form and the games took over. They repainted the walls, chucked out all the pages of grammar and invited their badly behaved friends. Now the book is bursting with any game that can bring people together, encourage communication, spark creativity, warm you up, cool you down, break an awkward silence, start a party . . .

There’s no sacred message to this book. I won’t stand behind my lectern and tell you that games are proven to do this or stop that, cure this or shrink that. What I will say is that for me, games provide an opportunity to connect. In an age when so much entertainment and information is available to us at the press of one finger, it’s incredibly easy to remain cut off from those immediately around us.

I’m not telling you to get off your phone. I’m not telling you that screens are evil. I am saying there’s an alternative. The right game, in the right situation, is better than anything else in the world. I promise, it’ll be more fun for both you and your thumb than the scrolling you were about to do, and much less effort than you realise. That’s why I wrote this book.

Who Cares?

In researching and compiling this book, I’ve been fascinated by people’s reactions to my elevator pitch. Some seem confused. ‘Like . . . just games?’ they ask. They wonder what purpose the games will serve, or what they will help people achieve, as if the playing of the game isn’t enough of an achievement in itself.

Others’ eyes light up. ‘I’ve got this brilliant game! We played it as kids,’ they’ll say, or ‘Oh, I loved this one!’ I’ll bask in their delight as they tell me the rules, noting it down so I don’t forget, and wondering why they sound so nostalgic. It’s as if these games are off-limit now.

Most people, once they’ve offered their favourite game, will ask hungrily for mine. The answer is different depending on the weather, or the colour of my socks, but I’d probably have to choose between the tactical yet simple Hangman Mastermind (see here), the bluffs and suspense of Mafia (here) or the mind-blowingly bonkers experience that is 1000 Blank White Cards (here). To be honest, my favourite game changes all the time. It’ll probably change again before the end of this introduction.

I adore passing games on to a new player. There’s a currency in the trading of games – a mischievous delight in simply imagining the fun that could be had. So, here you go. Have a hundred games.

So What’s the Point of this Book?

This book is a big green play-button. It’s a collection of a hundred creative, comical, co-operative games, grouped together for each situation when you might need them. Going on holiday? There’s a chapter for that. Trying to spend more quality time together at dinner? You’ll find ten perfect games to play at the table. Stuck inside on a rainy Sunday? Sorted. Locked in a woefully slow traffic jam? Don’t panic. You’re good.

The games within this book range from inspiring to challenging to downright silly, but they’re guaranteed to bring you together, liven up any occasion, and even stretch your brain a little. My aim is to turn your life into a game, because we humans do the best sort of learning, connecting and discovering when we’re at play.

All Right, Fine. Where Do I Start?

Absolutely anywhere. I’ve divided the chapters up into ten different situations that you might find yourself stuck in. Each has ten games perfect for that time. However, there’s a lot of crossover, so just dive inside and enjoy yourself. And let me know how you get on! I’m easiest to get hold of on Twitter: @IvanBrett.

CHAPTER 1

TRAFFIC JAMS

Traffic has ground to an absolute halt; there’s some sort of accident up ahead. The temporary lights have been red for what feels like a year. There’s a dog in the boot of the car in front, turning anxious circles and barking inaudibly. The kids are ten minutes late for swimming already, and you’re not even through the busy bit of town. You’re cursing yourself for not taking the rat run round the industrial estate. The radio tuner is stuck on smooth classics. What you need is something to take your mind off it.

And that’s what I’ve got for you here. This chapter contains the ten best car games to play when all you’ve got is each other, a nose-smudged window and time to waste. These games need no equipment. They’re fun enough to distract you from the mind-numbing traffic and will enable you to use the busy streets as a resource. When you actually make it to swimming in time for the last five minutes you’ll feel mildly disappointed, because nothing’s as much fun as yelling pirate noises at passing pedestrians or beating your family at Car Cricket.

1. Car Cricket

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Easy

1 hour (at least!)

TAGS:
MATHS,
COMPETITIVE,
PASS THE TIME

IN SHORT: Turn traffic into a game with this excellent ‘cricket’ match.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• A road with plenty of cars.

• Absolutely no prior knowledge of cricket.

HOW TO PLAY

First of all, you’ll need a steady stream of cars. Too many and you’ll lose track – too few and you’ll get bored. If you’re on a motorway, you can use cars that pass (or pass you) on your side. If you’re on a quieter road, you can use cars that pass in the other direction.

The game works as follows: each player will take it in turns to ‘have a bat’.

Just like in cricket, you are aiming to score runs, without getting bowled out. Each time you pass a vehicle, you should add on a different number of runs:

• If you pass a car (NOT white) then you score 1 run.

• If you pass a van, caravan or lorry (again, NOT white) then you score 2 runs.

• If you pass a motorbike or bicycle then you score 4 runs.

• If you pass any rare vehicle (such as a horse-drawn carriage, boat, witch on a broom, or horsebox) then you score 6 runs.

• If you pass a car lorry, you get 1 run for every car on the car lorry, plus 2 for the lorry.

• HOWEVER, if you pass a WHITE CAR then you are OUT!

• If you pass any other white vehicle, as long as it isn’t a car, then you add no runs for that vehicle, but you are not out. It’s a ‘dot ball’. Close one!

Once you are out, note down or remember your score, and the game immediately passes to the next batsman. The game works best if each player has at least two innings, then adds up their total score from each one.

LEVEL-UP

• If you’re a stats nerd, like me, then somebody should have a piece of paper or a device, and note down all the scores. Then you can work out batting averages, longest innings, fastest scorers and all sorts of other things. There’s no good reason to do this . . . which is all the better reason to do it!

2. Sail the Seven Seas

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Easy

The entire car journey

TAGS:
PASS THE TIME,
MEMORY, SILLY

IN SHORT: Turn your journey into a pirate adventure.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

Everyone in the car is a bloodthirsty pirate. There are various things throughout your journey that you should keep your one good eye out for:

• If your car stops directly beside another, shout, ‘Fire the cannons!’

• If you see a pond, lake, ocean or river, shout, ‘Sail the seven seas!’

• If you pass a pub, shout, ‘Ho ho ho and a bottle o’ rum!’

• When you see a sign with your destination, shout, ‘Land, ahoy!’

• Every time you see a car with a broken light, hold your hand over one eye and shout, ‘Arrr, me eyepatch!’

• Every time you see a bird, shout, ‘Pretty Polly!’

• Every time somebody crosses the road, shout, ‘Landlubbers!’

The aim is to be the first person to shout out any of the pirate calls. Remember, it only counts if you do it in your best pirate accent.

LEVEL-UP

• This game lends itself very well to creativity. When would you shout ‘Walk the plank?’ or ‘Arrr, treasure!’ for example?

3. Where’s Voldemort?

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Easy

The rest of your life

TAGS:
LONG-TERM,
COMPETITIVE,
SILLY,
STRATEGY

IN SHORT: A background game that’ll never get old. Don’t look, or you might get cursed!

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

Thanks to my friend Charlie for inspiration on this one. It’s a background game. In other words, it goes on for the entire journey and beyond, whether you know it or not.

The first time you get in the car, explain the rules. After this, as long as everybody knows the rules, you never have to explain them again, or even announce that you’re playing.

The rules themselves are simple. Whoever introduces the game starts off as ‘cursed’. To get rid of the curse, simply point out of the window and proclaim suddenly, ‘There’s Voldemort!’ If you manage to get anybody in your car to look in the direction you’ve pointed, then they are landed with the curse instead.

If everybody in the car looks, then the person who looks first is cursed. Now it’s their job to make somebody else look, in order to pass the curse on.

So, the key is to NOT look when somebody else says it, while doing yours in a way that makes people want to see. Obviously, the more often you say the words, the less likely people are to look, so if you’re cursed, you’ve got to save it up until nobody’s thinking about it.

Winning this game is all about making your voice and expression so convincing that people don’t even realise they’re losing the game until they’ve already lost. One tactic might be to add other words before the dreaded phrase to hide it, or to gasp and point in a really believable way. But it’s up to you.

TIPS

• Of course, if you use the same sentence (‘Look over there! There’s Voldemort!’) every time, people might get wise to it quite quickly. You could pose a question, pretending to ask about something in the distance and then drop the V word once people are looking. Or, how about moderating your tone so that people feel the need to see what you’re angry about, or sad about, or amazed by?

• If you actually see Lord Voldemort, it’s best not to point. Try running, hiding or crying. Also, dodging. He has a good aim.

4. Licence Plate Sentences

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Easy

Endless

TAGS:
SPELLING,
GRAMMAR,
CREATIVE

IN SHORT: A simple and silly game, turning licence plates into three-word sentences.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• A road with plenty of cars.

HOW TO PLAY

(Disclaimer: this game works with licence plates from the UK. If the ones where you are work differently, just pick the letters out of it and use those.)

One player looks out for a car licence plate and reads out the three letters at the end. For example, if the car’s reg was BR27 ALT then all you need are the letters ALT.

Everybody else in the car should try to think of a sentence (or just a phrase) that is three words long, with the first beginning with a, the second with l and the third beginning with t.

And that’s the game! If you like competition then the player who chose the licence plate could pick a winner and you could give out points, but really, the aim of the game is just to make your sentences either funny or clever.

EXAMPLE

Judge: ‘OK, that one says ALT.’

Player 1: ‘Avocado, lemon, toast.’

Player 2: ‘Attack lions tenderly.’

Player 3: ‘Adrian likes tennis.’

Player 4: ‘Actually, Lego’s tasty.’

Etc.

LEVEL-UP

• If this is too easy, or you like your sentences longer, use all five letters from the licence plate. ‘Bring reindeer a lovely treat.’

• Bored of that? Try to incorporate the numbers too! ‘Ben rode 27 aardvarks last Tuesday.’

TIP

• Try to vary how your sentence is built. With only three words it’s quite easy to go ‘NAME VERB THING’, such as Player 3’s example: Adrian likes tennis. But you could put the verb in any position in your three-word sentence: it can also go at the beginning (such as in Player 2’s sentence) or at the end (Articulately, Linda translated).

5. 1-2-3-Spy

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

1+

Easy

Ongoing

TAGS:
COLLABORATIVE,
COMPETITIVE,
MATHS

IN SHORT: Watch out of the window for the numbers 1–999. Spot them, in order, to win.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

This is a sort of I-Spy, or scavenger hunt, where your challenge is to find the numbers from 1 to 999, in order, written down in the real world. I’ve put this in the Traffic Jams chapter because it’s perfect for passing time with your forehead glued to the window, but there is a drawback: if you’re moving it’s quite easy to ‘pretend’ you’ve seen a number and hard for the others to go back and check. For that reason, if you want to play this competitively, try it if your car is at a standstill or if you’re walking around your local town.

The game works pretty simply: everybody has to look for numbers written in figures (so 1, not ‘one’) outside the car. Any number inside the car doesn’t count, because you could just write it, or look at every page number in this book. For the same reason, you can’t just hold your book out of the window and flick the pages. Naughty, naughty. Do this properly or don’t do it at all.

Players begin by looking for 1. If you’re working together, which I recommend, then shout the number out when you see it and share where it was hiding. You’re all now looking for 2. If you’re playing against each other then the first person to see the 1 gets it, and everybody else has to look for another. If you shout the number at the same time, you both get it.

Your number can be in the middle of others. So, for example, if you see ‘1381’ you can use this for ‘1’ or ‘38’ but definitely not ‘31’, or ‘11’ because you’re having to cherry pick from two places.

TIPS

• House numbers, licence plates and roadside adverts are great places to find numbers.

• If you think people are just pretending they’ve seen the numbers, it stops being fun. You could have a rule where two people need to see it, in order to verify that the number was really there. Or just play with people you trust.

LEVEL-UP

• I set up a round of this game with my other half, Amy, working as a number-spotting team on a shivery night-bus home, and it cheered up our journey no end. What I didn’t predict was that the game ran and ran long after we’d stepped off the bus: we now send each other picture messages containing the next number in the sequence. Until we reach infinity, which may take some time, this game really has no end! Obviously, the same rules still apply: no looking at page numbers, no typing or writing the digits. You have to find them out in the wild, if you catch my drift.

6. Pub Cricket

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Easy

The entire car journey

TAGS: MATHS,
COMPETITIVE,
PASS THE TIME

IN SHORT: The old-fashioned driving game. Count legs on pubs to score ‘runs’.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• A route in Britain (not a motorway) where you’ll pass plenty of pubs. Sadly, this is becoming increasingly rare so the game can be a little slow if you’re not in a town.

HOW TO PLAY

Whether it’s a depiction of a white hart or a queen’s head, the pub sign is a British institution. This game relies on them, and can be a lot of fun. See also Car Cricket (here) for a similar, though slightly faster-paced, run-scoring game.

One player ‘goes in to bat’. It is her job to look out for pubs by the side of the road. For each pub, count the number of legs implied by the sign and score that many runs. So, ‘The Bull and Last’ would be 4 runs for the four legs on the bull, ‘The William Shakespeare’ would score 2, and ‘The Fox and Hound’ would score 8.

If you get plurals, such as ‘The Cricketers’, assume it’s two of them unless it specifies otherwise. So for this pub you’d score 4 runs.

The player’s innings continue for every pub that you pass. However, if the pub contains the word ‘Arms’ or ‘Head’, you are OUT. The game moves on to the next person, who steps in to bat starting from the next pub you see.

EXAMPLE

Player 1 goes in to bat. She passes and logs these pubs:

• The Mash Tun (0 points)

• The Phoenix (2 points)

• The Red Lion (4 points; running total: 6)

• The White Hart (a hart is a deer, so 4 points; running total: 10)

• The Ship (0 points; running total: 10)

• The Horse and Jockey (6 points; running total: 16)

• The King’s Arms (OUT! Innings total: 16)

Player 2 goes in to bat, etc.

TIP

• This isn’t an I-Spy game. If you see a pub then tell the batsman, don’t keep it a secret.

7. Cat Eats Mouse

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Medium

20 mins

TAGS: CREATIVE,
GRAMMAR, SILLY

IN SHORT: A back-and-forth game of one-upmanship where you must find something to defeat the previous winner.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

This game is a fun mixture of Rock/Paper/Scissors and that old song ‘I Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly’. Basically, the idea is that everything has a weakness, and that there’s always something better if you look hard enough.

One player starts by suggesting a small thing (I use mouse for my example. Feel free to take that. Otherwise, try beetle, fingernail, metal nail, cube of cheese, penny, Lego piece, worm, anything really . . .)

The next player must think of something that beats, destroys, uses, outshines, embarrasses, belittles or generally out-does the previous thing. They give their answer in the format: ‘[New thing] [verb] [old thing].’

The next player must then think of an item that out-does the most recent item, and so on. You can have a pretty loose idea of what counts as ‘beating’ the previous item, to keep the game going for as long as possible.

You know what? This game is best explained in the Example on the next page. (Watch how I use a new verb each time to describe how A beats B. You can never just say ‘Hammer beats nail’. It’s ‘Hammer hits nail’, for example.)

EXAMPLE

Player 1: ‘Mouse.’

Player 2: ‘Cat eats mouse.’

Player 3: ‘Girl strokes cat.’

Player 4: ‘Boy chases girl.’

Player 1: ‘PlayStation tempts boy.’

Player 2: ‘Boot smashes PlayStation.’

Player 3: ‘Fire melts boot.’

Player 4: ‘Water drenches fire.’

Etc.

TIPS

• It’s very tempting to try to ‘win’ this game. I could choose the most powerful thing in the universe and then argue against anybody that tries to beat it. A piece of advice – this game is most fun when someone beats a huge power with something tiny, even if in reality it doesn’t make sense. I’m thinking ‘mouse scares Superman’ or ‘cork plugs black hole’. These moments give a great image and provide a giggle. And that’s why we’re here, isn’t it?

• As an extra rule, you could decide that you are never allowed to repeat an object, even in the next round. You’ll constantly have to think of new solutions.

8. How Did Liverpool Get Its Name?

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Medium

30 mins +

TAGS:
CREATIVE,
STORYTELLING,
CONVERSATION

IN SHORT: Pick a place on the map and tell the story of how it got its name.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• A map of the surrounding area (alternatively, road signs have plenty of good names on them).

HOW TO PLAY

I made up this game with my dad on the way up to Scotland on our summer holidays. It’s such fun, especially if you really pretend to know what you’re talking about.

Find a town or village nearby on the map, with an interesting name. If you’re in the UK there are thousands of oddly named towns and villages, but even if you’re driving through a place where everything nearby has a pretty normal name, that just means you’ll have to work your imagination a bit harder.

Now, tell the other players the story of how your place got its name. Try to break the place name down into smaller words, then use your story to build those together into a satisfying conclusion. Check out my example if you need some help. The sillier your story is, the better it is.

EXAMPLE

A Viking hunter called Ulf liked to hunt deer in the local woods. He would bring them home and roast them over his fire, handing out crispy chunks of venison meat to all of his friends and relations. However, the one part of the deer that nobody wanted to eat was the liver.

‘Too salty,’ some would say, or ‘Too tough!’

Every time, the liver was left over. Afterwards, the skin was tanned and made into clothing, the bones ground down to make bonemeal, but the liver remained on the side, hated by all. So Ulf would be forced, each time, to throw the liver into a nearby pond.

Ulf was such a good hunter that even when hundreds of people came to build their Viking huts near his house, around this pond, he was still able to hunt enough deer to keep them all fed. But with more deer came more livers, still uneaten, and thrown in the pond. Eventually the pond was swimming with livers, full to the brim of the stinking slippery things, and it began to be known as the Liver Pool.

So famous was Ulf’s Liver Pool that Viking people flocked from far and wide to see it. And that’s how Liverpool got its name.

TIPS

• It’s quite good fun if every player has a go at describing how the same place got its name. You’ll be surprised how different everybody’s ideas will be.

• If you’re struggling to think of an idea, and breaking the name down doesn’t help, remember that over the thousands of years of our history, the spellings and pronunciations of names change hugely, so be quite free with it. For example, Manchester could be broken up into ‘Mad Jester’ or ‘Munchy Star’ or ‘Man Just Here’. Try saying the place name lots of times, really fast, until the edges start to blur.

9. Reg!

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

1+

Hard

2 mins per number plate

TAGS:
MATHS, CODE,
STRATEGY

IN SHORT: Try to ‘solve’ the number plate of the car in front of you. Can you do it before they drive away?

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• A traffic jam, or a busy road where you’ll all be able to see the same licence plate for longer than a moment.

• Paper and pencil for your workings out, if you need it.

HOW TO PLAY

This game requires some pretty speedy mental maths, so be ready for that.

Start by selecting a number plate on a car you can all see. In Britain, these have the following format:

Letter, letter, two-digit number, letter, letter, letter.

For example: NE14 BLT (If this is your number plate, then don’t say it aloud around other people or they’ll all expect a sandwich.)

If you live in another country, read the rules, then work out how you can use your country’s number plates to do the same thing.

The two-digit number is your target. In the above example, ours is 14.

The five letters are your ingredients. You must first translate them into numbers using the following simple letter = number code. Pretty soon you’ll be able to do this automatically, but to save you some effort, here it is:

So, in the number plate EV82 BNL, we have E=5, V=22, B=2, N=14, L=12

Your job is to add, subtract, multiply and divide these numbers to reach your target, 82. You can only use each number once, but you don’t have to use them all. (Not every number plate works, so get as close as you can.)

In this case, you can do 5 x 22 = 110, then take away 14, 12 and 2 (28) to make 82.

If you solve the number plate, shout, ‘REG!’ Explain the solution to the other players to finish the round.

TIPS

• If these take too long and cars never stay still for long enough, you’ll need to write them down. Never photograph anybody’s number plate without permission. They won’t like it.

• If you’re finding this all too difficult, then it might help to use this slightly simplified letter = number code. It only uses numbers up to ten.

10. I’m in Business

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Hard

Ongoing

TAGS: PUNS,
COLLABORATIVE,
CONVERSATION

IN SHORT: Puns about jobs, in a silly conversation game.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

This is the sort of game to introduce at the start of a journey, and just let brew. You might blurt out a suggestion, then leave it again until you pass Birmingham. It’s hard, and good ideas take time. Everyone’s a winner here, so just have a go and enjoy it.

So, the game always works with the same five lines of conversation.

1: ‘I’m in business.’

2: ‘Oh yeah? What’s your business?’

1: ‘I’m a _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _’

2: ‘How’s it going?’

1: ‘_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _’

Each time, Player 1 has to give a job, and then provide a pun about how that job’s going.

. . . And that’s it! It’s great because you can go on forever. There are a million jobs, and for each one, many ways to create a pun about it. Here are a few examples:

EXAMPLE

Player 1: ‘I’m in business.’

Player 2: ‘Oh yeah? What’s your business?’

Player 1: ‘I’m an engraver.’

Player 2: ‘How’s it going?’

Player 1: ‘I scratch a living.’

Player 3: ‘I’m in business.’

Player 4: ‘Oh yeah? What’s your business?’

Player 3: ‘I’m a bungee jumping instructor.’

Player 4: ‘How’s it going?’

Player 3: ‘It has its ups and downs.’

(I won’t punish you with any more. Now it’s up to you!)

TIP

• When you’re thinking about your next submission, it’s actually easier to start with the comment about how it’s going, and work backwards to the job. If I say, ‘It’s very tiring,’ then I might make my job something to do with wheels, perhaps . . .

LEVEL-UP

• This game is essentially just a joke factory. If you’re good at these ones, why not try making your own ‘Knock-Knock’ jokes? These are similar, in that the person on the other end only has to respond with the same line each time, and the hard work’s all yours.

• That reminds me of one of my favourite pranks of all time. Tell your friend that you’ve got this really good ‘Knock-Knock’ joke, then ask them to start. They’ll get as far as the third line and then become very confused. Instant classic.

CHAPTER 2

THE KITCHEN TABLE

It’s Thursday evening, about half past six. You’ve done fish fingers, but they burned under the grill because Trish called to ask for advice about her son, who’s got worms. Max doesn’t even want to come down because he’s got his War Poets essay due in for tomorrow, and Clara’s refusing to eat anything now that the peas have touched the ketchup. Only a month ago, you enforced the ‘No TV at the table’ rule, but it’s slipped again, and for the last couple of weeks your munching has been drowned out by EastEnders.

It’s time for a change. Here are ten games you could play across the dinner table, whether you’re waiting for the juices on that roast to run clear, or chewing your way through an endless plate of vegetables. They require nothing more than the table you’re sitting at, and spark off great situations to make the most of the time you spend together.

11. Crambo

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Medium

10–20 mins

TAGS:
GRAMMAR,
VOCABULARY,
RHYME

IN SHORT: Guess a secret word with rhymes and synonyms. The whole game creates its own rhyming poem every time. Neat!

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

This is a classic. Dating back to the Middle Ages, Crambo is a simple guessing game that works in rhyme.

One player, the rhymer, picks a word. Start with shorter words (one syllable) but you can move onto something more complicated once you’re all used to the game.

Let’s say the rhymer has chosen the word ‘bed’. She will think of a word that rhymes with ‘bed’ and begin the game like this: ‘I know a word that rhymes with dead.’

Now the guessers know that they’re searching for a word that rhymes with ‘dead’. But they can’t just guess. They have to only hint at the word they’re guessing.

For example, one guesser thinks of ‘red’. So, he asks, ‘Is it a colour?’

To which the rhymer would respond, ‘No, it’s not red.’

Another guesser might ask, ‘Is it on top of my neck?’

To which the rhymer would respond, ‘No, not in my head.’

The game continues until a guesser gives a clue that clearly leads to the correct word. The rhymer will respond, ‘Yes, it is bed!’

I’ve just given an example, but here’s another.

EXAMPLE

Rhymer:      ‘I know a word that rhymes with plate.’

Guesser 1:  ‘Is it a garden door?’

Rhymer:      ‘No, not a gate.’

Guesser 2:  ‘Is it disliking?’

Rhymer:      ‘No, it’s not hate.’

Guesser 3:  ‘Is it a summer party?’

Rhymer:      ‘No, not a fete.’

Guesser 1:  ‘Is it just brilliant?’

Rhymer:      ‘No, it’s not great.’

Guesser 2:  ‘Is it behind time?’

Rhymer:      ‘Yes! It is late!’

TIPS

• This game is so excellent because everybody’s doing something. Normally, the person who isn’t doing the guessing is just saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to all the questions chucked at them. In this game, they have to think of the rhyming word each time. For a group where everybody needs to feel involved all of the time, this will work well.

• If the rhymer can’t work out the word that you’re guessing, keep giving clues, or give the first letter. Never just tell them the word you’re guessing.

LEVEL-UP

• The ‘question, rhyming answer, question, rhyming answer’ format is pretty simple, but why not try to make the whole thing have a rhythm too? Notice how the rhymer changed the wording of her answers so that they always fit with the meter of the game. If you’re really into the ‘rap’ element, you could beat along with a wooden spoon on the back of a saucepan.

• If you have a particularly great round, why not write it down? Crambo poems are fun, silly and make the reader guess along with the game. It’s rare to find a game which is so much fun to read back over afterwards.

12. Kim’s Game

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Easy

2 mins per item

TAGS:
MEMORY,
AROUND THE
HOUSE

IN SHORT: Hide an item beneath the table. What’s missing?

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• A big table full of cutlery, crockery, condiments and so on. The fuller the better.

HOW TO PLAY

This game involves removing items from the table and potentially hiding them on your lap, so play it before dinner when the plates aren’t greasy.

One player, the guesser, closes her eyes. Then, the other players remove one thing from the table and hide it underneath. Any of the other players can hide the item, but you can only hide one thing, and it must be a group decision. Nothing else on the table should be moved.

Now, the guesser opens her eyes. She may not get up from her chair or look beneath the table. She just needs to look at the table and work out what’s missing. Don’t block her view of anything on the table!

The guesser only gets three guesses. If she gets the item right, make a big deal of revealing the item theatrically. Even if she doesn’t, the third guess can be quite a dramatic moment with a big reveal. Enjoy it!

LEVEL-UP

• This game gets easier with time. Eventually, you’ll know the contents of your table pretty well. After a few rounds, limit the player to one guess, or only ten seconds to guess. The other players could even quietly count down, to raise the tension.

13. Please Pass the . . .

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Easy

20 mins

TAGS:
PASS THE TIME,
MEMORY, SILLY

IN SHORT: That moment where you want to say something, but don’t know what it’s called, as a game.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• A table full of stuff. Dinner tables are perfect.

HOW TO PLAY

This game has two phases. Start with the first, and move onto the second. (You can also follow the natural progression of how my family makes up a game by watching how this one develops.) I won’t put level 2 in the Level-Up section because it’s the main game, really. Think of level 1 as an introduction.

LEVEL 1

One player, the mimer, chooses something on the table that she wants. It could be the salt or ketchup, or something the other players would usually pass, but it doesn’t need to be. It could be the lid of the mayonnaise, or someone else’s fork.

Next, the mimer says, ‘Please pass the . . .’ and acts out the thing she wants using only mime. From this point, she cannot say a single word until the correct thing has been passed. Even ‘No!’ should be replaced by a shake of her head. She may absolutely never point to the item on the table, and even staring at the item should be discouraged. That would make the game far too easy.

The other players will try to pass her things in the following form: ‘Here’s the salt shaker,’ ‘Here’s the gravy,’ ‘Here’s the bottle of poison,’ but the mimer will refuse everything except the one item she wants. Once the mimer has been passed the correct thing, the game continues when another player will ask for something to be passed.

LEVEL 2

If you’re ready to move on, then begin to choose things that aren’t on the table. For example, one mimer might choose a dog collar and say, ‘Please pass the . . .’ and then mime putting the collar on a dog. In response, the other players will try to hand her the correct thing, also in mime. They will accompany this with the words ‘Here’s the necklace,’ ‘Here’s the dog,’ ‘Here’s the dog collar.’ The mimer will only accept the third offer, obviously.

TIPS

• Miming is an art. There isn’t a correct way to do it, but try not to mouth the words, spell with your fingers, write anything down or use other ‘cheating’ tactics. You may as well just ask for the thing to be passed, and that isn’t a game. That’s just dinner.

• Look at all the different ways you can mime an item: you can mime the shape of something, the weight of it, your attitude towards it, what you do with it, and even where you’d find it. For example, if I were miming a vase of flowers, I could pick the flowers, sniff them, slot them into the (heavy) vase, carry the vase to a tap, fill up the water, place on a table and arrange the flowers carefully. There’s so much you can do if the other players aren’t imagining what you’re imagining.

14. Shut Your Eyes

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Easy

10 mins +

TAGS:
MEMORY,
GUESSING

IN SHORT: You’ll never see the contents of a room quite the same after playing this simple memory game.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

This game changes as you play it, because the more rounds you do, the more aware people become of their surroundings.

It works pretty simply. You don’t need to agree to play this game, like most of the others in this book. One player, the questioner, unannounced, tells another, the recaller, to shut their eyes. The questioner then asks the recaller a simple question about the room. For example:

• ‘What’s on the worksurface behind you?’

• ‘How many forks are on the table?’

• ‘What colour is my necklace?’

• ‘How many people are in the painting on the wall by the door?’

• ‘How many potatoes are left on your plate?’ (This question is best if you have been eating potatoes, but not limited to those occasions. I always keep a spare potato in my pocket to surprise other players when they open their eyes.)

Obviously, the challenge is for the recaller to remember correctly with their eyes firmly closed.

Once the recaller has given their answer, they’ll inevitably open their eyes and check, and from this point on, the whole table will be much more aware of everything around them. From question two onwards, you can usually make the questions much harder.

15. Boink!

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Medium

20 mins

TAGS:
GRAMMAR,
VOCABULARY,
SILLY

IN SHORT: Replace two homophones in a sentence with ‘BOINK!’ for a fun word guessing game.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Access to the internet for a bigger list of homophones, but only if you get stuck!

HOW TO PLAY

Homophones are two words that are spelled differently, mean different things, but sound the same. So, for instance, ‘I’ and ‘eye’, or ‘heard’ and ‘herd’.

You can put two homophones in the same sentence, with a nice effect:

• ‘Can you see if I have some grit in my eye?’

• ‘The herd of cows heard the storm approaching.’

However, this game requires you not to say the homophones. Rather, replace them both with the word ‘BOINK!’

• ‘Can you see if BOINK have some grit in my BOINK?’

• ‘The BOINK of cows BOINK the storm approaching.’

The other players should guess the homophones that ‘BOINK’ has replaced. Of course, the second sentence is easier to guess (and more fun) than the first, because it gives away a few more clues, and there’s more to go on.

EXAMPLE

I won’t give you too many examples, or I’ll spoil the game. But here is a short list of homophones you could use. (In the English language there are hundreds. Part of the game is thinking of them!)

• to/too/two

• where/wear

• witch/which

• road/rode

• wait/weight

And how about half-homophones, such as close/clothes?

TIPS

• If you’re struggling to think of homophones, look online for a few more. The only problem with giving you loads here is that if everyone’s already seen them, they’re pretty easy to guess.

• Try to fill your sentences with more clues by surrounding the BOINKs with related words. ‘BOINK! I’m BOINK!’ could be anything. Try, ‘BOINK there, fine sir. I’m very BOINK in this tree and need helping down.’

LEVEL-UP

• If you’re bored of homophones, how about homonyms? These are words that are spelled exactly the same but still mean different things, such as ‘rose’: e.g. ‘I rose from my armchair’ or ‘No rose could smell so sweet.’ Homonyms are harder to find, which makes finding them all the more satisfying.

16. King Henry VIII’s Banquet

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Medium

15 mins

TAGS:
MEMORY,
CREATIVITY,
SILLY

IN SHORT: Remember a list of foods that grows and grows.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

King Henry VIII was known for his enormous appetite and even larger stomach, so much so that his feasts became legendary. The food he served was gluttonous, extravagant and often very weird. Roasted swan, grilled beavers’ tails, cow’s udders, dolphin, all sorts of things. Your goal is to imagine this feast.

This is a great game to play during a mega-meal of your own. Simply, you’ll take it in turns to add a dish of food to King Henry’s banquet table, while at the same time remembering all the items that have come before. It’s a huge amount of fun, and becomes a real challenge as it progresses.

One player begins with the statement, ‘At his banquet, King Henry ate . . .’ and then adds one type of food. It can be as simple or as descriptive as you like, but the general rule is: make it sound expensive or calorific, or just weird.

Now, the next player recites the same statement, plus the previous foodstuff (including descriptions), and then adds one of their own. Each subsequent player then continues in the same fashion.

When a player cannot remember one of the items, you could help them by miming it, or giving a little prompt. If they really can’t remember, you could finish the game there. Alternatively, if there are at least four of you playing, ‘buzz out’ that player. The next player would now have to recite the whole list and add a new item. See who can stay in the game the longest.

EXAMPLE

Player 1: ‘At his banquet, King Henry ate a boiled prawn head.’

Player 2: ‘At his banquet, King Henry ate a boiled prawn head and a quadruple cheeseburger.’

Player 3: ‘At his banquet, King Henry ate a boiled prawn head, a quadruple cheeseburger and a twenty-pound-note salad . . .’

Player 4: ‘At his banquet, King Henry ate a boiled prawn head, a quadruple cheeseburger and a castle made of toffee.’

Player 3: ‘You forgot the twenty-pound-note salad!’

Player 4: ‘All right, I’m out.’

Player 2: ‘At his banquet . . .’

Etc.

TIPS

• Don’t worry about the weird and wonderful foods if you feel pressure to make up amazing ones. Any food is good food.

• Memory is a skill you can learn. Believe me, I have a terrible memory, but I’m actually not bad at this game. Some people try to visualise each item in the list. Personally, I like to take it a little further and build a narrative in my head where one item interacts with the next, so that all your ideas are connected in a string. So, for example, I’d imagine the boiled prawn head leaking its fishy water and getting the quadruple cheeseburger’s bun all soggy. Then the burger is too tall, so it topples onto a plate of sliced twenty-pound-notes. That sort of thing.

17. Six Degrees of Separation

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

1+

Medium

20 mins

TAGS:
CREATIVE,
WIND-DOWN,
PASS THE TIME

IN SHORT: Link two random items in as few steps as possible.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

One player picks two random items. If you need some help here, turn to the list of story objects (see here) and waggle your finger about with your eyes closed until you land on a word.

It is every player’s job to find a string of items that link those two things, in as few steps as possible.

When you’re all ready, each player should share their chain of links. If you aren’t happy with one of the other player’s links, if it’s too tenuous, too general or just plain wrong, challenge the other player on it.

Once you’ve finished, players should judge whose chain was best by whose was shortest, plus a special prize for the person who may not have got there quickest, yet each link was solid, imaginative and interesting.

EXAMPLE

Player 1 chose the items this time. She chose SAUSAGE and IVORY.

Player 1: ‘You make sausage from a pig, pigs are an animal, one animal is an elephant, ivory comes from elephants. Four steps!’

Player 2: ‘I eat sausages on a plate. Plates are white, and ivory is white.’

(This is three steps, but in my opinion it’s not a good answer, as plates can be any colour.)

Player 3: ‘You pick up sausages with a fork, forks are pointy, tusks are pointy, ivory is made from tusks. Four steps.’

Who won? You decide.

LEVEL-UP

• It’s also quite good fun to play the same game, but with as many links as possible. See how long you can keep your chain going before finally falling asleep or reaching your other item.

• You may know of the game ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’. It’s basically the same idea, but you are only allowed to use actors, and your target is always Kevin Bacon. You need to find a film that your actor has starred in, as well as Kevin Bacon. If you can’t, then you’ll need to go via another actor. So, for example, if you chose Daniel Radcliffe, you would say that Daniel was in Harry Potter with John Cleese, and then John Cleese was in The Big Picture with Kevin Bacon. Yeah, I had to search online for it. I’m terrible at this game.

18. What’s My Line?

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Medium

10 mins per round

TAGS:
GUESSING,
CONVERSATION,
WIND-DOWN

IN SHORT: Guess a player’s made-up job.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

This is a classic game to play before or during your meal to keep the conversation flowing.

One player, the professional, picks a job and pretends that they do it. You could start off simple (police officer, dairy farmer) but eventually get really niche (newspaper columnist, skydiving instructor). If you get stuck, have a look here for some inspiration. Plenty of jobs written there.

The questioners take it in turns to ask about the professional’s life. Question by question, they should be closing in on the nature of the work.

The professional can only answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. If the answer is iffy, you could say ‘Sort of’ or ‘Sometimes’, but try to avoid this. If you don’t know the answer, say so, but if you find yourself not knowing the answer to lots of questions, you’ve picked the wrong job.

Once one of the questioners has guessed the job, they can pick one and the game continues.

EXAMPLE

The professional has chosen ‘Prime Minister’.

Questioner 1: ‘Do you have to wear a uniform?’

Professional: ‘No.’

Questioner 2: ‘Do you work in an office?’

Professional: ‘Sometimes.’

Questioner 3: ‘Do you sell things?’

Professional: ‘No.’

Questioner 1: ‘Do you make a lot of money?’

Professional: ‘I don’t know. Probably, yes.’

Questioner 2: ‘Do I regularly see people who do your job on TV?’

Professional: ‘Yes.’

Etc.

TIP

• This game is so much easier if the job you choose is nice and active. If you choose a chartered accountant or a divorce lawyer, the questioners will need to be very inventive (and possibly quite technical!) to get to the bottom of what it is you actually do.

19. Scat Memory

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Hard

15 mins

TAGS:
MEMORY,
CREATIVE,
RHYTHM, SILLY

IN SHORT: Remember, and add to, an increasingly complicated line of ‘scat’ singing

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• A kitchen/restaurant/café containing people who don’t mind you making some incredibly silly noises.

HOW TO PLAY

This is a tremendous game to play around a table, but don’t do it with your mouth full!

If you haven’t heard of scat, you’re in for a treat. It’s a type of rhythmical singing without words, mostly in jazz, where you just make noises along with the music. It’s free and improvisational, and there are no rules. You just make the sounds you feel like making.

If you want some excellent examples, search these out online:

• ‘One Note Samba’ by Ella Fitzgerald

• ‘Heebie Jeebies’ by Louis Armstrong

• ‘Scatman (Ski-ba-bop-ba-dop-bop)’ by Scatman John

OK, so we’ll never be as good as them, but we’re going to employ the same idea in our game.

Scat singing basically has no limit, but there are some scat ‘words’ you’ll have heard coming back quite a few times. They’re often plosive, which means they have a ‘pop’ noise. They sometimes imitate percussion noise.

Have a go at saying some of these out loud. Try them forwards, backwards, fast and slow:

• Bop

• Shoop

• Skee

• Doo

• Bap

• Shap

• Dap

• Woo

• Pah

• Skip

• Diddlee

• Dee

Feel ready? OK. One player begins by saying one scat word.

The next player then repeats that scat word and adds another.

Each player repeats all of the scat words and then adds one more word at the end.

Bit by bit, the players will build a scat melody and rhythm. The challenge is to remember what’s come before and add something new. The game ends when there are so many ‘wahs’ and ‘shoops’ in your head that you scat all over the carpet.

EXAMPLE

Player 1: ‘Boop.’

Player 2: ‘Boop dada.’

Player 3: ‘Boop dada skip.’

Player 1: ‘Boop dada skip bop.’

Player 2: ‘Boop dada skip bop wheep.’

Player 3: ‘Boop skip bop wheep.’

But Player 3 forgot ‘dada.’ How could she? The players either correct her and carry on, or stop and start a new scat melody.

TIPS

• Really try to work with the rhythm of your scat sequence. ‘Bap boo shap scap skip dap woo’ is all right, but you won’t get yourself a Grammy any time soon. It’s too ploddy! Get your feet tapping, put on your darkest jazz sunglasses, and get in the groove with words that build an interesting rhythm.

• While there is no limit to what constitutes a scat ‘word’, try not to add anything too complicated. For example: which is the odd one out in the following scat melody? ‘Bop dap ba-boop whop, skeedily encyclopaedia shoo wap.’

• Actually, that last one was kind of catchy.

LEVEL-UP

• This is such a wonderfully musical game. Stick on some old-fashioned jazz with no singing and play your game over a musical backing track. You’ll love the way the melodies grow and fit with the song, and players are forced to impersonate each other to make sense of the words.

20. Hardest Game in the World

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

4+

Hard

Infinite

TAGS:
COLLABORATIVE,
STRATEGY

IN SHORT: How hard can it be to count to twenty?

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

I love this game, simply because of what it says about you, the player, based on how you play it. (Quick note: the more players you have for this game, the better.)

The challenge is simple: count to twenty.

The twist, however, is in the following rules:

1. You are not allowed to say more than one number at a time.

2. You may not make any motion, sound or indication to the other players about who should speak next.

3. If two people say the next number simultaneously, it’s game over. You must start back at number one.

This is a game of body language. You want someone in the circle to say the next number, but you don’t want two people to say it. Deciding on some order or tactic is strictly forbidden. Any group can count to twenty if you know who will say each number. This is about communication through other means. What can you see in someone’s breathing, their eyes, the way they open their mouth or sit forward?

You must self-police. It’s pretty easy to let someone take control or develop some way of showing who’s speaking next. Don’t let that happen.

LEVEL-UP

• Obviously, if you find it simple to get to twenty, then try going further. Set a high-score and try to beat it with a different group.

• The more players you have, the harder it gets. I’ve done this with a class of children and never got past eight.

• If you’re really attuned to each other, try this game with your eyes closed. You’ll hate each other, yourselves, and also me for suggesting it, within ten minutes, but it’s an excellent challenge.

CHAPTER 3

LONG, HOT SUMMER

Two weeks in sunny Mallorca sounded like an excellent idea in January, but now you’re here, it’s hardly the paradise you’d imagined. There are flies in the hotel bathroom, and if you venture outside you’ll be assaulted by the sort of sun that cooks you to crispy bacon in five minutes. Dad’s earned himself a squirming tummy from that dodgy paella, the kids don’t want to read their holiday books and their eyes are stinging from a pool that’s more chlorine than water. But never fear, because I’ve got ten games that will let you pass the time smoothly under a shady palm tree. They’re slow, creative, and all the better for being left out in the sun to ferment for a while.

In this chapter you’ll find secret languages, storytelling games and a massive murder mystery that will absolutely overtake your holiday. Even if you’re at home, there are games here that make that long summer break pass like an August cloud.

21. Twenty-One Dares

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Easy

15 mins +

TAGS:
MATHS,
STRATEGY,
COMPETITIVE

IN SHORT: A simple, tactical counting game. You can use it as a springboard to give out dares or forfeits.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

This game can be played anywhere: airport departure lounges, on the beach or halfway up a mountain. The aim of the game is to avoid saying ‘twenty-one’.

Players take it in turns to count in order, starting from one, choosing whether to say one number, two, or three. You may not say more than three numbers, and you may not skip, repeat, or go down.

Eventually, one player will be forced to say ‘twenty-one’. They lose, and must be punished! Some sort of dare or forfeit that does not disturb other people would be perfect. If you’re in a place where dares aren’t appropriate, ‘truth’ questions would be just as good. Ask the loser a question that they must answer honestly.

EXAMPLE

Player 1: ‘One, two, three.’

Player 2: ‘Four, five.’

Player 3: ‘Six, seven, eight.’

Player 4: ‘Nine.’

Player 1: ‘Ten, eleven, twelve.’

Player 2: ‘Thirteen, fourteen.’

Player 3: ‘Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen.’

Player 4: ‘Eighteen, nineteen.’

Player 1: ‘Twenty!’

Player 2: ‘Twenty-one. Bother.’

Player 2 earns the next dare.

TIPS

• I’m not going to spoil the game here, but it’s worth saying that it has been ‘solved’. That is, there is a simple mathematical way to make sure that you never lose, at least when playing as a two. Challenge me, if you meet me; I swear you won’t beat me. (I realise that rhymed.)

• This does get more complicated with more players, but there still could be a way to solve it so that you always win. Experiment!

LEVEL-UP

• If one or more of the players in your group knows how to never lose at this game (see above), you might need another challenge. Try one of these:

• Change the number of numbers that you are allowed to say each turn. The game is vastly different if you’re able to count four at a time, or even five.

• Change the target from 21 to 22, or 36, or 81. See how your tactics change.

22. Murder in Paradise

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

4+

Easy

1 day–2 weeks

TAGS:
ACTIVE,
LONG-TERM,
STRATEGY

IN SHORT: Set up this Cluedo-style ‘murder’ game at the beginning of a holiday, then plan and ‘execute’ your murder when the time is right.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Pens and scraps of paper.

• Three hats, or bowls, or something to pick a slip of paper from.

HOW TO PLAY

If you’re about to head off on a big family holiday, then this might be the game to spice up your trip. It’s a game of secrets, subterfuge, deception and, most importantly, murder. It ought to be said at this point, please don’t actually murder anybody. Not even a little bit. You’re better than that. Having said that, pretending’s fine!

So, you’ve arrived on holiday and you’re lucky enough be rattling around for two weeks in a beautiful hotel, villa, village, etc. On the first evening, once you’ve got a feel of the place and know where you can go, what you can do and so on, sit all the players down and set up the game. It works like this:

1. Write everybody’s name on slips of paper, fold them up, and put them in the first hat. It’s really important that every player has their name on a piece of paper just once. Think of a secret Santa.

2. Now, each player should write a location within the area where you’re staying, that you could easily get to. So, it could be ‘the bakery next door’, ‘Mum and Dad’s bedroom’, or ‘under the big tree in the garden’, but not ‘the clouds’. Everyone should fold up their suggestion and put it in the second hat. Players should not show anyone else what they’ve written.

3. Finally, every player should write an object that is safe and easily accessible. Choose something like ‘a baguette’, ‘a pillow’ or ‘Amy’s sock’. Please do not choose anything that could actually be used as a weapon – for example, nothing sharp. Everyone should fold up their suggestion and put it in the third hat. Again, the suggestions should be kept secret.

Once this stage is complete, everybody should take it in turns to pick a name from the hat. (If you get yourself, please immediately say so, put it back, and draw again. If the last person gets themselves you’ll need to put all the names back and draw again.) This name is your potential ‘victim’.

Next, pick out a location and an item. These are the requirements for your murder. You now have a victim, a scene of the crime and a weapon. Keep them secret – if anybody finds out, your game will become MUCH harder!

The rest of the holiday is your time limit. All you have to do is get your victim alone in the location on your paper, and have the murder weapon with you. Show them your slips of paper and they’re dead!

At this point, you need to tell the other players who killed whom, with what, and where. Not only can you enjoy the silliness of it, but it might help the other potential victims work out who wants them dead.

Meanwhile, you’re trying your best to avoid being killed by whoever picked out your name. Bargain, barter and bluff your way around other players to find out what they know. Keep your eyes peeled for family members carrying around a lemon all the time, or continually asking you to come to the laundry room. These clues might give away a lot!

If you’ve committed your murder, you must still watch out for the person who’s going for you. The game only ends when everybody’s either committed their murder, or they’re dead.

If you’re killed, you can’t commit your murder any more, but that doesn’t mean you can’t play. It’s still fun to try and work out who’s left, and what their murder plan might be. For that reason, even if you’re dead, don’t give away who you were supposed to kill. It’s much more fun to keep everybody paranoid right until the end.

TIPS

• This game is as much about gathering clues as killing people. If there are four players and you think you know who two others are killing, you’ve identified your potential murderer. Avoid being alone with them at all costs!

• Keep your slips of paper safe. There’s no rule against ferreting out other people’s information.

• What’s great about this game is that you can freely trade knowledge and insight. For example, if you’ve spotted your dad carrying around that lemon, you might suspect that’s his murder weapon. You could offer that information to your brother in exchange for something he’s noticed. If he tells you that Mum’s been repeatedly asking him to take a look at something in the laundry room, you can probably stop worrying about Mum killing you any time soon.

• At the start, when you open up your location and murder weapon papers, speak out if you don’t think it’s fair, or don’t think it’s within the spirit of the game. If you’re being asked to heft your dad and a living whale into the top shelf of the oven, then you won’t have a good time.

LEVEL-UP

• If your holiday involves a lot of moving about, then you might need to pick some more general locations and items. For example, ‘bedroom’ or ‘restaurant’. You could still play the game, as long as you travel to a place that has that thing.

23. Preposition I-Spy

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Easy

5 mins per round

TAGS:
GRAMMAR,
GUESSING,
VOCABULARY

IN SHORT: Practise prepositions with a fun twist on an old game.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

I assume you know how to play the great holiday game, I-Spy: ‘I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with P.’ ‘Pizza!’

Well, this isn’t that. In this game, you don’t give letters, but locations. First of all, you need to know about prepositions.

Prepositions are little words that are used to give the position of a noun. Pre-position. See? So, for example, ‘The dog hides under the carpet,’ or ‘We ate our dinner after the race.’ Here are a few more prepositions:

• Inside/outside

• Above/below

• Next to/to the left of/to the right of

• In front of/behind

• Between

Now, one player picks an object around her. However well the original I-Spy works in a car, you might need to be moving a little slower than that for this variation.

The player gives her first clue. ‘I spy, with my little eye, something below something beginning with P.’

So the other players – the guessers – not only have to look for something beginning with P, but also find an object below it. They each get one guess at the object, not the thing beginning with P, before the first player gives another clue to the same object, using a different preposition. ‘I spy, with my little eye, something in front of something beginning with L.’

Once somebody’s guessed the object, it’s time to swap roles.

EXAMPLE

Player 1: ‘I spy with my little eye, something on something beginning with T.’

Player 2 thinks the T might be that palm tree. ‘A coconut?’

Player 1: ‘Nope.’

Player 3 thinks the T might be a truck driving by. ‘A roof?’

Player 1: ‘Nuh-uh.’

Player 4 thinks the T might be the table. ‘Your gin and tonic?’

Player 1: ‘Wrong. I spy, with my little eye, something behind something beginning with G.’

Player 4 sees that behind the gin and tonic, on the table, is the sun cream. ‘Sun cream?’

Player 1: ‘Yep!’

Player 4 is the winner, and picks a new item.

24. Don’t Finish the Word!

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Easy

10–20 mins

TAGS:
SPELLING,
STRATEGY,
VOCABULARY,
COMPETITIVE

IN SHORT: Fun, competitive and weirdly addictive spelling game.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Pencil and paper/whiteboard (optional). See Level-Up.

HOW TO PLAY

Perfect for playing with your eyes closed, lounging on a hammock, this game will keep you entertained for as long as you need it to. The aim is to add a letter to a word without finishing it. Players will take it in turns to say a letter, adding to the previous letters and working towards spelling a word (the words in mind will change and evolve as the game progresses). This goes on until somebody finishes a word. If you finish a word, you lose a life.

Sometimes you may suspect that your opponent is just bluffing and they do not have a real word in mind after they’ve added their letter. At this point, you may declare ‘Challenge!’ then your opponent has to say the word they were thinking of. If there’s an incorrect spelling in the letters you currently have, or if there’s no word at all, then they lose a life. If, however, they were working towards a valid word, then you lose a life.

All players begin with five lives. The last player with lives remaining is the winner!

EXAMPLE

First round. Player 1 writes ‘T’.

Player 2 thinks of the word ‘THE’ and writes ‘H’.

Player 1 cannot write ‘E’ because it would finish the word ‘THE’. He writes ‘I’.

Player 2 cannot write ‘S’ because it would finish the word ‘THIS’. She writes ‘N’, thinking of the word ‘THING’.

Player 2 loses a life, because THIN is a completed word.

Second round. Player 2 writes ‘G’.

Player 1 writes ‘L’.

Player 2 writes ‘U’.

Player 1 could write ‘E’, ‘G’ or ‘M’ but those letters all finish words. He doesn’t think of ‘C’ for ‘GLUCOSE’. Instead, he tries to bluff his opponent. He adds ‘N’ and hopes she will think he’s found a word.

Player 2 looks at ‘GLUN’ for a long time, but eventually declares ‘Challenge!’

Player 1 cannot finish the word. Player 1 loses a life.

TIPS

• Make sure you don’t begin with the letters A or I, unless you really like losing lives. Those words are already finished!

• If the only letters you can think of finish the word, try to bluff. Add a random letter and leave it for your opponent to squirm. You’d be surprised how often they do the same in return, and then you can definitely challenge.

• This game is very good for understanding how the same vowels can make different sounds depending on which letter comes next. If you have ‘STO’ and you only hear the short ‘O’ sound, as in ‘STOP’, you won’t think of the Magic E ‘O’ sound, as in ‘STONE’. Of course, it isn’t called Magic E any more. It’s a split digraph, and they won’t shut up about it.

LEVEL-UP

• If you don’t want to give your memory a workout, you can write down the letters as you go.

25. Top Ten of Everything

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

1+

Easy

30 mins per list

TAGS:
CONVERSATION,
COLLABORATIVE,
WIND-DOWN

IN SHORT: List-making is more fun than it should be. Use my categories to list your favourites.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

These are optional:

• Access to the internet (for research).

• Pen and paper.

HOW TO PLAY

For some reason, the world loves lists – especially countdowns. The internet is full of them. I spend my life trying to work out what sneaks into my top ten of various categories. Let’s not question why this is true and just enjoy the process. Play this one when you’re over halfway through your holiday and have run out of things to get excited about.

To play this game, firstly decide a category. You could use anything from here, one of your own, or any of these fun things to rank:

• Places I’ve been

• Films I’ve seen

• Superheroes

• Birthdays I’ve had

• Smells

• Books I’ve read

• Sounds

• Flavours of crisps

• Accents

• Words in the English language

• Songs

If you’re playing this on the go, a top five should be enough to keep in your head. If you have a notepad on your phone or a pen and paper, you could stretch to ten or more.

Each player could make their own list, but it’s more fun to make one list between all the players. The second is more difficult but more rewarding, because if you want one particular flavour of crisps to be higher up the list you’ll have to make a case for it. Give good enough reasons, argue your point persuasively, and the other players are sure to agree with you, and that’s a great feeling!

TIP

• It’s best not to make this game too personal, for example using a category like ‘favourite people’. Believe it or not, there’s no joy in finding out that you either have, or haven’t, made it into somebody’s list of best friends.

FOLLOW-UP

• Once you’ve made your list, make a proper chart with pictures, explanations and the reasons why each option placed where it did.

• Whoop Whoop! Nerd alert! If I were playing this game with a lot of people, I’d encourage everyone to write down their own list, then collect them and make an overall table by using each list as a set of votes. Award 10 points for a first place, 9 for second place, etc., and finish with a big overall league table. Mmm. League tables.

26. Story Tornado

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Medium

5 mins per story

TAGS:
STORYTELLING,
COLLABORATIVE,
CREATIVE

IN SHORT: Improvise a story with the ingredients that are constantly being thrown at you.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Story ingredients (see here) photocopied/written out and cut out, if you can. You could even add your own ideas! If you don’t have time to prepare this in advance, you can just choose the options directly from the back of the book.

• If you’ve cut out the story ingredients, you’ll also need four containers (hats, bowls, shoes) to put them in. Put each category of story ingredients – character, place, object, action – into a separate container.

HOW TO PLAY

This is a chaotic storytelling game. It’s an absolute romp, and quite hard at first, but stick with it and you’ll create some amazing stories.

One player, the tornado, hands another player, the storyteller, a card from one of the four pots, or just reads a random item from any of the story ingredient pages. It really doesn’t matter which one. The tornado may root around and look for a card she wants, or just pick the top one out. Decide beforehand which you’ll do and just go with it.

With this one ingredient, the storyteller begins telling his story. Almost immediately, the tornado throws the storyteller another card from a different pot (once again, random or chosen). The storyteller must build this new ingredient into the story and continue.

The game continues, with the tornado adding story ingredients whenever she wants. She can deprive the storyteller of ingredients and watch him improvise with the parts he has, or add more and more until the story’s ready to burst.

At some point, the story should end, and then it’s time to swap roles.

EXAMPLE

The tornado gives the storyteller a card that says ‘Dog’.

Storyteller: ‘Once upon a time there was a dog called Buster.’

The tornado gives the storyteller a card that says ‘Balloon’.

Storyteller: ‘He loved chasing balloons so much that his owner only had to blow up a balloon and throw it into the garden, and he’d be out there for hours.’

The tornado gives the storyteller a card that says ‘Palace’.

Storyteller: ‘One day, Buster chased a balloon all the way through town and up the steps of the royal palace, and straight through the front door. The queen screamed as the dirty dog walked muddy paw-prints all across their precious rug.’

Etc.

TIPS

• If you’re telling the story, pay attention: as with every story, decide who’s the main character nice and early, then give that character a problem that they have to solve and make the rest of the story about solving that problem. No matter what the other player gives you, don’t abandon the main character and their problem. How can the new ingredients help to further that story?

• If you’re the tornado, listen to the storyteller and try to help! Does he sound like he needs a new location? Is the character already laden with objects? It’s fun to make it hard for the storyteller, but don’t make it impossible!

27. Stupid Superheroes

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

1+

Medium

1 hour +

TAGS:
CREATIVE,
WRITING,
COLLABORATIVE,
CONVERSATION

IN SHORT: Develop your own team of pathetic superheroes, even worse super-villains, then battle them against each other!

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Paper and pencil.

• Colouring pencils, felt tips or drawing app on a tablet.

• ‘Object’ story suggestions (see here), ideally photocopied/written out and cut out, though you can just choose them from the back of the book.

HOW TO PLAY

This one’s great to play at a table. It will turn any long afternoon into an absolute feast of creativity. Each player should shuffle the ‘object’ story suggestions, then pick one, or just choose randomly from the list at the back (close your eyes and point). This item becomes the source of the super-power for a brand-new superhero or super-villain. Choose an element of that object that might be useful for fighting crime or, if you feel a little villainous, for causing it. Before you share your idea, give yourself five minutes to answer these questions in your head, or on some scrap paper:

• What is your character’s name? It could include the word on your card plus -man, -woman, -boy or -girl. Alternatively, go a little more creative.

• Hero or villain?

• What is your character’s real-life identity? What do they do when they’re not dressed in Lycra? How old/young/rich/poor/happy/sad/popular/unpopular are they in real life? Do they have a job or family? You need to decide.

• What, exactly, is your character’s special power? What can he/she do that’s completely unique and new? HINT: think about the unique qualities of the item you picked. Shooting _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ out of his/her hands is not a new idea. Use it only if you must!

• How did your character get their power? You’ve got to have an origin story. If you’re stuck, ‘Bitten by a radioactive _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _’ is a great place to start.

• What is your character’s weakness? Every superhero has a weakness. It’s normally the opposite of the thing on your card, or the thing that would destroy the thing on your card.

The best players will not make the strongest superhero, but the most original one. Superman may have cool pants, but someone has already created him and even the first one is boring. Be original!

Now it’s time to share your characters. In turn, tell the other players all about your superhero. Try to keep it fun, and give as much detail as you can without being boring. If you’re on your own, don’t worry! Skip to the next step.

Try asking questions about the other players’ characters to get a little deeper into their heads. If they can transform into a jellyfish, how long does it take? And what happens if they’re on land when it happens? And do they also get the intelligence of a jellyfish? Pretend this is really happening in real life, and work out the kinks of the character.

Here’s where you get creative. There are a few options as to what happens next:

1. Every player can draw/write the scene when the characters meet (and do battle) for the first time. Who wins is up to them, but think it out first. You can do this as one big action page, or use a comic-book grid to show the sequence of events.

2. Role-play the characters and make up a conversation between them. Would they team up or fight? What common ground do they have? Would they be a successful team?

3. Have each player judge who would win in a fight. You each have 1 minute to tell the story of how you think the fight would go, and who would end up on top.

4. If you’re feeling artistic, draw your character, stick the paper onto a thick card and cut it out with an extra flap at the bottom so they can stand up. Once you’ve done a few you’ll have your own superhero team right there in front of you. This can be the base for excellent written stories, photo comics, tabletop games or just a cool display.

EXAMPLE

If the object card says ‘cheese’:

Name: Doctor Roquefort (villain).

Real-life identity: Robert Camembert, a grey-haired brain surgeon from Paris. He lives alone (because he smells so strongly of cheese) and no longer works at the hospital after his brain surgery patients woke up and complained about the stink.

Power: He can melt into a pool of cheese and move about as a liquid. His ripe dairy smell is another element of his power, but not a particularly useful one.

Origin story: Robert Camembert left a particularly strong French cheese out of the fridge for weeks, and then ate a mouthful. Little did he know that the cheese had begun to rot and evolved a dangerous DNA-editing strain of bacteria, which turned him into the monstrosity that he is today.

Weakness: Any source of heat can begin to trigger his melting power, which can be awkward on a summer’s day or on the bus. When in his liquid state, even though he can slip between prison bars and squeeze inside locked safes, he is both delicious and spreadable. Also people can smell him coming from half a mile away because, well, he stinks.

LEVEL-UP

• If you really, really like a character, use it as a basis to get started on a graphic novel! I cannot wait to see what you create.

28. What’s it Worth?

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Medium

10 mins per item

TAGS:
CREATIVE,
CONVERSATION,
SILLY

IN SHORT: Find an object lying about. Pretend to be an expert on it. This game is very, very silly.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Any weird and wonderful items from around the world.

HOW TO PLAY

This game uses items that you find on holiday, or just around your house, and turns them into pieces of rare and magnificent antiquity.

Before you play this game, it might be worth watching an episode of Antiques Roadshow on BBC iPlayer, or a few clips on YouTube. Watch how the experts talk in detail about the piece’s history, its use, its maker, the materials, etc. Look at their passion and love for the item, and the way they talk with such enthusiasm.

One player hands the ‘expert’ an object. It could be anything, but the stranger the better.

If the expert knows what this thing is, he should immediately pretend it’s something else. If it’s a pot, turn it upside down and now it’s a hat! If it’s a bulldog clip, now it’s a bullfrog clip, used for catching frogs between its pincers.

The expert must talk for a given amount of time (e.g. two minutes) about this item. Of course, he’ll need to make up everything about it. If he gets stuck, use these questions for inspiration:

• What is this item used for?

• What special features does it have?

• When/where was it made?

• Which company/craftsman made it? How?

• How rare/old/unusual is this item?

• What is the history of items like this? Were they popular, and with whom?

• And finally . . . what’s it worth?

TIPS

• If you get stuck, spend some time describing how beautiful and exquisite the item is. The experts on Antiques Roadshow really love their antiques.

• If you’re the listener and the expert is getting stuck, ask some leading questions from the list above.

29. Genre Bender

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2

Hard

20 mins

TAGS:
STORYTELLING,
COLLABORATIVE,
SILLY

IN SHORT: Storytelling game with a big twist.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

This game can’t be won or lost, but it’s a huge amount of fun, so isn’t everyone the winner? One player, the storyteller, begins to tell the other a story. For this, choose any story you like from book, TV, film or stage. You could even choose one of my story titles or opening lines here.

Before you begin, the players should discuss which genre this story belongs to. A genre is the category that the story fits into. Here are the main options:

• Horror: Scary, creepy stories with lots of suspense.

• Mystery: A story where the main character, and the reader, attempts to solve a mysterious crime.

• Sci-Fi: Anything futuristic or in space, with aliens, lasers or time travel.

• Fantasy: Set in a made-up world with magic, dragons, kings and queens.

• Romance: A story where the characters struggle to find their true love.

• Comedy: Jokes, funny characters and slapstick moments.

• Drama: A real-life tale about school, family and the modern world.

• Fairy tale: Talking animals, princesses in castles, cute gnomes and evil witches.

• Myth/legend: Ancient tales of gods and long journeys, big battles, magical beasts.

Now, at any point during the story, the listener may call, ‘Change to _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _’ and decide on a new genre for the story. The storyteller must continue in the new genre.

The game ends when the story ends!

EXAMPLE

Storyteller: ‘Harry Potter was a normal boy who lived with his mean uncle and aunt, until Hagrid the giant told him he was a wizard.’

Listener: ‘Change to fairy tale.’

Storyteller: ‘Hagrid and Harry went into the forest and found a talking fox. “I’m better at magic tricks than you!” said the fox.’

Listener: ‘Change to horror.’

Storyteller: ‘Harry’s eyes widened as he saw that the fox was holding a tiny knife. “My first trick,” said the fox, “is to make blood spring from your chest!”’

Listener: ‘Change to fantasy.’

Storyteller: ‘Harry grabbed his magical amulet and held it up to the sun. From the distance, his dragon roared, the beats of its wing shaking leaves from the trees. The fox turned to flee.’

Listener: ‘Change to romance.’

Storyteller: ‘“Stop!” cried Harry. “Don’t leave yet!” The dragon landed nearby with a dozen red roses in its beak. “I have something to tell you. Something . . . important . . .” Harry whispered.’

Etc.

TIP

• The more times you switch genre, the more complicated the story will get. Don’t worry, though! This game is supposed to be silly.

30. Avagat

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Hard

Learn in 30 mins, use for life

TAGS:
SILLY,
GRAMMAR,
CONVERSATION,
LONG-TERM

IN SHORT: An excellent secret language where the words hide in plain sight.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

Hevege-llovogo. Myvygy navagame ivigis Ivigi-vavagan.

‘Avagat’ is a secret language that my sisters used to employ to speak to each other. It completely baffled me for years, but once I worked it out (or once they told me . . . I don’t remember . . .) I felt thoroughly ‘in’ on the secret. It’s a great one to use on holiday, when you can pretend to be speaking in a ‘foreign’ language, then switch back to immaculate English and confuse onlookers. Also, it takes time to perfect, so airport waiting rooms or long car journeys are the ideal time to practise.

I’ll teach you how to use this language, but be aware of how inclusive/exclusive you’re being. Half of the fun with a secret language is to see if others can work out what you’re saying, though do bear in mind (and this is from experience) that it can be quite annoying if you’re the one who’s not in on the secret.

So here’s how it works.

Take any word and break it down into syllables. A syllable is a part of the word that takes one ‘beat’.

So, for example, ‘Hello’ has two syllables. He-llo. ‘Octopus’ has three. Oc-to-pus. Tap along with your word to get better at identifying syllables.

Now, with each syllable of your word, you need to interrupt the vowel with the consonants v and g. So the ‘ah’ noise would be ‘avagah’ and the ‘ee’ noise would be ‘evegee’.

He-llo now becomes Hevege-llovogo.

Octopus now becomes Ovogoc-tovogo-puvugus.

Now, this all sounds very weird, but with practice you’ll not only be able to speak Avagat, but also understand it when others speak it. For a language where the real words are right there, but hidden by lots of Vs and Gs, it’s pretty hard to decipher if you don’t know the rule!

If you want to practise, I recommend trying to recite the alphabet. I’ve tried to spell these out as best I can. The rest, you’ll have to do yourself. Sorry . . .

Avagay, bevegey, cevegey, devegey, evegey, evegef, geevegey, ayvagaych, ivigiy etc. Good luck!

Novogow. Dovogoo youvugu uvugun-deveger-stavagand whavagat ivigiy avagam savagay-iviging?

CHAPTER 4

ONE-ON-ONE

It’s rare that you get to spend time with just one person, whether it’s your significant other, sibling, parent, offspring, friend or cat. Even when you do come together, usually there are plenty of reasons to ignore each other: smartphones, chores, TV to catch up on. Much better to separate yourselves between large pages of a newspaper or the glare of a screen, so that you’re basically alone, but sitting in the same room.

But maybe, just occasionally, you should make the effort to come together properly. Or, perhaps there’s a specific situation where you need to pass time with someone: you both have a long train journey to fill, or you’re sat waiting for the doctor to look at your daughter’s blocked ear and it looks like it’ll be a long one. A long wait, not a long ear. Obviously.

Whatever the case, these one-on-one games are perfect for those moments. They’re duels or challenges that require conversation or tit-for-tat interaction, helping you make the most of your time together. They’re also silly amounts of fun.

Many of the games in this chapter require a notebook and pencil, so they might be ones to play at home. But if you know ahead of time that you’ll be sat somewhere for a long while, why not pack these in your bag? If you’re really keen, get your hands on a mini-whiteboard and some pens from a stationery shop and you’ll have unlimited paper for life.

31. Reflect Me

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Easy

5 mins

TAGS:
ARTY,
WIND-DOWN,
MATHS

IN SHORT: Explore reflection in this quiet, collaborative game that produces fun drawings!

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Whiteboard and pens, ideally, but scrap paper and pencils will do.

HOW TO PLAY

Take your paper and lay it landscape (wider than it is tall). Now, draw a dotted line down the middle of the page so that you have two equal segments.

One player is the leader, and the other is the follower. You can swap roles every round, so don’t worry about who goes first.

The leader draws a line, or a simple squiggle, on their side of the board. Next, the follower copies that mark on their side of the board as if it’s reflected in the mirror. Remember: when reflected, everything looks the wrong way around.

As the leader adds more lines, the picture becomes more and more complex. If you’re the follower, try to be as perfect as possible. Think about exactly where, and exactly what size, your markings should be.

It’s the leader’s job to notice if the follower has made any mistakes. If you’re playing on a whiteboard, these can be corrected easily. The game is over when the follower decides the masterpiece is complete, and then the roles swap.

TIP

• If you need practice on this, find a wall-mounted mirror and wiggle your hands around for a bit. The closer to the mirror you are, the closest to the mirror your reflection is. Use this same principle when reflecting in the dotted line.

LEVEL-UP

• Once you’re really confident in this game, how about agreeing that in each round, the follower will make one intentional mistake. The leader will have to pay attention to make sure that they don’t miss the mistake. This works well because it’s easy for the leader to lose concentration and just focus on their own half. We don’t want that!

• There’s another game in this, which takes place in real life rather than on a whiteboard. Sit or stand face to face and imagine a mirror separating you and your partner. One player is the leader, the other the reflection. Every move the leader makes (slowly at first) the reflection should copy, as exactly as possible. See how accurately you can mirror your partner. After a few minutes, swap roles.

32. Blindfold Game

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2

Easy

30 mins

TAGS:
COLLABORATIVE,
VOCABULARY,
AROUND THE
HOUSE

IN SHORT: An instructions game to be played around the house.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• A blindfold. This could be a scarf, a shirt or any material that blocks your view and can be tied safely around your head without blocking your mouth.

HOW TO PLAY

This game is perfect for two players at home, because it morphs a place you thought you knew well into a mystery maze, just by eliminating one of the senses. However, don’t play this in a public place, for obvious reasons.

One player, the listener, puts on the blindfold and the other player, the commander, decides on a place for the listener to go.

The commander must give clear, simple instructions to get the listener from point to point. This may include number of steps, angle and direction of turns and even movements to open and close doors.

The commander is not allowed to touch the listener to direct her, nor is he allowed to intentionally direct her into any walls, however funny that is.

IMPORTANT

• Don’t even attempt to lead the listener down any stairs. Going up stairs is possible but difficult, but never ever go down.

• Don’t direct the listener near anything that could hurt them.

• If you’re wearing the blindfold, never take risks.

LEVEL-UP

• Once you’ve become a blindfold game expert, how about stacking up the instructions? The commander could give three or more instructions at a time, for example, ‘Take three steps forward, then turn left, then reach forward and grab the handle.’ After this, the listener must carry out the instructions while the commander must not intervene (unless the listener is putting themselves in danger). The added challenge here is that the commander can’t keep making small adjustments, hence small mistakes from the listener may lead them way off course.

33. Squiggle Challenge

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

1+

Easy

10 mins

TAGS:
CREATIVE,
WIND-DOWN,
ARTY

IN SHORT: Idle drawing game with hilarious consequences.

YOU WILL NEED

• Paper and colouring pencils.

HOW TO PLAY

This is kind of a one-player game, but you really need somebody to set it up for you. If there are two of you, why not set each other squiggles at the same time?

Have somebody draw you a squiggle on a piece of paper. It can be any shape or size, but keep it simple. Too much detail at this point can make the game very hard!

Now look at your squiggle from every angle and decide what it could be. When you’re ready, go ahead and continue the drawing. The weirder the better!

TIP

• Avoid faces. Any squiggle could become a face. Start by asking yourself, ‘What else in the world has this shape?’ Then just go for it.

LEVEL-UP

• If you have access to a scanner or photocopier, why not copy the same squiggle and give everybody the same one? It will be fascinating to see how different each person’s drawing ends up.

34. Fortunately/Unfortunately

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2

Easy

10 mins per round

TAGS:
VOCABULARY,
AROUND THE
HOUSE, SILLY

IN SHORT: Storytelling game where two players battle it out to make things great/terrible for the main character.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

I’ve said that this works for two players, but it’s easy to adapt for more. It’s certainly worth a go, however many people are sitting around.

One player starts with an opening sentence of a story. It could be anything, but if you’re stuck, why not use one of the 100 crackers here?

Then, the next player adds the second sentence of the story, but begins his sentence with ‘Unfortunately’. In other words, he’s going to make things bad for the main character.

However, now the first player steps in with her sentence, which must begin with ‘Fortunately’. She’s going to improve things for the main character . . . until the other player begins the next sentence with ‘Unfortunately’.

This carries on until one player runs out of ideas, or both get bored. It makes some amazingly dramatic stories.

EXAMPLE

Player 1: ‘Timmy lived by the sea, and wanted to be an explorer.’

Player 2: ‘Unfortunately, he didn’t have a boat.’

Player 1: ‘Fortunately, he saw a competition in the local paper, where the prize was a boat!’

Player 2: ‘Unfortunately, he had missed the entry deadline.’

Player 1: ‘Fortunately, so had everybody else, so his entry won the competition!’

Player 2: ‘Unfortunately, his prize was a tiny toy boat.’

Player 1: ‘Fortunately, Timmy was also tiny, so it was the perfect size.’

Etc.

TIP

• It can be difficult to balance making things good/bad for your character without just ruining the story. ‘Unfortunately, Timmy drowned.’ would not be a good move. Try: ‘Unfortunately, a giant wave knocked Timmy from his boat.’ In the second case, at least Timmy (and therefore the other player) has a chance. Remember, you’re telling a story, not playing chess. You don’t necessarily want to ruin your opponent’s chance to save things.

LEVEL-UP

• As I say, it’s possible to include more players. If there are an odd number of players, you will find that each time it’s your turn, you have to be first kind, then mean, then kind to your character. It’s a very different game this way!

35. Control the Robot

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2

Easy

30 mins

TAGS:
COLLABORATIVE,
ACTIVE, AROUND
THE HOUSE

IN SHORT: A daft movement game that practises giving clear instructions.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

This game is great when two of you are bored at home, and practises giving instructions that deal with movement.

One player is the robot, and the other is its creator. The robot must follow every instruction given by its creator.

The creator should decide on a simple task that he wants the robot to complete. It could be making a sandwich, brushing her teeth, feeding the cat, or any other number of random chores.

The creator then begins giving simple, clear instructions. It is the robot’s job to take the instructions completely literally. If told to ‘walk forward’, the robot should walk until she hits a wall and carry on walking. If told to ‘turn left’, the robot should continually turn left in a circle until told to stop.

If told to do anything complicated (e.g. ‘Go upstairs’) the robot should turn to the creator and announce in her robotic voice, ‘Bleep, bloop, does not compute.’ She’ll need much clearer and simpler instructions than that: something like, ‘Lift your left leg and place it on the stair in front,’ etc.

(In a somewhat legendary round of this game at school – where I was the teacher, but in this case, also the robot – a few unclear instructions led to a piece of jammy bread being stuck on the classroom ceiling. Don’t make my mistakes, folks.)

After the task is completed, swap roles and try a new task.

TIPS

• If you’re the robot, and feel like you aren’t getting precise enough instructions, don’t break character to complain about it. Instead, say something like, ‘Bleep bloop, further data required,’ or, ‘Query: direction of walking unclear. Awaiting input.’ They’ll get the idea soon enough.

• Similarly, if you’re the creator and the robot doesn’t seem to be following instructions, or is getting things wrong on purpose, make a big performance of tutting, complaining about malfunctions, then turning the robot off and on again. If that doesn’t work, unplug him at the wall and phone the manufacturer.

• If the robot feels uncomfortable at any point, stop the game and talk about it. At no point should the robot feel forced to do anything.

• Likewise, the creator should never direct the robot towards situations that might be dangerous, and the robot should not agree to go towards anything dangerous. Just use your (human) brain!

36. Boxes

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2

Easy

20 mins

TAGS:
STRATEGY,
PASS THE TIME,
WIND-DOWN,
MATHS

IN SHORT: Add a line to a grid, trying to complete boxes while stopping your opponent from doing the same.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Squared paper, or normal paper (it will be a tiny bit harder to draw the dots, but not by much).

• Pencil or pen (two different colours is fun but not necessary).

HOW TO PLAY

Start by drawing a 5 by 5 (for a quick game) or 10 by 10 (for a longer game) grid of dots on your paper. Make sure to space them out evenly, and make sure that they’re in line with each other. If you have squared paper then it’s easy: draw a dot every time the lines cross. If you have lined or blank paper, just try to make it as neat as possible. Your complete grid should look like this:

Now the game begins. Take it in turns to join two adjacent dots with a horizontal or vertical line. No diagonals allowed.

The aim of the game is to be the person to draw the fourth line around a box, which would complete it. But obviously, since you’re taking it in turns, if you leave a box with three lines complete, your opponent can finish it. So be careful! Unless you want to take a risk, make sure that no box has more than two complete lines around it.

Eventually, though, it will become impossible to add another line without giving your opponent the chance to complete a box. In this example, Player B has run out of options, and has been forced to put a third line around a box at the bottom of the grid:

Player A can now draw the final line to complete that box, write the initial of his name inside, and then he gets to move again immediately. Because of this, it’s possible to have a string of turns when all your opponent can do is watch as you complete a chain of boxes. Player A will be able to complete the box above it, too. Anticipating this, and trying to avoid giving your opponent a glut of boxes, is part of the game.

In this example, B gave A two boxes, but A added a line that let B take eight boxes in one turn. Soon you’ll learn to see chain reactions like this before they happen. Once the entire grid is complete, add up your boxes and see who has more. They win the round!

37. Dice Football

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2

Medium

15 mins per match

TAGS:
COMPETITIVE,
MATHS

IN SHORT: Take on your partner in an exciting football simulation game.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• A piece of paper to draw your pitch.

• A coin or counter to represent the ball.

• Two dice (but one will do).

HOW TO PLAY

Table-top gaming is a fantastic way to pass the time. I’ve become fascinated by the use of dice to simulate fantasy worlds and epic battles or, in this case, a football match. This version of dice football is simple to pick up and diverting enough to keep you playing for ages. The huge dose of luck makes for exciting games.

Here is a simple diagram of the pitch that you’ll want to draw on your piece of paper. Notice the six segments of the pitch (three on each side of the centre circle, including the penalty area). Leave space for somewhere to write the score and the match clock tally (currently ‘0’).

Place the paper lengthwise between yourself and your opponent. You will each be defending your own ‘end’ nearest to you and aiming forward. To begin the game, both players roll a die, and the player with the higher score places the ball in their version of segment C. Notice that for each player, segment C is in a different place, as the segments go in opposite orders depending on which direction you are heading. If the rolls are level, roll again. Play then begins.

To score a goal, you’ll have to get the ball, progress through to segment F, and score in the goal.

When in control of the ball, the player must roll a die to see what happens next. Here’s what happens when the ball is in each segment.

Segments A to E:

First, the player without the ball rolls their die to defend. Then, the player with the ball rolls to beat that score.

• If the player with the ball wins by 2 or more: Long pass. (Move forward two segments, or one if you are already in segment E.) The player keeps possession.

• If the player with the ball wins by 1: Short pass. (Move forward one segment.) The player keeps possession.

• If both players get the same score: Add up the scores of the two dice and add it to the match clock tally at the top of your page. So if you both roll a 5, add ten minutes to the match clock tally. The player keeps possession.

• If the player with the ball loses by 1: Back pass. (Move back one segment, if you can.) However, the player keeps possession.

• If the player with the ball loses by 2 or more: Tackle. (Ball stays where it is, but your opponent gains possession.)

Segment F (Penalty Area):

This one is a little different. The player with the ball should call out a number between 1 and 6, then roll. The defender can’t do anything now!

• If the number they roll is the same as the number they called: Goal! (Add 1 to your score and your opponent gains possession, and kicks off in their version of segment C.)

• If the number they roll is 1 away from the number they called: Rebound! (Roll again.)

• Otherwise: Saved! (Your opponent gains possession in their own segment A.)

The player with the ball advances and advances until they lose possession of the ball in one of the ways described above. As soon as this happens, the game changes direction. Make sure you are using the letters on your side, not your opponent’s.

The match clock ticks on as you roll doubles (see above). When it hits 90 minutes, the game is over. If it’s a draw, why not play ‘Next Goal Wins’ to decide it?

LEVEL-UP

• You could definitely make this game more complicated, if that’s your thing. You could rewrite the scores to include fouls, corners, free kicks and penalties. If you create a set of rules that works really well, tell me! I’m always keen to hear new rules.

• I’m a big fan of league tables. If there are lots of you involved, make a quick round robin tournament where everyone plays everyone. Three points for a win, one for a draw and nothing for a loss. The two highest points scorers could have a final playoff at the end, to decide the ultimate Dice Football champ.

38. Switch!

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2

Medium

15 mins

TAGS:
STORYTELLING,
COLLABORATIVE,
SILLY

IN SHORT: Storytelling game with a big twist.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

One player, the storyteller, begins to tell the listener a story. For this, you could begin with a fairy tale that you both know, or the plot of a book or film that you have both seen.

Some stories you could use:

• Goldilocks and the Three Bears

• Rapunzel

• Snow White and the Seven Dwarves

• Hansel and Gretel

• The Three Billy Goats Gruff

• Cinderella

• The Gingerbread Man

At any point, the listener can yell, ‘SWITCH!’ and, whatever the storyteller is currently saying, she must change it to the absolute opposite and continue the story in this new direction.

The storyteller can choose to end the story whenever she likes, but it’s likely that it won’t end up as she’d imagined. This improvisation and going with the flow is what makes the game great. Don’t struggle against it!

EXAMPLE

Storyteller: ‘Once upon a time, a young girl called Goldilocks was walking in the forest. She came across a little wooden house and knocked on the door, but nobody was in.’

Listener: ‘SWITCH!’

Storyteller: ‘But somebody was in! Daddy Bear opened the door and smiled at Goldilocks. “We’re having porridge,” he said.’

Listener: ‘SWITCH!’

Storyteller: ‘“We’re not having porridge; we’re eating a human. Would you like some?” “Oh, no thank you!” cried Goldilocks.’

Listener: ‘SWITCH!’

Storyteller: ‘“I’d love some!” replied Goldilocks.’

Etc.

TIPS

• You don’t have to say ‘SWITCH!’ all the time. Let the storyteller tell the story for a while before picking your moment. You could even limit yourself to three switches per game.

• When I’ve played this game, I’ve come across some players being tempted to ‘work around’ the switches and try their hardest to tell the usual story with just a few bumps in the road. So for example, if the storyteller is forced to say that the bears were already in the house, try not to fix it by going on to say ‘but then the bears went out, leaving the house empty.’ This game is about seeing how the stories can change, not how good you are at keeping them the same.

• You don’t have to use the absolute opposite. The true opposite of porridge is . . . not porridge? The storyteller chose a human because it felt very different from porridge. Have a little freedom with this one.

39. Hangman Mastermind

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2

Hard

15 mins per word

TAGS:
SPELLING,
STRATEGY,
VOCABULARY,
COMPETITIVE

IN SHORT: Somewhere between Mastermind (the code-cracking board game, not the quiz show) and Hangman. Easy to play, hard to master.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Pencil and paper (or mini whiteboard and pens).

HOW TO PLAY

This is one of my favourite word games in existence. One player, the judge, picks a four-letter word (no names or abbreviations) and keeps it a secret. The only limitation is that the word cannot have any repeated letters at all (so ‘kind’ is fine, ‘book’ and ‘none’ are not).

The guesser then must write their first four-letter-word guess on the whiteboard. The first player awards them a score: 1 point for every letter that they guessed correctly. The order of the letters is completely ignored; you only get marks based on the letters used.

Using this knowledge, the guesser has another guess, and so on, until they find the word. The aim is to find the word with the least possible guesses.

EXAMPLE

The judge has chosen the word ‘LATE’.

Guesser’s guess | Points awarded by the judge
PLUM | 1
PLAN | 2
PAIN | 1
LAST | 3
TALE | 4
LATE | WIN!

TIPS

• It really helps if the guesser keeps an alphabet nearby. Cross off any letters you’re sure are not right, circle any letters you know are in the word, and write down any further information you’ve worked out.

• If you receive 0 points on a guess, that’s great! Now you know four letters that cannot be in the word.

• Until you are an expert, try changing one letter at a time. If your score changes, you know exactly which letter made the difference.

• Remember, 4 points does not mean you’ve won! You may have all the letters, but not in the right order.

BOSS LEVEL

• When you’re ready, move on to five-letter words. That’s a whole new game, and is just as much fun, if not more so!

40. Lego Challenge

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2

Hard

1 hour (at least)

TAGS:
VOCABULARY,
COLLABORATIVE,
WIND-DOWN

IN SHORT: Instruction and communication game that transforms a well-known toy.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• A small set of building blocks with instructions. (Lego is one of many types that you could choose.)

HOW TO PLAY

I was taught this game as a teacher under the aspirational name of ‘Lego Therapy’. It’s an amazing program that builds communication and social skills for children who struggle with that sort of thing. However, I truly feel that a similar, if simplified, game is a great challenge for anybody. It’s also addictive and fun, and a brand new way of doing Lego!

One player, the instructor, holds the instructions, but may not touch or point to the blocks. Meanwhile, the other player, the builder, may touch and build with the blocks, but not look at the instructions.

Together, they must build the model. The instructor will have to work out how to specify exactly which block to find from the set, and then how to add it to the model. It’s really difficult, but any sort of pointing or demonstrating is completely banned. Use colour, shape, size, location, and then prepositions such as ‘under’, ‘above’ and ‘beside’ to be really specific about where each piece goes.

The builder will have to listen really carefully, and prepare to be wrong many, many times! Both players will need to be patient.

It’s worth trying this game at least twice, so you can play both roles. There are challenges for each.

TIPS

• One important bit of admin between instructor and builder will be what to call each type of brick. You could go mathematical (‘two rows of five blobs, thin yellow rectangle’), freestyle (‘a kinda squat, flat banana piece’) or relational (‘same as you used for the propeller, but yellow’). Develop your own style and stick with it. Develop a shared language. Whatever you do, don’t operate your builder like a fairground crane game. (‘Left arm towards you, down a bit, up a bit, grab that piece. No, the other one.’) This is not the way to play.

• If you’re the instructor, you’re going to be really tempted to intervene, but don’t. Sit on your hands and think about how you can be more specific. If the builder isn’t getting it, it’s more likely that you’re not being clear enough than that they aren’t listening properly.

LEVEL-UP

• If there are three of you, how about having one person as an instructor, one seeker who finds the pieces and one as the builder. Make sure to rotate the roles nice and often.

CHAPTER 5

PARTY TIME

Parties. They’re supposed to be fun – and they are, when you’re not in charge. When it’s your house, or when you’ve hired the hall, it’s an absolute nightmare. Who’s eaten all the cocktail sausages? Who keeps leaving wine glasses in perilous positions hanging over the new carpet? Who fed the dog a double gin and tonic? Which party animal switched the music playlist from Blues to Bashment?

Whether it’s a party for kids or adults, hosting one is a bit like herding cats. If anything, a party will leave you more scratched and covered in hair than cat-herding, and you still won’t have herded any of those cats. So what’s the solution? How do you make a party an enjoyable experience?

This chapter holds the answer. It’s chock-full of party games to play with any excitable group. You’ve got all-ages games, silly circle games and psychological setups that’ll have you suspecting everyone. They’re all engaging and exciting enough to feel like a real highlight of your party.

Read through this chapter before a party, not during. Select one that will suit the people present, and make sure you know the rules so that you can explain them nice and simply to your assembled guests. This is especially true for Mafia, an absolutely incredible game that does require the host to know the rules pretty well before you start. It’s worth it, though!

41. Clap Clap SQUAWK

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

As many as possible, really

Easy

10 mins

TAGS:
MEMORY, SILLY,
CIRCLE GAMES,
RHYTHM

IN SHORT: Tap into your spirit animals with this rowdy variation of a naming game.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

This game works best with more people: four is fine but it won’t be as much fun as with nine-plus.

First of all, every player should pick an animal, and an action that is associated with that animal. Once you’ve all picked, share it with the group. Make your action really recognisable. A cat licking its paw, an eagle beating its wings or a squid squirting ink might be good examples. The whole group should have a go at each other’s noises/actions too, to get used to them.

To begin the game, the group gets a good, slow tapping rhythm going. Pat your lap or gently clap, trying not to speed up (yet). The rhythm should be the same as the introduction to ‘We Will Rock You’, but much slower.

Clap – Clap – TAP. Clap – Clap – TAP.

One player starts, on a TAP, by doing the action of one of the other players. Perhaps another player chose a lion’s roar, so the first player does this action, effectively passing the game over to the lion. Now it is the lion’s turn to instantly pick someone else’s action. On the next TAP, the lion does the kangaroo’s action, which is bouncy and probably involves boxing. Next, the kangaroo does an elephant squirting water from its trunk, which passes the game to the elephant, etc.

If any player misses their turn, or fails to do the action of somebody who’s still in the game, then they are eliminated.

One by one, the players drop out, until two remain. You could leave it here, proclaiming the two last players joint champions, or have them duke it out in the final round. Unfortunately, the final round is pretty easy, because you only need to remember one animal impression. One way to solve this is to gently speed up as you play, which often leads to some very silly things occurring.

This game is best when played multiple times, because in the second game you’ve all got to pick fresh animals. NO REPEATS! Not only do your impressions get stranger, but also you’ve still got a whole zoo full of animals squawking about in your head that you might accidentally select when it’s your turn. Do you have a good enough selective memory to forget each player’s previous animal impression, and remember the new one?

TIPS

• Make your animal actions simple and full of movement. An impression of a bunny twitching her little nose, no matter how adorable, looks much like somebody working back a sneeze. You could do an impression of a bunny leaping over a tuft of grass instead. The more creative, the better.

• If you’re playing this in public, be aware of others. You have a responsibility to not annoy them, even if your animal impressions are really, really good.

42. Zip Bong

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

6–15

Easy

10 mins per round

TAGS:
COMPETITIVE,
RHYTHM,
MEMORY, CIRCLE
GAMES

IN SHORT: A game full of silly noises and thinking under pressure.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

Sit in a circle with your hands together, as if in prayer. Make sure that your lips cover your teeth, so that no white is showing. This may sound strange, but it’s vitally important!

One player (let’s say the youngest) points their hands towards the person to their left and says, ‘Zip.’

The person to the first player’s left then does the same, saying, ‘Zip.’

The ‘Zip’ passes clockwise around the circle, each player moving their hands and saying their ‘Zip’, all without showing their teeth.

At any point, a player may pass the sound back to their right, moving their hand in that direction and saying, ‘Bong.’ The ‘Bong’ sound then travels anti-clockwise for a while, until somebody changes it back to ‘Zip’ and it goes clockwise again.

So, whenever you pass to your left, it’s ‘Zip’. Whenever you pass to your right, it’s ‘Bong’.

The game is all about following the rules. You are eliminated if:

• You pass the sound left, but say ‘Bong’.

• You pass the sound right, but say ‘Zip’.

• You make any noise at all when it isn’t your turn.

• You make no noise when it is your turn.

• You show your teeth.

The last rule is the odd one out. It’s there because it’s really hard to say ‘Zip’ with your lips over your teeth, which makes people laugh, which makes them show their teeth, which makes them get eliminated.

Each time someone is eliminated, the person whose turn it would have been after that, takes their turn.

When it’s down to two, the players stand face to face and still pass the noise left or right, not directly forward. Every other player should watch that they are making the right noises with the right movements, as the players get faster and faster. At this stage, what’ll probably win or lose it is laughing, though.

The game ends when only one person remains. They are the Zip Bong champion!

. . . Until the next round.

TIP

• Watch the ‘zzz’ of zip! It’s easy to show your teeth, but there are ways around it.

LEVEL-UP

• Another way to play this is that ‘Zip’ continues the previous direction and ‘Bong’ changes direction, but after that it’s back to ‘Zip’ again, even if travelling anti-clockwise. Make sure everybody knows which you’re doing before you start, though! We don’t want to cause a bongument.

43. Bang!

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

8–30

Easy

15 mins

TAGS:
COMPETITIVE,
ACTIVE, CIRCLE
GAMES

IN SHORT: Nonverbal circle game based on reaction times and quick thinking.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

Stand in a circle and clasp your hands together with the index and middle fingers facing forward, so that you’ve got a finger gun. It’s loaded, so be careful.

One player begins by pointing clearly at another in the circle and shooting, by shouting, ‘BANG!’

The target must instantly duck to avoid the bullet, while the two players on either side of the target must turn towards each other and shoot their finger guns, shouting, ‘BANG!’

Essentially, three things can happen:

1. The target of the original ‘BANG’ doesn’t react in time, and either of the players on either side shoot him before he ducks down. The original target has been shot, and is eliminated.

2. The target of the first ‘BANG’ ducks in time to avoid the bullet, and the players on either side shoot. The last of those two players to say, ‘BANG!’ has been shot, and is eliminated. If it’s a dead draw (pardon the pun) and the two guns are shot at exactly the same time, then the original shooter gets another shot at a new target.

3. One of the players says the wrong thing, or jumps instead of ducks, or turns the wrong way, or forgets to do anything at all because he’s thinking about lizards. This player has been shot, and is eliminated.

When you have been eliminated, you must sit down and enjoy the rest of the game.

Now, the successful shooter (the one whose shot eliminated the last player) gets to choose a new target and shoot. The game continues.

It becomes interesting at this point for those still standing, because the players next to them will gradually change, so they need to react in new ways when people get shot. When it is your turn and you get to choose who to shoot, you may not shoot the person next to you. When there are only three players left, you will find that you have to, so at this point it’s fine! This rule helps to avoid people cheating by shooting the person next to them and then instantly ‘reacting’ by shooting again to win the round. If this doesn’t make sense, try it and see.

It’s particularly complicated when you get down to three players, because whoever gets shot, everyone has to do something. When you get down to two players, however, you’ll have to do something new:

Duel

The two remaining players stand back to back with their finger guns raised. One player who has already been eliminated slowly lists the names of fruit, and for every fruit, the two duellists take one step away from each other. When the player says the name of a vegetable, the two duellists turn and shoot. First to say, ‘BANG!’ is the winner!

TIPS

• It’s quite useful to have an arbiter in this game: somebody who gets the final decision on who shot first. They could still play, unless that might make them biased.

• Have a couple of trial shots first, with no eliminations, so that everyone can get used to the rules.

• If you’re shooting, it’s really crucial that you’re clear about who you’re shooting. Point with both arms, lock eyes with your target, and act it properly. If the person next to your target thinks they’re being shot, too, it goes a bit wrong!

44. Co-Op Musical Islands

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

5–15

Easy

10 mins

TAGS:
COLLABORATIVE,
ACTIVE, MUSIC

IN SHORT: Much better than the original because you work together. This game works perfectly for any party, not just children’s parties!

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• An old newspaper, staples carefully removed (that’s important!), then pulled apart into the big pages.

• A Hi-Fi or set of speakers to play your music.

HOW TO PLAY

Just like pass the parcel, musical chairs or any other of these sorts of game, you’ll want everybody standing up, with shoes and socks off, in a big space with nothing sharp around. The person playing and stopping the music might need a helper to remove islands, so aim to have at least two people to run the game.

The best thing about this game is that you have to work together to stay dry against the encroaching oceans, and so the frantic rush to get onto an island is a team effort, not a vicious, competitive one. Good team-building opportunities, here.

Start by placing enough pieces of newspaper on the floor so that everyone will get their own island. Now play the music, and let everybody ‘swim’ about the room. Swimming motions and general aquatic moves are encouraged, but not compulsory if you can’t swim.

When the music stops, the sharks arrive. You could shout, ‘QUICK! SHARKS!’ as you stop the music. Everybody has about three seconds to ‘get to an island’, which means standing on a piece of newspaper. Depending on the age and size of the group, you can give more or less time here, but the players need to get entirely clear of the ‘water’ (the floor). If any part of them or their clothes is touching the carpet, they are gobbled up by sharks and eliminated.

Escaping the water is easy at first, but each time you start the music and everybody goes for a swim, the helpers should come and remove one of the pieces of newspaper. Then, when the music stops again, rather than players competing to be first to get to the newspaper, they will have to work together to share the shrinking islands. The aim of the game is to save everyone.

Once you get down to the nitty gritty, and there are maybe four players for each sheet of newspaper, you could begin to remove little ribbons of paper from some of the pieces so that each one is a little smaller. Or, you could just go down to one piece, but with a team of fifteen swimmers this may be quite hard! At some point, people will begin to fall off into the sea. The winner, if you need one, would be the last person who hasn’t been eaten by sharks, but the game must continue until absolutely everyone has been eliminated. It’s funny to see the last person balancing a toe on a square centimetre of newspaper as the sharks surround them!

LEVEL-UP

• If you want to make this game truly collaborative, then agree that the round ends as soon as the first person is eaten by sharks. That way, you must work together to save everyone for as long as possible, whether that means piggy-backs, crushed toes or intense hugs.

45. Squashed Sardines

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

4–12

Easy

15 mins

TAGS:
COLLABORATIVE,
ACTIVE, AROUND
THE HOUSE

IN SHORT: Hide-and-Seek to begin with, then a strange sort of Blitz-spirit shared hiding exercise. Great fun!

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• A flat, house or outdoor area in which to hide.

HOW TO PLAY

We all know how to play Hide-and-Seek. Everyone hides, one person seeks; if you get found you become the seeker too until everyone’s been found. The annoying thing about that game is that if you’re really good at hiding, then the game might last forever. Once, at primary school, I eventually emerged from behind the bins to find that my classmates had given up looking for me and started playing something else. One of the worst days of my life.

Well, Squashed Sardines suffers from none of the criticisms I could level at Hide-and-Seek.

One player is the hider. She gets as long as she needs (let’s say three minutes) to find a good place to hide. Then, everybody else begins as the seeker. They must split up as well as they can for this game to work, so no teams of seekers. Why not have people setting off from the main room in intervals of 30 seconds?

But this is where the game is brilliant. If you find the hider, you join them. It will get harder and harder for you all to hide in whatever the chosen hiding place is, but that’s the fun of it. As you cram together in the shower, try to stay silent and make sure nobody turns it on! Once you’re all together again (which won’t take long once the bodies pile up), set a new hider and begin the next round.

TIPS

• Before you start, count how many people are playing. You don’t want to all be hiding under a duvet for hours before realising that nobody else is looking for you and essentially you’ve gone for a collective nap.

• If the house you’re playing in is too small, think where else this game could be played. The local park or other outdoor spaces might be fun, as long as you all know the game boundaries.

46. Who’s the Leader?

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

5–20

Easy

5 mins per round

TAGS:
COLLABORATIVE,
ACTIVE, CIRCLE
GAMES

IN SHORT: Simple movement game where one player must figure out who is leading the actions.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

Sit or stand in a circle. It works with either, but your choice depends on how active you plan on being!

One player leaves the room, while the others decide who will be the leader. This will change every round, so it doesn’t matter who starts.

When the player returns, everyone else begins doing a repeated movement, such as patting their thighs or clicking their fingers. Every so often, maybe every ten seconds, the leader changes the movement, and all the other players have to change their movement as soon as they realise. At first, the changes in movement could be subtle and small, such as going from rubbing your arm to patting your arm, to patting your shoulder.

The guesser can enter the circle or stay on the outside, moving about as much as she needs, but her goal is to work out who is the leader. She could look for eye contact, or for who seems to change their movements first. For this reason, all the players should stay aware of the leader’s changes in movements as much as possible.

Once the guesser thinks she knows, she loudly announces the name of the leader. If she’s right, she rejoins the circle and somebody else leaves the room for a new round. If she’s wrong, the leader should start to make his changes of movements a bit more obvious. For example, if the guesser has guessed wrong three times, the leader might go straight from rubbing his tummy to clapping his hands. The sudden change and the new noise might give a good clue.

TIPS

• If you’re the leader, try to vary up the types of movements you do as much as possible. Think how each part of your body could make a unique repeated motion. There’s twisting, bending, stretching, flicking and wiggling, and that’s just the tip of the hokey-cokey iceberg. Whatever changes you make, just try to make them when the guesser isn’t looking.

• This may seem obvious, but if everyone just spends the game watching the leader to see when they change their movement, it’s pretty easy for the guesser to follow their eyes. You need to be hiding who you’re watching so that you don’t give the game away.

47. Chappy Tomato

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

5–15

Medium

20 mins

TAGS:
COMPETITIVE,
MEMORY, CIRCLE
GAMES

IN SHORT: Everybody chooses a silly name, then they must guess who’s who while hoping that their own name isn’t discovered.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Scraps of paper, equal-sized.

• Pens and paper for each player.

HOW TO PLAY

Sit in a circle, and agree on one player to be the announcer. This will change each round.

The Setup

The announcer hands out slips of paper, and every other player must make up a silly name. What you write on the paper is entirely up to you, but it needs to be readable and possible to memorise. So, for example, ‘Sniffy Richard’ or ‘Nelson Trout-Shoes’ is fine, but ‘Mxctflsd’ is impossible to read out loud, and ‘Adrian Philip “Harrods” McCartney the Fifteenth of French Polynesia’ is too long to remember. (Great name, though, if you’re called that.) The announcer should not write a name, and should not compete in this round.

Once you’ve written your secret name, hand it to the announcer. The announcer checks to make sure they can all be read aloud. If not, it’s not too late to ask the player to make another name!

When every player has given a name to the announcer, she shuffles them and then slowly reads out the names TWICE, making sure that nobody can see the slips of paper, in case they recognise handwriting. These are the only two times the players will officially hear the names, so listen carefully!

If the announcer reads your name wrong, you must accept that your name is the one that the announcer reads. It’s probably your fault for having such terrible handwriting anyway.

The Main Game

The player on the announcer’s left, Player 1, gets to ask the first question. She picks another player in the circle (not the announcer, though) and asks, ‘Player 2, are you _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _?’

Player 2 must now respond. If Player 1 was correct, Player 2 must say, ‘Yes.’ She is now is OUT and Player 1 gets another go. However, if Player 1 was wrong, or if he was right but said the name significantly wrong, then Player 2 says, ‘No,’ and now it’s Player 2’s turn to guess. (Her name is ‘Sniffy Richard’. So ‘Snotty Richard’ or ‘Sniffing Richard’ would be wrong. A mild pronunciation error is probably counted as correct.)

The last remaining unnamed player is the winner. She can jubilantly reveal her secret name to the group, and then becomes the announcer for the next round.

TIPS

• Often, as you approach the end, there are one or two names that everybody has forgotten. If this is your name, try to keep it secret for as long as possible. You could even guess a similar name, but wrong, to change people’s memories of the real name. However, in some circles this is counted as cheating, or at least bad sportsmanship, so that’s down to you.

• The hardest part of this game is memorising the names. I use a simple form of memory palace, which is where you take a familiar journey (for me, it’s walking through my parents’ house) and mentally put the items you need to remember on that journey, interacting with each other.

48. Locked Box

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Medium

15 mins per round

TAGS:
STRATEGY,
SPELLINGS,
GUESSING, CIRCLE
GAMES

IN SHORT: A guessing game where players must work out the rule for what fits in the box.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

There is a locked box on one player’s lap. Only she can look inside: for everybody else, the box is completely invisible!

Inside this box are all sorts of things, but they all follow one rule. The box-holder must decide one rule before the beginning of the round. For example, the items in the box could all:

• Have a meaningful link (all nature, all food, all one colour, all made of metal, etc.).

• Begin with a particular letter.

• Be a word of a particular length.

• Rhyme with each other.

• Contain a double letter.

• Be said in a particular way (say ‘umm’ beforehand or shrug as you say it, etc.).

• Be small enough to actually fit in the box.

• Not be in this room.

• Be worth £1,000 or more.

As you can see, the box-holder’s rule could be anything. Be creative and make sure it isn’t always about the meaning of the words. Think about the spelling, the sound and everything else.

The box-holder begins by looking in the box and naming one thing that is inside. The other players now each get a chance to suggest another item that could be put in the box. If their word passes the rule, even if they don’t know the rule, the box-holder says, ‘Yes!’ and takes the item. If their suggestion does not fit, the box-holder says, ‘No.’

Once every player has had a turn, the box-holder looks inside the box and names another thing inside. Other players should try to remember as many things that do fit inside the box as possible, in order to work out the rule.

The fun part about this game is that once other players know the rule, they don’t reveal it. They just keep on guessing, following the rule so that every item they guess will fit inside the box! This, in turn, will make it easier for the others as they get more examples of things that fit.

Once everybody seems to know the rule and is getting every guess right, you can either discuss the rule, or just move on to the next round. Make sure everybody gets a chance to hold the box and make up a rule.

TIPS

• There really is no limit to the rules that you could decide. Try things that relate to each player’s own name, for example. You could make rules about how you’re sitting, or how you move. At first, though, start simple.

• Try to never use the same rule twice. People will guess it really quickly!

49. Mafia

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

6–20

Medium

30 mins

TAGS:
COMPETITIVE,
CONVERSATION,
CIRCLE GAMES,
STRATEGY

IN SHORT: Root out the secret gangsters before they ‘kill’ you in the night.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

This game is absolutely brilliant. It will need a large-ish group of players sitting around in a circle, so if you think you can organise that at a party, then do! It’s probably not right for kids’ parties, although I have regularly used this game with a full class of ten- and eleven-year-olds (and let me tell you, thirty players works but I don’t recommend it).

You will need one player to be the host. They’ll need to be pretty familiar with the rules, and confident enough to boss around a group for an extended period of time. (Whenever I play this game, I love being the host. It’s such fun.)

It works like this. The host tells the assembled villagers that there are two Mafiosi in their midst. The aim of the game is to root them out, and banish them from the village. Meanwhile, the aim of the Mafiosi is to ‘kill’ all of the villagers, so that only they remain.

So, the first thing to happen is that everybody ‘goes to sleep’ by closing and covering their eyes. Heads in laps is a good way to make sure nobody peeks. The host walks around the room, tapping two players on their shoulder. These are the two Mafiosi for this round. As quietly as possible, the Mafiosi must look up, identify each other, and go back to sleep. For the duration of the game, they must try to keep their identities secret by pretending to be villagers.

From now until the end of the game, we rotate between two periods:

Day

Every day, the assembled villagers (and Mafiosi, who are pretending to be villagers) must try to work out who amongst them are the Mafiosi. The host could prompt them with questions, or let the conversation naturally flow. Here are some open questions you could use to prompt conversation:

• Who in this circle can you definitely trust?

• Who would have wanted to kill x (the last eliminated player)?

• How do we know that you’re a villager?

• Who do you think is a Mafioso?

It’s quite good to follow accusations around the room. So, if Villager 1 accuses Villager 2, let Villager 1 explain why, and then give Villager 2 a chance to answer. Then ask her who she suspects, and so on.

After 3–5 minutes, the sun sets and it’s time to banish someone. Everybody still alive, even the secret Mafiosi, votes for the person they think is a Mafioso, and the person with the most votes is banished. Before they leave the village to become a silent audience member, they must announce to the rest of the group whether they were a villager or a Mafioso.

Night

Immediately, everybody closes and covers their eyes, and once the host is sure nobody’s peeking, the remaining Mafiosi uncover their eyes and decide, silently, who they’ll kill. Once they’ve made their target clear to the host, they go back to sleep, and the host announces that it’s dawn, and wakes everybody up. The host then reveals, with much drama, who has been murdered. That person is now a silent audience member. I like to go into gory details at this point, making up some horrible means of murder. This is optional.

The day begins again, but with fewer villagers. Just like yesterday, you spend the day discussing who to banish. As the number of players decreases, things get tense and often rather exciting.

Ending the Game

The game can end in two ways:

• At the end of any day, if the villagers manage to vote out and banish the final Mafioso, they win. There should be much high-fiving and some sort of celebratory dance.

• At the beginning of a day, if the remaining Mafiosi have murdered enough people that only one villager remains, then at this point the remaining villager will immediately know who the Mafiosi are (I won’t explain this, but just think about it). The game is essentially over. If there are two Mafiosi and one villager, then they have won. If there is one Mafioso and one villager, you could have a duel (see the section named ‘Duel’ in the game ‘Bang!’ here for more info on that).

LEVEL-UP

• Once you get familiar with this game, there are various modifications you can add. It can get more and more complicated, but the new additions keep this game fresh for years. Why not try:

1. DETECTIVE: A villager who the host identifies as definitely innocent. She cannot be banished, but can still be murdered.

2. MAYOR: A villager who gets to banish an extra person at the end of every day. (You could even vote for a mayor at the beginning, but be careful of doing this. What if a Mafioso gets elected?)

3. DOCTOR: A villager who may name one player per night who is protected from the Mafiosi’s murdering grasp.

4. DUEL: At any time, a player can challenge another to a duel. If the other player accepts, then follow the rules of a duel inside the game ‘Bang!’ (see here). Last to say ‘Bang!’ is dead, and their dying words will be to reveal if they were Mafioso or villager, before becoming a silent audience member.

• With different numbers of players, you can adapt the number of Mafiosi. With four villagers, having just one Mafioso can work. With thirty villagers, you might want three Mafiosi.

• In a similar vein, with more villagers, how about having more murders per night? I’ve got to a stage where each Mafioso gets to kill one person each night, just to speed things along.

TIPS

• One thing to be aware of is that it’s very easy to cheat. If a player keeps his eyes secretly open at night, he’ll see exactly who the Mafiosi are. So, the host should make it clear that cheaters on either side will be eliminated without warning, and keep a good watch on people who seem to have too much insight about what’s going on!

• Also, once players are eliminated, they must remain silent. It’s easy to want to remain involved in this game, but the host must make sure that once you’re out, you’re just a spectator.

• If you’re the host, think before you speak. It’s hard, but you have to treat the Mafiosi just like they’re villagers, even when you know they aren’t! I’ve accidentally given away a Mafioso just twice in my life, but both times it’s ruined the game.

50. Pat Clap Click Click

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

3–15

Medium

10 mins per round

TAGS:
COMPETITIVE,
RHYTHM, MEMORY,
CIRCLE GAMES

IN SHORT: A categories naming game under pressure, in a circle, with movements.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

Sit in a circle, and collectively agree on a category of things. It should be nice and broad to begin with, such as ‘Countries’, ‘Films’ or ‘Fruit and Veg’, because the game is stressful enough without something difficult. However, as you feel more daring, or if you’re amongst brainboxes, you could choose something a little more ambitious such as ‘Ways to cook an egg’ or ‘Adverbs’. If you get stuck, I’ve included some ideas for categories here.

This game has a rhythm, which must be maintained, or else!

So, to begin with, settle into the rhythm as a group. It goes:

Pat – Clap – Click – Click – One – Two – Three – Four

The first four beats are movements: pat the table or your thighs, clap your hands, click the fingers of your left hand, click the fingers of your right hand. The next four beats you count in your head. Practise keeping those four beats absolutely silent, but still coming in together on Pat. It should be quite a challenge on its own, just to stay together and remember the order of the movements.

Now we introduce the categories. Each player takes it in turns to name something within that category, during the counting part of the rhythm. Essentially, they have four seconds to submit their answer, and then it’s on to the next person.

At first, four seconds will feel like ages to submit an answer, but after a while it becomes quite tricky. No matter how quickly or slowly you answer, everybody else still counts to four in their heads before going back to Pat. The rhythm must continue, whatever happens.

If you don’t answer in time, you’re OUT, but the rhythm continues and it’s onto the next person. For this reason, unless you don’t mind the game stopping every time someone gets it wrong, it’s self-policing. If you miss an answer, back away from the circle and let the others continue. You’ll get a chance to come back in for the next round.

TIP

• The temptation is to speed up early on, or not to count to four in your head, and come in with the next Pat as soon as the player has said their word. Don’t do it! The rhythm keeps the game going and soon becomes a really satisfying way of imposing a time limit when the answers get harder.

LEVEL-UP

• If you’re familiar with the ‘Cup Song’ from the film Pitch Perfect, you’ll know there are places you can go with this game. I recommend searching out that particular song, learning the skill (I’d say it’s my equal top party trick, along with breathing out of my eye) and playing this same game, but saying your word on the last cup-slam of that famous rhythm.

CHAPTER 6

CABIN FEVER

It’s a Sunday afternoon in early February. The rain snivels down like a nose with a persistent cold. You wouldn’t leave the house even if it were on fire, yet there’s nothing to do inside either. You’re so bored that the word ‘bored’ has become boring. The kids are climbing the walls (not literally). Hang on, yes, literally. Your five-year-old is now hanging from the curtain.

You need something, anything to entertain you before headaches, crying and comfort food absorb your entire weekend. And guess what I have in this chapter?

I’ve collected these games with a rainy weekend in mind. Some use your home for inspiration, so there’s no reason to leave it, but you’ll be using it in a very different way from usual. Others are creative or absorbing enough to have you ignoring Storm Desmond, or whatever they’re calling him, and whiling away the afternoon until it turns into evening. You’re just one scrap of paper or, in one case, a saucepan, away from a perfectly pleasant day together, even though you’re stuck inside.

51. Sniffer Dog

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Easy

5 mins per round

TAGS:
ARTY, MEMORY,
AROUND THE
HOUSE, ACTIVE

IN SHORT: One player draws an item that’s nearby. Everybody else has to go and find it.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• A pad of paper (you’ll be drawing all around the house, not always on a table) and a pencil.

• A place where you can safely move about without disturbing people or their belongings.

HOW TO PLAY

The game begins with all players exploring the surrounding area, carefully taking mental note of everything they can see. The players decide on a certain area as their ‘boundary’, for example the house, but not outside it.

Now, one player, the artist, chooses something in the area that’s easily visible (i.e. not hidden in a box or behind a locked door) and draws a picture of it on a piece of paper. The other players are the sniffer dogs. At any point during the drawing, the sniffer dogs may peel off to find that item. When they think they’ve found it, they bark loudly, and place their hand or finger on the item, at which point everybody else comes to see. If they’re correct, they win the round and it’s their turn to draw. If not, the artist continues to draw their item until it is found.

No sniffer dog may bark, woof or whine unless they have their paw on the item. If they bark as they’re searching, then it sends a dishonest message to the other players, so they’re in the doghouse (sitting out) for the rest of that round. If two sniffer dogs are barking at the same time, the artist should know the location where the real item actually is, so be able to discern who is the winning dog.

If two sniffer dogs find the item at the same time, the round is a tie and they can decide between them who draws next round.

52. Endless Sentence

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2

Easy

15 mins

TAGS:
GRAMMAR,
CREATIVE,
STORY TELLING,
COLLABORATIVE

IN SHORT: One player tells a story. The other makes sure that their sentence never ends.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

First of all, you need to be acquainted with conjunctions. These words, also known as connectives or ‘joiny-bits’, according to one of my pupils, are the glue that stick two clauses together. (A clause is a group of words that makes sense on its own.) So, for example, ‘The dog bit the postman because he looked so tasty.’

Without conjunctions, your sentences can only contain one clause, and that’s just boring! Below is a cloud of conjunctions. You’ll need to keep this page open, probably, when you play the game. If you can’t hold the page open, then spell out the words in alphabetti spaghetti or tattoo them on your grandmother’s arm. Not literally, of course, unless she’s down for that sort of thing.

Conjunctions Cloud

• additionally

• afterwards

• also

• although

• and

• as if

• as long as

• as soon as

• as well as

• because

• before

• but

• by the time

• consequently

• despite the fact that

• due to

• even though

• for

• furthermore

• however

• in case

• including

• meanwhile

• moreover

• nevertheless

• next

• once

• or

• or else

• otherwise

• owing to

• since

• so

• so that

• then

• though

• unless

• until

• when

• whenever

• where

• wherever

• while

• yet

To play this game, the storyteller will begin a story with a simple sentence. You can use a first line from my list (see here), or come up with your own. The only limitation is that it must be a whole clause (containing a subject and an action) and not just a short phrase. ‘Once upon a time’, for example, is not enough, because ‘Once upon a time and . . .’ doesn’t make sense.

Then the other player, the conjoiner, will shout out one of the conjunctions from the cloud, and the storyteller must continue the story using that conjunction. The twist is that at the end of every clause, the conjoiner will shout another conjunction, so that your sentence goes on and on, telling the whole story without ever stopping. It’s amazing how far your story can go on one sentence.

Once the story has reached a natural end, you can stop shouting conjunctions and the roles will swap. Now it’s the other player’s turn to try the Endless Sentence.

EXAMPLE

Storyteller: ‘Timmy the seal went for a swim . . .’

Conjoiner: ‘after . . .’

Storyteller: ‘he’d finished his dinner . . .’

Conjoiner: ‘because . . .’

Storyteller: ‘he felt fat and flabby . . .’

Conjoiner: ‘so . . .’

Storyteller: ‘he swam far out into the ocean . . .’

Conjoiner: ‘where . . .’

Storyteller: ‘he found a grumpy whale, filtering plankton . . .’

Etc.

TIPS

• If you are the conjoiner, you must listen carefully to the story and be as involved as the storyteller. Not all conjunctions will work at the end of every clause. If I say, ‘One day, I climbed a mountain,’ and you add ‘or else’, I’m stuck.

• You could try to use every conjunction on the list, or repeat the same one again and again. Try a mixture!

53. Pan-Tapping

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Easy

5 mins

TAGS:
ACTIVE,
GUESSING,
RHYTHM, AROUND
THE HOUSE

IN SHORT: Help a player find an item just by tapping.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Something you can tap on. Tambourines, wooden spoons on saucepans, or just use your voice.

HOW TO PLAY

Have one player, the hunter, leave the room. The other players should decide between them on an item in the room (or the whole house, if you like) that you want the hunter to find.

The hunter now re-enters the room and the rest of the players begin to tap their pans in a slow and steady rhythm, like a drum beat. If you have nothing to tap, use your voice. Start with a low hum.

The closer the hunter gets to the item, the faster you tap your pan, or the higher you hum. If they move away again, you tap slower again. Just by listening to your taps, they can track down the exact location of the hidden item. Make sure you don’t look at the item!

When the hunter touches the item, they win! It’s time to choose another player to leave the room.

LEVEL-UP

This game can also be played by choosing a particular movement or gesture rather than an item. You tap your pan faster the closer the hunter gets to making that movement. For example, if you want the hunter to get on their hands and knees and bark like a dog, then you would tap faster when they lean over, then faster still when they kneel, etc . . .

54. Silly Word Snowballs

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Easy

15 mins

TAGS:
ACTIVE,
AROUND THE
HOUSE, SILLY

IN SHORT: Create special snowballs containing words to make your opponents laugh.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Permission from the person who owns the house that it’s OK to throw paper about – make sure there’s nothing breakable nearby.

• Pencils and scrap paper. (Don’t use nice paper for this. You’ll use a lot.)

HOW TO PLAY

First of all, you need to make some silly snowballs. To do this, write a short sentence or just a word on a piece of paper, and then scrunch it up. It doesn’t even need to be a real word – whatever you think will make the other players laugh.

To begin with, why not make about three snowballs each.

When you’re ready, the snowball fight begins. Count down from ten together so that you can all get to a shielded space, and on zero, begin!

As soon as a paper snowball directly hits another player, everybody who sees it shouts, ‘CEASEFIRE!’ and the round ends. (Picking up a snowball does not count as it ‘hitting’ you.)

At this point, the person who was hit by a snowball must stand up straight, pick up the snowball that hit her and un-scrunch it. She must then read aloud the contents of that snowball without laughing. If you want to be mean, you could decide beforehand that she cannot even smile.

If she laughs (or smiles), then the person who wrote the snowball gets a point. If not, then she gets a point. If she wrote the snowball that hit her, she must scrunch that one up without reading it aloud and pick up the nearest one to her.

The ‘used’ snowball is cast aside (in the recycling) and after a countdown, the game begins again. If you’re low on snowballs then between rounds you should make some more.

The game ends when it actually begins to snow and you can all go outside to play the real version of this game.

TIPS

• Think about the things that will make somebody laugh when forced to say them out loud. There are plenty of great gags that are amusing when delivered right, but a different sort of thing will make me chuckle as I read it.

• There’s no rule as to what the other players can do while the hit player is reading out their snowball, but a tense silence is often the most conducive to making them laugh. There is such a thing as trying too hard to be funny.

55. The Floor Is Lava

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Easy

Endless

TAGS:
ACTIVE,
AROUND THE
HOUSE, SILLY

IN SHORT: A great physical game to play at home. Just don’t play it around precious things.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Permission from the person who owns the house that it’s OK to climb about on their furniture.

HOW TO PLAY

This is an ongoing game, which works best when sprung upon people in the room/area at random times. Simply, one person yells, ‘The floor is lava!’ and then starts counting down from five. Every other person must be completely off the ground by the time the counter reaches zero. What, or who, they climb on is up to them, but if any part of them remains on the ground then they’ll be burnt to a crisp.

LEVEL-UP

• At this point, you’ve probably had enough fun and someone might have broken a vase or ankle, but you’re probably wondering when you’re allowed to get down. The game can continue if you challenge other players to get to a certain place without touching the ground. Watch as each player creatively devises a plan for crossing the dangerous lava without burning their toes.

56. The Silent Game

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Easy

Depends how good you are!

TAGS:
COMPETITIVE,
AROUND THE
HOUSE, SILLY

IN SHORT: Shh!

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

Glorious! A game that gets people to be quiet! Well . . . it isn’t that simple, because the aim of the game is to get your opponents to make a noise. You could do anything, be that making silly faces, giving an intense stare or pretending to be a gorilla.

Any noise counts, so listen out for footsteps, sighing or the odd occasional snort.

The thing is, not being able to make a noise makes everything more tense. If you’re looking to quieten some people down, look in the Just Chill Out chapter (here). This one’s all about self-awareness and poise . . . not exactly a relaxing experience.

An important rule here is that there should be no physical contact. Of course your opponent will make some noise if you hit them hard enough. Where’s the fun in that?

LEVEL-UP

• How about both trying to do a normal life task without making a noise? You could try pairing socks, cooking dinner together or doing the school run, all without making a single noise. I wonder how it’ll change your appreciation of the little things . . .

57. Disregarded Things

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Medium

10–20 mins

TAGS:
CREATIVE,
GUESSING,
AROUND THE
HOUSE

IN SHORT: Adopt the personality of forgotten things in your house, and see how long the other players take to find them.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

I found this game years ago in one of Pie Corbett’s excellent books on literacy, Jumpstart! Literacy, and had to include a version of it. It was originally devised by poet Philip Gross, and I think it’s genius.

Move about a room, and try to find something that you think nobody else will have seen. It might be a scrap of paper on the floor or a shoe mark on the skirting board.

Now, try to imagine you are that thing. Tell the other players what it feels like to be you, what you can see from where you are, how you came to be where you are, what it’s like living wherever you live. Don’t give too many obvious clues about where you’re found, but make sure that you’re really in the character of your disregarded thing.

The other players must search the room, trying to work out who you are. Eventually they’ll find you, and somebody else will play the role of their disregarded thing.

TIP

• This game is all about personification, which takes empathy. Bringing an item to life is all about trying to think what they’d feel, say, think and do if they were alive. It’s not easy, which is all the more reason to try it.

58. Monsters of the Nook and Cranny

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

1+

Medium

It entirely depends

TAGS:
CREATIVE,
ARTY, AROUND
THE HOUSE,
LONG-TERM

IN SHORT: Your house is full of tiny monsters. Or, at least, it will be after you’ve finished this game.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Modelling material (clay, plasticine, cold porcelain, etc.) OR drawing equipment.

HOW TO PLAY

Explore your house as if you’re looking for mice, or other tiny beasts. Think of all the places they might live: in the kitchen cupboards? In the pocket of an old coat? At the bottom of the toothbrush holder?

In this game, you will imagine what tiny, evil (or cute) monsters live in these little unexplored places, then create those monsters and leave them there, never to be found. (Eventually, they will be found, and that’s the joy of this game. How long will they hide before somebody comes across them?)

So, once you’ve decided on your hidden nook or cranny in your house, imagine what sort of beast would make it their home. What would the monster do down there? What would it eat? What would make that little space the perfect home for your monster?

Have a go at drawing your monster, giving it a name, and writing down what it spends its day doing.

Next, it’s time to create your monster. If you have some modelling clay or plasticine, use this. Make it as small as it needs to be. Think about which animal or monster parts it will have. (Legs or wings? Antennae? A shell?) What colour would it need to be to blend in with its environment, never to be found?

If you don’t have any modelling materials, draw your monster on a tiny square of paper or card.

Once your model/drawing is finished, it is time to deliver him to his new home. Make sure he’s safe in there. If you like, you could leave a little message of explanation. It could say who this monster is, why he is where he is, and what anyone should do if they find him.

Leave your monster to his new life. If you like, check on him after a few days to see if he’s settled in. The more monsters you can create and hide away in your house, the better you are doing at this game!

IMPORTANT

• If you have little children or animals who roam about the house, don’t leave anything small and swallowable anywhere that they could get their tiny mitts or paws on. If you’re playing this game on your own, it might be worth checking with one other person that this is a good place to hide your monster.

59. Jumble

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

1+

Medium

5 mins per round

TAGS:
SPELLING,
VOCABULARY,
COMPETITIVE

IN SHORT: A well-known anagrams game.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Letter cards (see below), cut up and put in two separate hats.

• A mini whiteboard and one pen per player, or paper and pencils.

• Timer – use a stopwatch or your phone.

• Dictionary (online is fine) to check spellings.

HOW TO PLAY

As you can see, there’s a little preparation needed for this game. It won’t take long, and don’t be put off, as it’s well worth the effort.

Cut some paper or card into little squares. On each one you’ll need to write a letter, but it’s quite important you get the number of each letter right.

Vowels: You need 4 of E, 3 of A, 3 of I, 3 of O and 1 of U. Put these 14 cards in the vowels hat.

Consonants: You need 5 each of D, L, N, R, S and T, 3 each of C, G, M and P, and 1 each of B, F, H, J, K, Q, V, W, X, Y and Z. Put these 53 cards in the consonants hat.

Each round, one player will select nine letters from the hats and place them on the table. You can select however many vowels and consonants you like, but you must pick the cards one by one and not look inside the hats as you pick. A mixture of vowels and consonants is useful, but you’ll soon learn how many of each is best, and even if you get it wrong, at least everyone will have the same challenge.

Once the cards have been picked, put one minute on the timer and begin. The aim is to spell the longest word using the letters that you have chosen. If playing alone, you can jumble around the cards to find your word.

You may not use proper nouns (names such as ‘London, ‘Facebook’ or ‘John’), slang (‘Haha’, ‘Innit’) or abbreviations (‘BRB’, ‘LOL’).

At the end of the time, the players share the longest word they have found. I like to give everybody points equal to their longest word. Alternatively, this game works perfectly well without scoring whatsoever.

EXAMPLE

The letters chosen are: A G P D E I T S P.

Player 1’s longest word is ‘TIPS’. She gets 4 points.

Player 2’s longest word is ‘PEPSI’, but that is a proper noun. His next longest word is ‘AGES’. He gets 4 points.

Player 3’s longest word is ‘DESPITE’, which would give 7 points, but she used E twice. Her second best word, ‘PAGES’, earns her 5 points.

TIPS

• After each round, why not use an online resource such as www.thewordfinder.com to find the longest possible word? Some of the top ones are just impossible to get, but see if there was a word longer than yours that you could have found. Which blends of consonants did it use? How did the word begin and end? These sorts of questions will help you develop some skills for the next round.

• Try looking for common word endings such as ‘ING’ and ‘ED’.

• If you are only getting 3–4 letter words, try blending the consonants on offer. ‘ND’ often go together in a word, as do ‘ST’. Play around with these blends instead of single letters.

LEVEL-UP

• Collect up everyone’s longest (or favourite) word from the same round and put them together into a stupid sentence. So, in this round, the sentence could be, ‘It takes me ages to write any pages of this book because the tips on my pens keep breaking’.

60. Double Acrostic

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

1+

Medium

10 mins

TAGS:
WIND-DOWN,
VOCABULARY,
SPELLING

IN SHORT: One acrostic on the left, one on the right, your words in the middle. Can you do it?

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Paper and pencils.

HOW TO PLAY

This game is calming and satisfying: perfect for long days indoors.

An acrostic is a word-game or poem where certain letters of each line form a word. In this case we will end up with several words listed on a page, for which the first and last letters will form words reading upwards and downwards.

Think of two words that have the same number of letters. They could be names, two related places, or anything, really. Write one word vertically downwards on the left of your page, and the other going upwards on the right-hand side of the page.

Your job is to find words that begin with the letter on the left and end with the letter on the right. It doesn’t matter how long or short the connecting word is. Write them in to join the two words.

EXAMPLE

I’ve made a double acrostic with two of my favourite words: ‘chocolate milkshake’. One goes down on the left, one goes up on the right.

LEVEL-UP

• If you want your double acrostic to remain a smart, juicy grid, then why not try to find words of the same length to fit each row? It’s a tough challenge, so perhaps wait to decide how long every word must be until you’ve got a few ideas.

CHAPTER 7

LONG GAMES FOR LONG JOURNEYS

Uncle Brian and his family of seven have driven down from Lincoln for a Sunday at yours. The house is a mess: you meant to tidy it during the week but each evening felt like its own episode of Fawlty Towers. You’ve stuck all the clutter in a couple of rooms and firmly closed the doors, and put the really nice fruit bowl from your trip to Morocco on the kitchen table to distract from the pile of unopened letters and half-read newspapers next to it.

Now they’ve arrived, all of them, including a puppy so massive that ‘puppy’ is false advertising, and your house suddenly feels sardine-tin cramped. You try to make tea but the kettle needs boiling three times just to fill eleven mugs. Within minutes, the kids have found your messy rooms and the really nice fruit bowl from your trip to Morocco has been tail-wagged off the kitchen table.

You hear the words coming out of your mouth before you realise you’re about to say them: ‘Let’s go for a walk.’

Now you’re a quarter of a mile from home and starting to regret it. You forgot your gloves, the dog has caught a pigeon, the girls are so bored that they’re singing a song about it and you still have nothing to say to Uncle Brian. Luckily, here are ten games for this very situation.

These are the sorts of games that liven up long periods of time where all you can do is chat. They’re conversation starters, talking duels, guessing games and creative challenges. Once you’ve got started on these, you’ll want your long walk to be five miles longer, your train journey to last three more stations or your bus to go on diversion.

61. The Questions Game

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2

Easy

10 mins

TAGS:
COMPETITIVE,
CONVERSATION,
STRATEGY

IN SHORT: Answer questions with questions for as long as you can in this head-to-head battle.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

One player begins by asking the other a question. It could be anything, but here are a couple of suggested starters:

• What’s the time?

• What’s your favourite food?

• What do you want to do today?

• When did you last have a bath?

The second player must respond with a relevant question to continue the conversation, rather than an answer. Don’t just respond, ‘Could you repeat that?’ or ‘What?’

The whole conversation must be made of questions. You aren’t allowed to repeat any questions, either. The first person to make a statement or command loses.

EXAMPLE

Player 1: ‘What’s for dinner?’

Player 2: ‘What makes you think I’m cooking?’

Player 1: ‘Who else would cook dinner?’

Player 2: ‘Couldn’t you do it?’

Player 1: ‘Have you seen me try to cook?’

Player 2: ‘When are you going to learn?’

Player 1: ‘I don’t know. When are you going to teach me?’

Player 1 loses because ‘I don’t know’ is not a question but a statement.

TIPS

• Open questions are always better than closed ones. So, start your sentences with one of the five Ws (what, who, where, why, when) over a word like ‘did’ or ‘is’, which provoke only a yes/no answer.

• If in doubt, turn your opponent’s question around on them.

• Watch out for little statements before your question, like ‘no’ or ‘I don’t know’. They’re often the way people end up losing!

62. Buzz Words

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Easy

5 mins per round

TAGS:
CODE,
GUESSING,
SPELLING

IN SHORT: Avoid the electric shocks by guessing words that don’t contain the buzz letter.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

This is a little bit like the spelling version of Locked Box (see here).

One player, the buzzer, chooses a ‘buzz letter’ – a letter that must not be contained in any words, or you’ll get an electric shock. The buzzer must keep this letter a secret, if they know what’s good for them.

The guessers must take it in turns to say a word. If the buzz letter is in their word, then the buzzer can call, ‘Buzz!’ If you’re really good friends, then this could be accompanied by a tickle, but you absolutely have to agree this before you start the game. I hate being tickled with such a passion that if you did it to me I’d immediately stop talking to you.

As you go, try to find the letter that has caused the buzz. Soon, you’ll be avoiding buzzes every turn, to the annoyance of the buzzer.

Once everybody has avoided buzzes for a few rounds, switch roles and let somebody else choose the buzz letter.

EXAMPLE

Buzzer has chosen ‘g’ as his buzz letter.

Guesser 1: ‘Norway.’

Buzzer says nothing.

Guesser 2: ‘Sausage.’

Buzzer: ‘Buzz!’

Guesser 1 thinks the buzz letter might be ‘s’, so tests it out. ‘Sarcastic.’

Buzzer says nothing, so Guesser 1 knows it isn’t ‘s’.

Guesser 2 tries a similar word. ‘Savage.’

Buzzer: ‘Buzz!’

Guesser 1: ‘Sage.’

Buzzer: ‘Buzz!’

Guesser 2 thinks the buzz letter might be g, so begins to avoid it. ‘Sauce.’

Buzzer says nothing.

Guesser 1 thinks he has it too, but once again, tests it. ‘Egg.’

Buzzer: ‘Buzz!’

Etc.

TIPS

• Hold the letters from each buzz word in your head, so that next time there’s a buzz word, you can see which letters are in both. Soon you’ll have your answer, and no more electric shocks.

• There will be times when players accidentally avoid buzzes for ages, just because they aren’t guessing the right (or wrong) letters. It’ll be pretty obvious when they know the letter, though.

LEVEL-UP

• You can play this game with a whiteboard if it’s too hard in your head, or if you just really like whiteboards. Write down your guess, and make two lists – ‘Letters that I can use’ and ‘Letters that I might not be able to use’. Soon you’ll find the answer, when the second list has one item.

• If you want this game to last for ages, keep the buzz letter going, even after everyone knows what it is. If anybody uses that letter in conversation, then, ‘Buzz!’

63. Glom!

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Easy

10 mins

TAGS:
VOCABULARY,
SILLY,
CONVERSATION,
COMPETITIVE

IN SHORT: A quick-fire game where players win by talking nonsense.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

This game is total nonsense. It works like this: take it in turns to blurt out a nonsense word. This is quickfire. No time to think or craft your word, and no repetitions. Your word must be one syllable long, not two or more. Have a look at Avagat (see here) for more information on identifying syllables.

Here’s the catch. With one-syllable words, it is surprisingly easy to accidentally say a real word. If you do, your opponent gets a point. If you pause for too long, your opponent gets a point. If you repeat a word, your opponent gets a point. If your word has more than one syllable, your opponent gets a point. First to one million points wins.

One more thing: you might hit a rich seam of nonsense words by finding a funny ending and changing the first consonant: ‘Totch, Fotch, Yotch, Spotch,’ and so on. For that reason, you aren’t allowed to say two words in a row that rhyme. Make each word sound different or it’s both naughty and cheating.

EXAMPLE

Player 1: ‘Spooch.’

Player 2: ‘Ling.’

Player 1: ‘Crab. Oh no!’

Player 2: ‘That’s a word. I get a point. Right, I’ll start again: clug.’

Player 1: ‘Tresh.’

Player 2:(slowly) ‘F . . . .oo . . . j?’

Player 1: ‘Too slow! I get a point.’

TIPS

• Think of the spelling of words in your head as you’re saying them. Remember, most one-syllable words go consonant-vowel-consonant. Look for odd combinations and hope they don’t make real words!

• In the end, though, it’s not about how you spell the word inside your head. It’s about how it sounds. You may have spelled the word ‘kasshe’ but it sounds like ‘cash’ so your opponent gets a point.

64. Yes/No/Black/White

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Hard

Ongoing

TAGS:
STRATEGY,
CONVERSATION,
SILLY,
COMPETITIVE

IN SHORT: Try to trick a player into saying one of the four words in this game’s title.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

Yes, no, black and white. Four little words. Hard to forget them, really. So why is this game so hard?

The rules of the game are simple. One player, the responder, has to attempt to avoid saying the words ‘Yes’, ‘No’, ‘Black’ or ‘White’ for as long as possible, while being asked a barrage of questions by the other players. As soon as she says one of the forbidden words, she is OUT and someone else takes a turn as the responder.

The responder may not ignore any questions. She must answer every single one with an answer that makes sense.

The responder is also not allowed to nod or shake her head. This works well because, if I may speak for myself, I have no idea what I’m doing with my head most of the time. You could extend this rule to any sounds such as ‘Mm-hmm’, and ‘Uh-uh’, which clearly mean yes and no. Similarly, choose right now whether or not to ban words like ‘Yeah’ and ‘Nah’.

EXAMPLE

Questioner: ‘What’s your favourite colour?’

Responder: ‘Red.’

Questioner: ‘Really?’

Responder: ‘Yeah . . . oh bother.’

TIP

• If the responder is really good, try to distract them by asking difficult questions that take a lot of explanation, or even asking questions that don’t require the four words to answer, to put them off their guard. For example, you could ask, ‘When was the last time you’ve been to France?’ Let them talk, and then follow it up with, ‘And have you ever been to Italy?’ They won’t see it coming.

LEVEL-UP

There are a number of variant rules that people choose to add. You could try them and see if they make it more, or less, hard.

• You may not repeat the answer to a question. This plays around those players who just answer ‘Dunno’ to everything.

• Fun version alert! If you don’t like fun, don’t read on . . . OK. Here we go. Everybody is both questioner and responder at the same time. Ask a question to your opponent, trying to get them to say one of the four words, without saying the words yourself. If you say it, you sit out the rest of the round, and see who’s left at the end. Tough, but great.

65. Adjectival Animals

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Hard

Ongoing

TAGS:
GRAMMAR,
VOCABULARY,
CREATIVE

IN SHORT: A to-and-fro game that will have you cackling from the wonderfully silly images it conjures.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

Take it in turns to come up with an animal and an adjective to describe that animal. The only twist is that both words MUST begin with the same letter. This is called alliteration, and it’s nice.

Try to get a really good flow by only allowing a second or two to think. You can either go through the alphabet, like in an ‘A–Z of . . .’ or just dot around as you like.

If you want to be competitive, if anybody gets stuck or doesn’t use alliteration then they are OUT for the rest of the round. If you don’t want that, just keep on playing. As usual, the sillier the better.

EXAMPLE

Player 1: ‘Moronic monkey.’

Player 2: ‘Lazy lizard.’

Player 3: ‘Iconic iguana.’

Player 1: ‘Sausage snake.’

Player 3: ‘Sausage isn’t a describing word!’

Player 1: ‘All right, sarcastic snake.’

Etc.

TIPS

• Some people find it easier to think of the animal first, and some think of the adjective. Try both and see which works for you!

• If you’re trying for a complete adjectival animal alphabet run, good luck on N, Q, U and X. If you really need help and you can’t use the internet, look below.fn1

LEVEL-UP

• This leads into some excellent creative writing opportunities. Use your favourite adjectival animals and expand them into sentences containing bags of alliteration. So, ‘Grumpy Gorilla’ is all well and good, but how about turning it into: ‘The grumpy gorilla gloriously grinned after gulping down a green grape.’ Notice that not every word has to start with G, but most do.

66. Similelarly

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2

Medium

15 mins

TAGS:
CREATIVE, PUNS,
GRAMMAR,
CONVERSATION

IN SHORT: A co-operative ideas game that creates strange similes.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Pencil and paper to record your results, if you want.

HOW TO PLAY

This is a slow game, so you’ll need to be comfortable with pauses, silences and giving each other time to think. That said, it’s brilliant, so give it a chance.

Let’s start with what a simile is. It’s when you bring in a new image by saying something is like or as something else:

• Rain drizzled down like a leaking pipe.

• This curry is as hot as the sun!

• My drive to work was like a film: long, full of twists and turns, and I fell asleep towards the end.

They’re very useful when you’re trying to describe to the reader/listener something they don’t know, by likening it to something they do know.

This game comes in two levels. I recommend warming up with Level 1, then once you’re confident, moving on to the more entertaining but slightly harder Level 2.

LEVEL 1

It works a little like Word Association (see here). One player states a random thing, person or action. Now the second player must think of another thing, person or action that is linked to the first one in some way, and give a reason. He will give his answer in the format: ‘_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ is like _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _: they both _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _’.

Now the first player will have to think of a new thing, person or action that is like the previous object, and link them together somehow, and so on. The best part is that you can link objects through simple ways (‘They both have wheels’) or in complicated ways (‘They both give you bad breath’, ‘They’d both make bad birthday presents’, ‘They both whistle’). The aim of the game is to make the longest chain of similes possible. Here’s an example.

EXAMPLE (LEVEL 1)

Player 1: ‘A ball.’

Player 2: ‘A ball is like an orange: they are both perfectly round.’

Player 1: ‘An orange is like a rhinoceros: they both have tough skin.’

Player 2: ‘A rhinoceros is like a battleship: they are both grey.’

Player 1: ‘A battleship is like a rubber duck: they both float on water.’

Player 2: ‘A rubber duck is like a guinea pig: they both squeak when you squeeze them.’

Etc.

LEVEL 2

Once you’ve mastered Level 1, you may choose to move on. Here’s where the game becomes a little more complex, but a step more fun.

Play the game just as before, still thinking of a new item that is similar in some way to the old one, but this time, don’t say the reason for your simile out loud. It is the other player’s job to work out the link. They will think about it, then say the reason for you.

It doesn’t matter if they get the same reason as you. In fact, it’s just as much fun to find different reasons why the two things are linked as it is to find the same one.

EXAMPLE (LEVEL 2)

Player 1: ‘A lion.’

Player 2: ‘. . . is like a motorbike.’

Player 1: ‘Because they make growling noises?’

Player 2: ‘Ooh, that’s good! I was thinking about their speed. Your turn.’

Player 1: ‘A motorbike is like a chip fryer.’

Player 2: ‘You fill it with oil?’

Player 1: ‘Yes!’

Player 2: ‘A chip fryer is like a swimming pool.’

Etc.

LEVEL-UP

• If you want a really challenging version, then count down from three together and both say random words at the same time. Then it’s your job to think of a simile that relates the two. Be patient: this game is difficult!

67. Celebritables

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Hard

15 mins +

TAGS:
COLLABORATIVE,
PUNS,
WIND-DOWN

IN SHORT: Pass the hours by turning celebrities into vegetables.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• If a good idea strikes you, then drawing materials.

• For the rest of us: nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

A great game to play as you wander along, dotting in and out as you let your mind wander.

Combine the name of a celebrity with the name of a vegetable (or a fruit, I guess), to create a quaint yet surprising image.

You can make a pun from their first name, for example, McCauliflower Culkin, or their surname, like Adrian Chives.

After each suggestion, it’s illuminating to discuss how the celebrity and the vegetable are mingled. Perhaps Potatony Blair is made of sculpted, living mashed potato, but still wearing a suit, while Kohlrabi Savage is a slightly muddy, wild-eyed, football-playing kohlrabi with great hair. You could discuss how their careers would have been different if they contained seeds, or had peelable skin. Finally, you could suggest the most delicious way to cook them.

LEVEL-UP

• You know what’s better than imagining these vegetebrities? Drawing them. Send me your best ones via Twitter, because I want to create a gallery of these but can’t draw to save my life.

• If you want a few more categories to try out, how about ‘Baking Musicians’ (Scone Lennon, James Brownie) or ‘Movies About Animals’ (Manchester by the Seagull, Honey I Skunk the Kids)?

68. Essence

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Hard

Ongoing

TAGS:
WIND-DOWN,
COLLABORATIVE,
CONVERSATION,
CREATIVE

IN SHORT: Discover the identity of a person by asking about their ‘essence’.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

One player, the leader, thinks of somebody that everyone else in the car knows: a family member, friend or colleague. It works best if you don’t use celebrities because there are far too many of them and – sorry to break it to you – you don’t know what they’re really like, only what they want you to think they’re like.

The leader keeps that person in their head, while the guessers take it in turns to ask questions to work out who they’re thinking about. Here’s the catch, though: they may only ask metaphorical questions that enquire about the character’s essence. For example:

• What animal are they?

• What item of clothing are they?

• What colour are they?

• What shop are they?

• What city are they?

• What plant are they?

• What TV show are they?

• What game are they?

• What vehicle are they?

• What decade are they?

• What noise are they?

• What flavour are they?

The leader must not take the questions too literally. Yes, this person is human, but that isn’t the answer to the first question. Perhaps this person is a dog, because they are loyal, or maybe they’re a monkey, because they’re cheeky. Whatever the case, you should answer with just one word. ‘Leopard’, for example.

The guessers may not ask any question that actually provides information that would help identify the character. So, for example, questions like ‘What gender are they?’ or ‘What age are they?’ are banned. This game is completed only with essences and metaphors, not real facts.

Once they think they know, a guesser can guess the mystery person in place of their question. Once the mystery person has been guessed correctly, another player will choose, and the game continues.

TIPS

• If you’re guessing, don’t guess the mystery person too soon, unless you’re absolutely sure. If you do, you’ll start to run out of mystery people to choose from far too quickly and the game will have to end!

• Once you’ve finished a round, go back over the leader’s answers and think about why each one fits, or doesn’t fit. It sparks great conversations about how you think of your friends and family, and really encourages chat that celebrates the people you love. It’s also pretty fascinating to see how your idea of a person differs from others’ ideas.

LEVEL-UP

• If you want a slightly more chilled-out version of this game, decide as a group on a person that you all know, and go through the categories above, trying to agree an answer for each one. After a bit of discussion, the players might all agree that Uncle Bob is a cherry tree, for example.

69. No, Mr Bond, I Expect You to Die

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2

Hard

20 mins

TAGS:
CREATIVE,
STORY TELLING,
PASS THE TIME,
CONVERSATION

IN SHORT: Play the criminal mastermind by putting James Bond into an inescapable death trap, or play the spy himself, and help him escape! A loose-ruled imagination game.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all (but you might want pen and paper to draw).

HOW TO PLAY

This is not a game you can win or lose. It’s more about setting up situations and seeing how the other player can tear them down. It’s a great conversation starter and, while I’ve said it involves two players, you could easily expand this to involve everybody’s ideas and theories.

One player is the criminal mastermind, and the other is James Bond. The mastermind describes the trap he’s put James Bond in, giving as much detail as possible. James Bond may ask as many questions as he needs to get a good picture of where he is.

It is James Bond’s job to describe in detail how he’d escape. He can only use what is around him, but it is safe to assume that James Bond is very good at picking locks, untying ropes, disarming guards, etc.

The game ends when James Bond is safe and clear of the trap. Then you swap roles and the game begins again.

Here are some elements of a James Bond-style trap that the mastermind could use. However, she’ll need to think of the details by herself.

• A tank of piranhas

• A slowly moving laser beam

• A robot with knives for hands

• A car locked on accelerate

• A crashing plane

• A ticking bomb

• A sinking ship

• A furnace

• A pack of wolves

• An angry sumo wrestler

• A wrecking ball

• A burning building

EXAMPLE

Criminal Mastermind: ‘You’re locked in a steel cage that is slowly lowering into a pool of hungry sharks. Around the side of the pool are six guards armed with pistols. The cage is locked with a padlock and the key thrown away. How do you escape?’

James Bond: ‘Hmm. What am I wearing?’

Criminal Mastermind: ‘You’re wearing a set of prison overalls and no shoes.’

James Bond: ‘OK. Because I’m in a cage, the sharks won’t actually get me unless I escape, so I’m safe for as long as I can hold my breath. So while I’m underwater I take my nice juicy hand and stick it through the bars right where the padlock is. The sharks will charge at it, but my lightning reflexes mean I can pull it away at the right time and one of them will end up biting the padlock. OK, so now I’m free I’ll have to punch the sharks on the nose to stun them. The guards will shoot but I’ll swim underwater to the furthest point of the pool and then tug on one guard’s leg to pull him in . . .’

Etc.

TIP

• If you’re both intent on winning, this game won’t be fun. You’ll end up saying a lot of, ‘No, but you can’t do that because . . .’ In order to make this game work, once the criminal mastermind has given all the information she can, let James Bond take over and enjoy his method. Even if you don’t think it would work or know he’s forgotten something you’ve said, don’t bring that up until after he’s finished his plan. Then you can discuss it and work out a solution together.

70. RPGs (Role-Playing Games)

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2–5

Hard

2 hours +

TAGS:
STORY TELLING,
CONVERSATION,
COLLABORATIVE,
CREATIVE

IN SHORT: Days, weeks, months of fun to be had here. An inclusive and imaginative game with literally no boundaries.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• A notebook and pen (optional, but advised).

WHAT’S A ROLE-PLAYING GAME?

I went to boarding school between the ages of seven and twelve. I was surrounded by boys entirely unlike me, mainly because the only things allowing me to grace those corridors were a hefty scholarship and bursary. Most had land, staff back at home, fathers in the House of Lords, that sort of thing. Fortunately, the vast majority of conversations between boys of that age take place in imaginary worlds: places where I fit in just fine. In those worlds, I was not the odd one out.

Every evening, after lights-out, my dorm-mates and I would play this interactive storytelling game. One boy would play the gamesmaster and everyone else would have roles within the story. Whenever prompted, the characters would have to choose, plan, persuade, argue, voyage and fight in order to overcome the challenges the storyteller gave them.

Games could last a week of evenings, or longer, depending on how engaging they were. Sometimes they reached some sort of happy end, but sometimes the characters would die in horrible, grizzly ways. Most often, we’d all fall asleep and someone else would start a new story the next day.

This game is best for long journeys when you’re stuck together, and just need somewhere else to be. Given time and attention, it can be absolutely wonderful. My advice is that, given the timescale it really requires, you shouldn’t try this when you only have five minutes to spare, or when people are coming and going. You’ll never get into it.

HOW TO PLAY

One player is the gamesmaster. Whoever this is, you’ll need to be really confident making up stories and have a good bucket of ideas to dip into. If you haven’t already, why not practise your storytelling skills with games like Switch! or Genre Bender (see here and here)? Also, it might help to have read some fantasy novels such as The Hobbit, the His Dark Materials trilogy or The Wind Singer for a few ideas. Alternatively, if you’ve played some of the best console RPGs (anything from the Legend of Zelda or Final Fantasy series) you’ll already have the idea.

The gamesmaster begins to tell a story where the other players are the main characters. So, she’ll be using ‘you’ and ‘your’ to talk about the characters’ surroundings. It will be as if the other players are living within her story. But here’s the great part: throughout the story, it’s up to the other players to decide how to act.

The gamesmaster should put the other players in difficult situations and let them decide how to get out of it. Together, they’ll ask extra questions, decide how to act, and then the gamesmaster will react to that with the next part of the story.

Let me give you a quick example.

EXAMPLE

The gamesmaster has already explained that the other players are a group of school children who have been lost in the woods on a school trip, and now the sun is setting.

Gamesmaster: ‘OK, so you finished your packed lunches ages ago, and you’re starting to feel hungry. At some point you’ll need to eat. What are you going to do?’

Player 1: ‘We need to find a way out. Can we see any roads?’

Gamesmaster: ‘No, there’s just trees and brambles. The brambles are covered in red berries and thorns.’

Player 2: ‘I eat some berries!’

Gamesmaster: ‘Player 2 eats some berries and feels immediately better. Anybody else want to eat some berries?’

Player 3: ‘No way.’

Gamesmaster: ‘Hmm. Well now that I mention it, Player 2 looks a bit pale. You’re holding your stomach and rocking your body.’

Player 1: ‘She’s poisoned! I give her some of my water.’

Player 2: ‘I spit out the berries.’

Gamesmaster: ‘Player 2, you’ve already swallowed the berries so you can’t spit them out, but you do drink the water and it feels a little better. But just as you’re catching your breath, you hear howling from the distance.’

Player 1: ‘RUN!’

Etc.

As the gamesmaster, it’s best to set the scene well. Use your five senses all the time to describe what’s around the players. Create dangerous situations for the players to solve, and side-characters who send the players on errands and missions: fetching powerful weapons, making useful friends, unlocking doors, making it through dank dungeons, all to get to the final ‘boss battle’ and the conclusion of the story.

The other players should ask lots of questions, to which the gamesmaster must give all the information possible. Once they have been filled in, the other players can make group or individual decisions throughout the story. Remember what you’ve picked up, and use all of your skills to solve problems.

The gamesmaster might like to keep track of held items, skills, abilities and story elements by taking notes on some paper. How about describing the scene by drawing a simple map for the players?

At any point, the gamesmaster can tell the players what is or isn’t possible. For example, if Player 3 suddenly claims to pull out a bazooka, the gamesmaster has every right to remind Player 3 that he doesn’t have that weapon.

STORY BASES THAT YOU COULD USE

You’re probably still feeling a bit confused by this whole idea. Below, I’ve created a few sample stories for you to use. Read through, pick a subject that suits the group you’re in, and begin. If you’re confident, you’ll want to create your own stories. Don’t be scared to take inspiration from the worlds you’ve read about or watched. You can create Role-Playing Games within the sprawling worlds of Harry Potter or the Marvel comics universe.

Zombie at the Gates

This one is great because you can begin the story in your very own house, and every player can already imagine that. The characters wake up and look out of the window to see a mob of flesh-eating zombies shambling about outside. They must gather as many resources as they can carry and venture into the city, fighting off the undead hordes and trying to find safety. Perhaps they could communicate with other survivors over a radio, learn how to protect themselves, break into prisons or police stations to gather armour and weaponry, fix and use a vehicle of their choice, scavenge for food and fuel, and try to set up their own safe zone.

Quest for the Seven Swords

In the fantasy land of Mysteria (a world of dragons, dwarf mines and corrupt kings), a dark power has taken over. The demonic ‘Underlord’ has risen from the blackness of the underworld to destroy humankind. The players are young elves, each with unique powers. They will have to travel the land, gathering the seven elemental swords which, when united, might be powerful enough to defeat this monstrous beast. The storyteller can create seven different challenges (a jungle land, underwater temple, desert city, fiery tunnels, guarded palace, snowy mountain, sewer system) each hiding its own special sword. Once the players have united them all into a powerful superweapon, they can try to take down the Underlord.

BattleBots

The players are a group of engineers building a fighting robot for the annual ‘BattleBots’ tournament. You let them start with some basic resources and give them some easy opponents to begin with, but as they fight the early rounds they win prize money that can buy them better armour, weaponry and other items. Each round is a different challenge – the opponents get steadily harder and the arenas are full of dangers. Furthermore, it appears that somebody in the tournament is sabotaging other robots. Can the players win the tournament and the grand prize?

Hunted

The players begin in a bank vault. Tell them that their plan has worked so far – if they can get the money out of the safes and escape, they’ll be millionaires. Unfortunately, police surround the vault and the whole city is on lockdown. If they manage to escape the building, they may need to steal a car, escape to the country and get across the border. Will they survive, or will they be brought to justice?

The Secret of Mettekahu

The players have been dropped from their helicopter deep in the Amazon rainforest with only their backpacks containing basic supplies, and a map to the lost Aztec temple of Mettekahu. If they can survive thieving monkeys and venomous snakes, cross the enormous Amazon River and fight off a cannibal tribe then they will reach the temple. Deep inside lies a priceless ruby that would make the players’ fortune; however, it is guarded by living stone idols, strange puzzles and a deadly smoke monster. Can they make it out alive?

CHAPTER 8

AFTER DINNER

For years, you’ve been idly saying to all your old friends, ‘Oh, we should do dinner some time,’ never expecting anything to ever happen. But this time, to their credit, they actually suggested a date. Now the evening has arrived, as have they, with nicer wine than you provided and a bunch of flowers, which is great, but you have no vase. You made chilli con carne, because everyone likes chilli con carne, except it turns out that Marco isn’t into spicy food so he just has the garlic bread.

You’ve made a playlist, and that goes down well, and your chat about music and films and old pals was great until about pudding, when it morphed, and you got too far into an opinion about politics and now you’re finding it hard to back out. Time for a change of pace; something to give the evening its ‘legendary’ status. Time for a game.

Clear the table, pour another glass of wine and dig into one of these juicy after-dinner treats. They’re raucous, challenging and fresh enough to suggest a round without feeling embarrassed about it. They involve guessing, bluffing, remembering or creating, but are the kind of activities that’ll make an evening last until long after it’s acceptable for everyone to just go home.

This chapter also includes my favourite after-dinner game of all time, 1000 Blank White Cards, a game so good that my friends organise get-togethers just to play it.

71. 1000 Blank White Cards

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

3+

Medium

1 hour at least

TAGS:
CREATIVE,
ARTY, STRATEGY,
COMPETITIVE

IN SHORT: A card game that you create as you play.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Some good-quality card, cut into rectangles a little larger than playing-cards (something like 7.5cm by 6cm). Revision cards from a stationery shop work well, cut into two. You’ll need around 100 of these cards for an evening of play, so you must be prepared!

• Pens/pencils for everyone.

• A sheet of paper to keep score.

• Almost anything else, if one of the cards demands it.

HOW TO PLAY

I can’t express to you how wonderful this game is. My closest set of friends and I play this as often as we can. It’s the perfect mix of silliness, competitiveness, nostalgia and creativity. Two games can, by definition, never be the same and, best of all, you’ll sometimes find yourself in the middle of a game that you never expected to play. Trust me, this is amazing.

Basically, it’s a card game that makes itself up as it goes along. The aim, usually, is to score the most points, but we’ve once had a game that was won by somebody who built a giant robot, and another that resulted in a presidential election.

You’ll have a range of cards, some blank, and will take it in turns to play a card on yourself, your opponent, or the whole table. With the blank cards in your hand, you’ll be able to react to the game as a whole and create the cards you need, or just create a card that you think will make your friends laugh.

I’ll talk you through the game in phases, but bear in mind, any of this can change at any time if a card commands it.

The Setup: Building Your Deck

If you’re playing for the first time, then this will take a little longer, but it’s a lot of fun in itself so don’t worry.

Every game starts with 52 cards in a stack at the centre of the table. This should be made of:

• 26 old cards voted through from the previous game;

• 14 blank white cards;

• 12 new cards that you’ll create right now, in the setup.

If it’s your first game, then the pile should look like this:

• 32 new cards that you’ll create right now, in the setup;

• 20 blank white cards.

Notice that the game will begin with blank cards in the deck for you to fill as you go, but you’ll also create some now, before the game begins.

To do this, divide out the right number of blank cards (32 if it’s your first game, 12 if it isn’t) so that each player has an even number, or close to. Then, allow 5–10 minutes for each player to fill their cards and place them face down on top of the deck in the middle of the table.

What Should I Put on My Cards?

A basic card should have a title, a picture and some sort of text. It should only have writing/drawing on one side. Having said that, there really is no rule. Here are a few types of card that you could think about:

• Challenges: Give a player a task in order to earn some points, or to avoid losing any. It could be some sort of dare, acting performance, physical challenge or memory task. The card on the right is the oldest surviving card in our deck. I don’t even want to imagine how many people have licked it.

• New Rules: Change the way that the game is played, subtly or significantly. You could change the order of play, have someone lose their turn, or even change how a player actually wins the game. In this example, one player becomes the Thumb Master and has a new role to play.

• Anything Else: Don’t be limited by rules and regulations. Your card could give somebody a secret mission, or just be pretty. It could apply to everyone or one person. It could, if you want, just be a drawing. Do what you want!

It feels wrong to give you too many examples, because this game thrives on originality, but if I can help you get off the ground then that’s excellent. Here are a few more cards in my archive for a little inspiration.

Once you’ve played, please, please share your best cards with me on twitter, @IvanBrett. I want to make a hall-of-fame deck out of other people’s genius creations.

The Game Begins

Make sure you now have the right number of old, new and blank cards in the deck. Shuffle the deck, then deal 5 cards, face down, to each player.

One player needs to keep score on a piece of paper, although this is quite a difficult job. Everyone should be involved in making sure the scores keep updating correctly.

The player who was the ugliest baby moves first, by playing a card face up in front of any of the players, including himself or herself, or to the centre of the table. The instructions on the card then apply to the person who received the card. So, the receiver might earn some points, or have to do a certain task. Finally, the player should pick up a new card from the face-down deck in the centre of the table, to finish her turn.

It’s hard to tell you the rules when any card could change them. But . . . generally, play moves clockwise (unless it doesn’t) and players play one card in front of another player, then pick one up (unless they don’t). Players can’t pick up any card that has already been played (unless they can).

Cards that award points stay in front of you on the table but don’t keep on acting, while cards with persistent effects (such as ‘Talk like a horse’) continue to act until the end of the game, or until another card overrides them.

At any point in the game, if you have a blank card in your hand, you may write or draw on it. It’s best to save these blank cards so that you can react to other cards already on the table. For example, if somebody has played a card on your side of the table that says ‘The Floor is Lava! Keep your body off the floor’, you might make a card that says ‘Sudden Snowfall. The ground hardens up’, and play that card on top, when it’s your turn. Generally, if a card is covered up by another card played on top, the covered-up card no longer does anything. But . . . it’s up to you!

If at any point it isn’t clear how a card should work, decide as a group. This can happen from time to time, but it often creates the most interesting moments.

You’ll find very quickly that it’s not worth trying to win, particularly. I could easily write, ‘You win!’ on a card and play it on myself, but within seconds somebody else will have made a card that says ‘No you don’t’, and played that on top. In truth, if you’re trying to win, you’re probably playing the wrong game.

The End of the Game

The game ends when there are no more cards to play (or maybe another way if the cards say so). At this point, the player keeping the score should announce the winner, the loser, and any other accolades or awards that have been earned through the game. In one game, there were three different types of points to be won, so while I won the ‘points’ game, Isaac won the most money and John got the most puppies.

Whatever the case, it’s time to collect up all the cards and move on to the final stage of the game:

Review Phase

This stage is very enjoyable and really important, so don’t skip it! One player takes it in turns to show each card to the table, and you jointly decide if it will be used in the next game. Remember, every game starts with 26 cards held through from the last game.

Think about voting for not necessarily the funniest card, but the ones that will function best in the next game. Some cards were brilliant in the previous game, but might be too powerful or not meaningful enough for the next game. Once you’ve agreed on 26, keep them ready for the next time you play. It’s worth keeping an archive of rejected cards too, as it’s hugely entertaining to look back through them later.

This game is as much fun as you make it. Some people will crave more rigid rules, or get frustrated if they make good cards and don’t win. But give it time, and this game will reward you more than any other in this book. Plus, once you get started it’s really hard to stop. It’ll eat up your evening in an absolute flash.

72. Category Scramble

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Medium

1 hour

TAGS:
VOCABULARY,
STRATEGY,
COMPETITIVE

IN SHORT: An alphabet categories game. Think of words that fit into each category before the time runs out.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Paper and pencil for each player.

• List of categories (see here), photocopied or written out, then cut up, folded, and mixed in a hat.

• The letters of the alphabet, cut up and placed in another hat (don’t bother with Q, U, V, X, Y or Z – too hard!) Alternatively, you could use an online alphabet spinner.

• Countdown timer.

• Access to a search engine to check answers.

HOW TO PLAY

In each round you’ll need to select some random categories from your hat. How many you choose is up to you, but five is a nice round number. Place them in the middle of the table where every player can see them.

Next, one player should randomly pick a letter from the other hat, read it aloud to the group, and immediately begin the timer. I recommend 1 minute, but again, it’s up to the group to decide.

In the time given, each player should try to write down just one word or short phrase for each category that begins with this round’s letter. If there are five categories then each player should write the numbers 1–5 in a column on their paper, to make it clear which guess is for which category.

After the time is up, players compare their answers. It might be necessary to check if some answers are correct or not, using a search engine. If it’s still unclear, make a joint decision as a team. You get a point for each correct answer. In my opinion, a bit of incorrect spelling should not matter in this game, as long as the answer is clear enough.

First person to 50 points wins. Or 20 points. Or 40,000. Who am I to tell you when to finish your game?

EXAMPLE

The categories chosen were Superheroes, Vegetables, Movies, Things You Hide and Enormous Things. The letter was S.

Player 1 wrote down:

Player 2 wrote down:

Superman

1. Spider-Man

Salad

2. Sweet onion

Scream

3. San Andreas

Sugar

4. Smile

Space

5. –

The players decide that salad isn’t a type of vegetable because it can contain all sorts of ingredients, and that there’s no real reason to hide sugar. Player 1 argues that there is often hidden sugar in processed food. The others agree to give her the point. She gets 4 overall.

For Player 2’s answers, the others use the internet to search ‘sweet onion’ and are surprised to find that it is a type of onion! As for San Andreas, again the internet confirms that it is a film (a terrible film, but still a film). Player 2 says that he has to hide his smile in class or he gets detention, so he also gets 4 points.

TIP

• If you get stuck, think of two-word phrases that might fit the category. Kitchen scissors is a household item that begins with ‘k’, even if scissors begins with ‘s’.

LEVEL-UP

• If you have lots of players, why not introduce a rule whereby you only get a point if nobody else guesses the same answer as you? So if two people choose Superman, neither gets the point. It will encourage you to think of more unusual answers. Because of this new challenge, you may need a little more time per round.

• I have seen this game played where any player at any time can shout, ‘STOP THE CLOCK!’, at which point the round immediately ends. If the shouting player wins, they get double points for the round, but if they don’t win the round, or if it’s a tie, they get no points at all. Is it worth the risk?

73. Would You Rather?

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Easy

20 mins +

TAGS:
CREATIVE,
CONVERSATION,
WIND-DOWN

IN SHORT: Would you rather have toes instead of fingers, or fingers instead of hair?

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

There is no stranger way to digest your food than over a round or two of this choices game. Having said that, it’s huge amounts of fun, and encourages you to be very creative.

One player chooses two possibilities that are either both really horrible or really great. She then offers them to the other players in the form, ‘Would you rather _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ or _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _?’

The rest of the players should discuss and decide which option they would prefer. It works best if you really follow the idea through. What would it be like on the first day/a week after/twenty years after?

. . . And the game continues. The only competition is coming up with the best ‘Would You Rather?’ questions.

EXAMPLE

Start with these, then create your own:

• Would you rather freeze every time it’s cold, or melt every time it’s hot?

• Would you rather know everything about the future, or everything about the past?

• Would you rather sing every time you want to speak, or laugh every time you want to cry?

• Would you rather have one elephant-sized leg or two duck-sized legs?

• Would you rather have the power to talk to animals, or the power to connect your brain to the internet?

• Would you rather be hated and rich, or loved and penniless?

• Would you rather never eat chocolate again in your life, or have everything in the world turn into chocolate?

• Would you rather spend the rest of your life inside or outside?

• Would you rather eat the same food at every meal for the rest of your life (your choice) or never eat the same dish twice (you never choose)?

• Would you rather own a dragon or be a dragon?

• Would you rather be able to fly or be able to breathe underwater?

• Would you rather have feet instead of hands, or fingers instead of hair?

• Would you rather read people’s minds or be able to put thoughts inside people’s minds?

• Would you rather have an elephant’s trunk or a giraffe’s neck?

• Would you rather be stuck in a room with the dirty socks of everyone who ran the London Marathon, or run the London Marathon in bare feet?

74. Wavy Gravy

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Medium

30 mins

TAGS:
RHYME,
CONVERSATION,
COLLABORATIVE,
CREATIVE

IN SHORT: Find pairs of rhyming words that should never go together . . . and watch as the other players explain how they do.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

Thanks to my old pal Charlie for this one. It’s perfect for those long, rambling after-dinner conversations.

Players come up with a pair of rhyming words, such as Wavy Gravy. The only rule is that the words shouldn’t go well together, in terms of meaning. So Fat Cat or Cool Pool aren’t good here. It’s pretty obvious how you can have an overweight cat or, for that matter, a nice cool swimming pool. I actually have one of those two things. (Spoiler: it’s the cat.)

So, a pair of rhyming but unlikely words. Rock Clock would be a good one, or Flyin’ Lion.

Now, it’s every other player’s chance to prove how wrong you are. The words do fit together! Wavy Gravy is a commonly seen thing! They might explain how, in the government’s underground gravy reservoir, where the meaty sauce is saved up in case of a nuclear war, they have to keep the liquid agitated so that it doesn’t go mouldy. So they’ve installed a wave machine, making the surface of the gravy constantly wavy.

Or, for Rock Clock, perhaps one player would mention that the stone statue of Nelson in Trafalgar Square actually has a working watch on his wrist. It’s made entirely of granite, and is powered by a ‘hard rock current’ (AC/DC, apparently).

And Flyin’ Lion’s not really a rare pair of words. The reason lions sleep all day is because at night they creep up behind vultures and latch their claws into their feathers. When the vultures fly away, the lions get a lift, up into the clouds, for a refreshing night-time journey. It’s actually a pretty common sight in the African Savannah.

As you can see, this game has a pretty free structure. The basic model of play is that whatever rare rhyming pair a player thinks of, the other players assure her that, in fact, it’s common as muck. If this branches off into discussions of how much underground gravy is too much underground gravy, then that’s mission accomplished.

The winner of the game is the first person to have a really enjoyable evening.

TIP

• This game is all collaboration, no competition. Once a player’s had a really good go at describing why the phrase is a common one (and only when they’re finished), add your own seasoning to the pot with any more detail or explanation that struck you as they were speaking. Just make sure you only ever accept and build. Don’t contradict anything that the other player has said, or you’ll end up competing to have the best idea.

75. Two Truths and a Lie

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Medium

30 mins

TAGS:
CREATIVE,
GUESSING,
STRATEGY,
CONVERSATION

IN SHORT: Give three statements. One is a lie. Can the other players guess which?

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Paper and pencils to record the scores and write down your statements, if you aren’t good at remembering them.

HOW TO PLAY

This game is really good if you don’t know your dinner guests that well, but you want to change that. If you think you do in fact know everything about your dinner guests, this game might help to teach you that you don’t!

To begin, one player, the first ‘liar’, should think about two true facts about themselves that the other players won’t know. If you’re the liar, you could think about the things you’ve done in your life, the places you’ve been or the people you’ve met. You should then make up a false fact: something that sounds like it could be true, when in reality it’s total nonsense. Practise saying each one in your head, making the lie sound like the true ones.

Now the liar should say all three of their statements, with the lie popped in at random.

It’s everyone else’s job to call out the lie. Each player gets to make a guess, and after they’ve all done so, the liar reveals which was false. Every player who guessed it correctly gets a point, and the liar gets a point for every person he managed to fool.

Note down the scores on a piece of paper and then another person becomes the liar for the next round. Try at least four sets of statements per player before tallying the final scores.

EXAMPLE

Liar: ‘All right, here are my three statements:

A: I used to have an imaginary friend called Dirtyfeet, who was a bull.

B: I have ridden on a tame bull called Pavel.

C: I was once chased around a beach by a bull.’

Guesser 1: ‘I think it’s C. Why was a bull on a beach?’

Guesser 2: ‘I’m going for B. I’d know if you did that.’

Guesser 3: ‘Yeah, good point. I’m going B.’

Liar: ‘Yep, the lie was B.’

So, Guessers 2 and 3 get a point each for guessing correctly, while the Liar gets 1 point for fooling Guesser 1.

TIPS

• Notice how after Guesser 2 said that she knew the answer, she made it easier for Guesser 3. Don’t give anything away until after the answers have been revealed! You don’t want others getting points because of your knowledge. It might even help if you pretend to be unsure . . .

• If you can’t think of a lie, try making all your facts related in some way. Notice how all of the ones above were about bulls.

• It may be obvious, but make sure that your truths and lie aren’t always in the same order! There’s a bit of game theory to this, so I have to be careful what I say. Basically, wherever you’d normally put your lie . . . don’t put it there. Or, if people think you won’t, then do. Or something. I’m confused.

LEVEL-UP

• If you’re ready to move on, how about this one: every player thinks of a significant item from their past. It could be a teddy bear, your rattly old scooter or the tree in your childhood garden. However, if you want, you could make up a completely false item. Whether it’s true or false, describe the item to the other players, explaining why it’s important to you, what you used to do with it, where it is now, and so on. After you’ve finished, the other players should decide if this is a real item or not. It works well because for those who choose to lie, it’s wonderful fun to pretend to be all nostalgic about something you’ve just created.

• I heard an episode of the Adam Buxton podcast where he and the comedian Jayde Adams played a brilliant variation of this game using children you remember from your school days. Pick the names of two real kids you remember from your year at school and make up another. You could just say their full names, or add a little sentence about them. The other players have to guess which is the made-up child. Making up fake names is such fun, especially if you have to build a little character around them, too. (If you really like this version of the game, be an author. Making up little side-characters is part of our daily routine.)

76. No More Dogs

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Hard

Ongoing

TAGS:
MEMORY,
STRATEGY,
CIRCLE GAMES

IN SHORT: Pick from a shrinking selection of famous names, then make it even harder for your opponent.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

This is a naming game with a twist, which owes its existence to British comedians Mark Watson, Alex Horne and Tim Key. It’s simple to learn, but difficult to play. Groups of adults will get more from this than children, as a guide.

The first player names a well-known character (alive, dead, real, fictional, anything), and then eliminates everybody else in that category. For example, she might say, ‘Queen Elizabeth II. No more women.’

The next player must name somebody who hasn’t been eliminated yet, and then impose a new rule, and so on and so forth until one player cannot name a person who follows within all of the rules.

EXAMPLE

Player 1: ‘Queen Elizabeth II. No more women.’

(Player 2 has just one rule to follow, so it’s pretty easy right now.)

Player 2: ‘Scooby Doo. No more dogs.’

(Player 3’s job is still pretty easy: no women or dogs.)

Player 3: ‘Gary Barlow. No more English people.’

Player 4: ‘Andy Murray. No more real people.’

Player 1: ‘Count Dracula. No more names beginning with C.’

(By this point, Player 2 has a lot to remember. He needs to think of a non-female, non-dog, non-English, non-real, non-C-beginning character.)

Player 2: ‘Harry Potter?’

But Harry Potter is English! Player 2 loses this round.

TIPS

• There are two different types of rule. Some rules eliminate most possible answers. These make the game difficult, but they aren’t hard to remember. Then, there are the sleeper rules that everybody forgets about, because they don’t eliminate many answers. Then, five minutes later, somebody names a dog and loses.

• If someone’s already eliminated dead people, don’t eliminate living people. All you would have left are zombies, and nobody wants that. The same goes for real/fictional, young/old and all the other binary descriptions. Be more creative!

• Don’t forget, the rule can be anything from descriptions of the person, to the spelling of their name. Don’t limit it to their job.

LEVEL-UP

• This game was originally played by Watson, Horne and Key with a chess timer. Every time you say a word, you hit your button, start the opponent’s timer, and put the pressure on them. If they run out of time, they lose. It’s a more stressful version of the game and it requires a chess timer (which I certainly don’t have!) but it looks like fun.

77. Acrophobia

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

1+

Hard

10 mins per word

TAGS:
CREATIVE,
SILLY,
COMPETITIVE

IN SHORT: Competitive acronyms game.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Pen and paper.

HOW TO PLAY

An acronym is a word formed from the first letters of a phrase. So, for example, UK stands for United Kingdom and SCUBA stands for Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus. Who knew?

In this game, you’ll be making acronyms in reverse. Simply, one player, the judge, will come up with a random string of letters (between three and six works best) and write it on a napkin or a piece of paper, placing it in the centre of the table where all other players can see it. All the other players must come up with a phrase or sentence where the first letters of each word make the acronym.

You could write down your acronym, but why not just work it out in your head? It’ll be easier to change and edit your ideas, plus you’ll use fewer napkins and save the planet.

After one minute, each player must tell their acronym sentence to the group. Players can comment on which they like, but it’s the judge who picks a winner. She could choose the funniest, the one that sounds most like a real acronym, or the most creative.

If you want to keep score, the winner of the round gets 1 point. I advise not bothering with a score, but just handing the napkin to the winner of the round, so that they can make up the letters for the next acronym, and so on.

EXAMPLE

The judge writes down the letters ‘PCNLR’. Each player thinks for around 1 minute, or until they all look ready.

Player 1: ‘Please Can Nigel Learn Russian?’

Player 2: ‘Powdered Cheese: Now Less rubbery!’

Player 3: ‘Poets for the Creation of Nasty and Lame Rhymes.’

The judge decides that she prefers Player 2’s sentence, so now he takes the napkin for the next round.

TIPS

• Your acronym could be a simple, funny sentence like Player 1’s, or it could act like the title of a group, movement or project, like Player 3’s.

• If you’re getting stuck, first go to the ‘rarest’ letter and decide what that will be.

• Also remember that you can have little unimportant words between your main words that go into the acronym, just like Player 3 did. It’s less satisfying, and people might not like it as much, but it’s done all the time in real life.

LEVEL-UP

• If there are lots of you (at least six), and you each have pieces of paper, it’s possible to play a slightly more complicated version of this game. Here everyone writes down their sentence secretly, then hands their paper to the judge. The judge now reads out the sentences in a random order, and the rest of the players vote on which is their favourite. Obviously, you can’t vote for your own sentence. The player with the most votes gets a point, and makes up the letters for the next round.

78. Fictionary

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Hard

30 mins +

TAGS:
WRITING,
GRAMMAR,
WIND-DOWN

IN SHORT: An after-dinner definitions game. Tremendous fun!

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• As many dictionaries as possible. (You can also use randomword.com for your random word needs!)

• Pencils and paper for every player.

• A way to hide your paper. Lean on a big book or use clipboards.

HOW TO PLAY

This game takes a little time, but it’s great for those cosy post-meal scenarios where everyone just needs to loosen up a little.

Pass the dictionary around the room. Each player should flick to a random page and find a word that they think the others will not know. Without anybody else seeing, write that word, as well as its definition, on your paper.

Now, create two more fake definitions for this word. Try to make them as formal and grown-up as the definition from the dictionary. The aim is to convince the other players that one of your made-up definitions is the real one.

Pay attention to the word type. Whether your word is a noun (a thing), a verb (an action) or an adjective (a description), make sure your fake definitions are that too.

Once everybody is ready with their words, the first player reads his word a couple of times, then the three definitions. Make sure to vary the order of your definitions, so that you don’t always read the real one first.

The other players must choose which is the real definition. This is a team game, so you must come to a decision as a group. Then the player reveals the real definition. If she managed to fool the group, she gets a point, otherwise nobody does. Go around the circle until everybody has had a turn. Then begin again.

EXAMPLE

Quinzhee. It’s a noun. But what does it mean?

A: A five-wheeled carriage.

B: A type of crossbow.

C: A snow shelter.

(Answer: C! If you got it wrong, then I get a point.)

TIP

• Make sure to practise reading the real definition. If you get stuck on a word when reading it aloud, it’s really obvious that you didn’t write it and everybody will call your bluff.

79. Botticelli

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Hard

20–30 mins

TAGS:
MEMORY,
CIRCLE GAMES,
WIND-DOWN

IN SHORT: A fun ‘guess the celeb’ style game, with some interesting rules.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

I’ve marked this as a ‘hard’ game, because your knowledge of famous people and their names needs to be pretty good. Kids could have a go, but they might find it a little frustrating.

One player, the celebrity, decides to be any famous person from history or the present day. For this game to work, it should be somebody that all the other players know about and could name.

The celebrity gives one clue to begin: the initial letter of the mystery person’s surname. ‘My surname begins with S,’ she might say.

Now it is time for the other players to guess who the celebrity is. However, their style of question is limited: they must ask a yes/no question that would lead to that person’s name. So, for example, if the guesser wanted to guess Arnold Schwarzenegger, he might ask, ‘Did you play the Terminator?’

Now, three things could happen:

• If the guesser is right, then the celebrity responds, ‘Yes, I am Arnold Schwarzenegger!’ and the guesser wins. He is the celebrity for the next turn.

• If the guesser is wrong but the celebrity knows who he’s talking about, then she must respond, ‘No, I am not Arnold Schwarzenegger,’ and then the next guesser gets to guess.

• However, if the celebrity doesn’t know who the guesser is asking about, then the guesser gets to ask a free question about the secret person. (Any question is allowed, so long as the answer wouldn’t have to include all or part of the celebrity’s name.) So the guesser might now ask, ‘How old are you?’ or ‘What are you famous for?’ The celebrity’s response will help narrow down the other players’ next guesses.

This is a fun game to play because it puts requirements on every player. The guessers must think of celebrities with that initial letter, while the celebrities must follow clues to work out who the guessers are guessing. There are a few moving parts, though, so if you’re confused, look at this example.

EXAMPLE

(Player 1 has picked Winston Churchill.)

Player 1: ‘My surname begins with C.’

Player 2: ‘All right. Were you in black and white movies?’

Player 1: ‘No, I’m not Charlie Chaplin.’

Player 3: ‘OK, did you sing “All I Want for Christmas Is You”?’

Player 1: ‘No, I’m not . . . erm . . .’

Player 3: ‘Mariah Carey! That means I get a free question. What nationality are you?’

Player 1: ‘British.’

Player 4: ‘OK, so do you judge The X Factor?’

Player 1: ‘No, I’m not Simon Cowell.’

Player 2: ‘Do you play James Bond?’

Player 1: ‘Ooh, I know his name . . . I do . . . bother. Dunno.’

Player 2: ‘Daniel Craig! Right, free question. What is your job?’

Player 1: ‘I’m a politician.’

Player 3: ‘Ooh, I know! Did you help Britain win World War II?’

Player 1: ‘Yes! I’m Winston Churchill!’

TIPS

• Go through different jobs that famous people might have with the letter ‘C’ held firmly in your head.

• Go through the alphabet of your second choice. ‘Ca, Cb, Cc, Cd’ etc. It might help you think of surnames.

80. Hunt for the Pair

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

5+

Hard

15 mins per round

TAGS:
GUESSING,
STRATEGY,
COMPETITIVE

IN SHORT: Two players are given a secret word, and must identify each other. The other players must bluff to appear like they have the word.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Lots of slips of paper, small, but not too small. A4 cut into quarters is perfect. If you have tiny handwriting, you could cut each piece of A4 into eighths.

• A piece of paper to keep score.

• Pencil or pen for each player.

HOW TO PLAY

This game is excellent, but a little complicated. Bear with me on this one, and use the example for clarification. It has excellent replay value, but the first couple of times you play you’ll need somebody to know these rules really well.

One player will be the dealer for this turn. Each turn, this role passes to the left, so everybody will have to be the dealer eventually.

The Setup

The dealer takes a slip of paper for every other player (if there are four other players, she takes four slips of paper). Without any other players seeing, she chooses one random word and writes it at the top of two of the slips of paper. On the others, she writes the word ‘BLUFF’. The dealer needs to leave space on the paper for something else later, so she must not take up all the space. Finally, the dealer shuffles the slips of paper so that the secret words and the bluffs are in a random order.

Now, all the other players put out their hands and close their eyes, and the dealer hands out the slips of paper face down (or folded). As soon as each player has their slip, they can look at their word, taking care not to let anyone else see. Two players, the pair, will have the secret word, and the rest will have ‘BLUFF’.

Here’s where the fun begins. If you are one of the pair, your aim is to discover your partner and identify yourself to them, without giving it away to the bluffers. If you are a bluffer, your aim is to work out who has the words at the same time as convincing others that you have the secret word. There are two identical rounds, which work as follows:

Round 1

Starting with the player to the left of the dealer, each player must say just one word that links to the secret word. So, if you are one of the pair, and it is ‘ball’, you might say ‘goal’ or ‘inflate’. Hopefully, your counterpart will pick up on your link.

If you are a bluffer then you won’t know what word to link to. You’ll have to say any word that sounds like it might link. Use other people’s words as a guide here. Of course, if you have to say your word first, and you’re bluffing, you’re at a disadvantage because you have absolutely nothing to go on. On the plus side, you might be able to spot a few bluffers if they say words that link to your made-up one.

Once every player has said one word, Round 1 ends. Every player may choose at this point to guess on their slip who the two players with the secret word are. (If you have the secret word, you already know one of them!) Bear in mind, though, that if you vote in Round 1, you may not vote in Round 2.

If you wish to vote, write ‘Round 1:’ and then the two names of the pair. If you do not, write ‘Round 1: No Vote’. Whatever the case, keep your slip of paper secret until the end of the whole game. You may not make half your vote in Round 1 and half in Round 2. And you only get points if you get both names right. It’s all or nothing.

Round 2

In the same order, say just one word. By this point, if you are a bluffer, you may have more of an idea what the secret word is.

After the second round, everybody gets their final chance to vote. If you have not already voted, write ‘Round 2:’ and then the two names of the pair. If you already voted in Round 1, write ‘Round 2:No Vote’.

Finally, all bluffers get one chance to guess the mystery word. They must write it as such at the bottom of their paper like so: ‘The word is: . . .’

The Reveal

Now the game is over. One by one, players should turn over their slips of paper, revealing if they were bluffing or if they had the secret word, and what their guess was. The scoring works as follows:

• Correct guess of the pair in Round 1: 3 points

• Correct guess of the pair in Round 2: 2 points

• Correct guess of the secret word (bluffers only): 1 point

Important: The pair who have the secret word only get their points if BOTH PLAYERS guess correctly.

After the points have been added to the scores by the dealer, the role passes to the left, and another round begins.

EXAMPLE

The dealer writes ‘APPLE’ on two of the pieces of paper and ‘BLUFF’ on the rest. Once they have all received their paper and secretly read the word, the game begins. Player 2 and Player 5 find that they are the pair. Notice how the bluffers use any clue to try to appear like the pair, while the pair try to blend in.

Player 1: ‘Black.’

Player 2: ‘Blackberry.’

Player 3: ‘Mud.’

Player 4: ‘Plum.’

Player 5: ‘Snake.’

At the end of Round 1, Player 3 takes the risk for a bigger score and writes ‘Round 1: Player 2 and Player 4’. He will get 0 points for this. Everyone else writes ‘Round 1:No Vote’. Nobody knows anybody else’s votes yet, though.

In the second round, everybody has a better idea of the secret word, so the guesses get closer.

Player 1: ‘Orange.’

Player 2: ‘Core.’

Player 3: ‘Tree.’

Player 4: ‘Apple.’

Player 5: ‘Pip.’

Players 2 and 5 know it isn’t Player 4, because she said the actual word. Player 5 writes down, ‘Round 2: Players 2 and 5’, but even though he’s correct, Player 2 has written, ‘Round 2: Players 2 and 3’, so neither gets any points. Player 1 guesses ‘Round 2: Players 2 and 5. The word is: apple.’ He gets 3 points: 2 for a correct guess in Round 2, and 1 for the correct word.

TIP

• The best thing about this game is that you can develop all sorts of tactics. Would it benefit you to pretend you had the secret word if you actually don’t? Would it benefit you to pretend you’re bluffing, when in fact you know the word? The game changes with the people playing it, which is great.

CHAPTER 9

A VERY MERRY CHRISTMASfn1

Christmas: a day that’s been looming since October, and it’s finally here. This morning, after presents, you climbed into your best apron and got on with the annual turkey-wrestle, using that fun new recipe where you stick a can of beer up its bum. Your parents arrived too early, so Mum spent the whole morning commenting on your culinary skills and Dad popped open the drinks cabinet rather too soon. Your brother and his wife and their baby arrived next, who you all love but can’t hug because your hands are covered in turkey juice.

Anyway, Christmas lunch for nine came together well. The potatoes were particularly crispy. Yes, Dad choked on a pig-in-blanket and your daughter elbowed over a quite large glass of red after pulling too hard on a Christmas cracker, but you’re all full up and the Christmas pudding’s been roundly ignored, which can only be a good sign.

Somehow, you all roll yourselves into the living room, and then there’s that awful moment of realisation that nobody has anything to do for the rest of the day. The Queen’s speech is about to start on TV, and the fear is that once she’s been switched on, nobody will have the energy to turn her off again.

But it’s OK. I have just the answer. In this chapter are ten games that you can play on a lazy festive afternoon with all the in-laws and cousins, with no movement required. So curl up by a Netflix stream of a crackling fire, climb into your warmest jumper and crack open one of the games in this chapter.

They’re fun for everyone, even more so accompanied by a sherry. Each has massive repeat value, but nobody’s going to be asked to dance around or do an animal impression. These are full-belly, curtains-drawn, sofa-full-of-family games that everyone will enjoy.

81. One-Word Story

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Easy

5–20 mins

TAGS:
STORYTELLING,
VOCABULARY,
CIRCLE GAMES,
SILLY

IN SHORT: Quick-fire storytelling game that never fails to be hilarious.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

This game involves taking turns, so first of all, decide on an order of play. Clockwise around the room would work.

One player begins by saying the first word of a story. Then the next player will say the next, followed by another word by the third player, and so on.

This is really a top tip, but it’s so important that it has to go here: always accept what’s come before and build upon it. Every time you play this game, you’ll have your own idea of where the story should go. Unfortunately, other players may have different ideas and take a turn you didn’t want. Whichever twist or turn the story takes, just go with it and enjoy the ride.

The game ends whenever feels right! If it begins to trail off, wait until the person before you says ‘the’ and then use the word ‘end’. That seems to work.

EXAMPLE

Player 1: ‘Once’

Player 2: ‘upon’

Player 3: ‘a’

Player 4: ‘time’

Player 1: ‘there’

Player 2: ‘was’

Player 3: ‘a’

Player 4: ‘werewolf . . .’

Etc.

TIPS

• There are two ways that this game ends up going: crazy or sensible. Both are great, and I won’t say that one is better than the other, BUT sometimes in a game you’ll get almost everybody trying to make a sensible story and one person simply saying ‘werewolf’ every time it’s their turn. Unless everyone’s being crazy, don’t be the werewolf guy! It’s not going to make the game fun for anybody apart from you.

• When everyone’s dying to have a say in the story, it’s frustrating if you keep getting forced to say the dull words like ‘of’. Don’t worry – your time will come . . .

82. Twenty Questions
(a.k.a. Animal, Vegetable, Mineral)

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Easy

10 mins per round

TAGS:
STRATEGY,
GUESSING,
CONVERSATION,
PASS THE TIME

IN SHORT: The well-known guessing game that requires players to ask meaningful questions to discover the answer.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

This game is perfect for Christmas because it’s so easy to get involved. Everybody can have guesses, and nobody has to leave their warm spot on the sofa.

One player, the picker, picks an item in the world. It could be animal (including anything made from animals), vegetable (all plants, including anything made from plants, e.g. a wooden spoon) or mineral (the rest, basically – anything that isn’t alive and was never alive). They must keep this word a secret.

The guessers may now ask up to twenty questions to discover the secret item. They can all chip in whenever they want; they don’t need to take turns. Traditionally, the first question is, ‘Animal, Vegetable or Mineral?’ to which the picker must answer with at least one of the three words. After that, every other question must only be given a yes/no answer. The picker may not say anything other than these two words, even if the guesser tries to ask a different sort of question.

Keep track on your fingers of the number of questions you’ve asked.

The guessers can guess at the item whenever they like, but that counts as one of their twenty questions.

If the twenty questions pass and the guessers have not guessed correctly, the game is over and the picker could reveal the answer, then pick another word. If one of the guessers does guess the word correctly then they become the picker.

EXAMPLE

Guesser 1: ‘Animal, vegetable or mineral?’

Picker: ‘Animal.’

Guesser 2: ‘Is it alive?’

Picker: ‘Yes.’

Guesser 3: ‘Can you keep it as a pet?’

Picker: ‘No.’

Guesser 2: ‘Does it live in the sea?’

Picker: ‘Yes.’

Guesser 1: ‘How big is it?’

Picker: ‘NO!’ (It wasn’t a yes/no question.)

Guesser 1: ‘OK, you bore. Is it really big?’

Picker: ‘Yes!’

Guesser 1: ‘Is it a whale?’

Picker: ‘Yes! You did it in seven questions!’

TIPS

• Before you begin, make sure everybody agrees what you can and cannot choose:

1. Can you choose a particular person, rather than just ‘human’, as your answer?

2. Can you choose something imaginary or a character on TV?

3. Do animal products like milk and leather count as animal or mineral? (My advice is animal, but you decide!)

• Some items are more than one thing. For example, a shoe has animal (leather from a cow), vegetable (rubber sole from a rubber tree) and mineral (metal strap buckle). If this is the case, the picker should answer the first question with ‘Animal, vegetable and mineral.’

• If you fancy yourself an expert at this game, you’ll be trying to get the answer in as few questions as possible. The following is an experimental and risky tactic that can drastically reduce the number of guesses you take, as long as you’re ready to employ a bit of boolean logic. It’s based on that proven tactic to always win ‘Guess Who?’. Basically, you ask two questions at once. ‘Does it swim in the ocean OR fly in the air?’ If the answer is no, you’ve chopped off two possible categories in one question. ‘Is it made of wood AND worth more than a hundred pounds?’ If the answer is yes, you have found out two important facts about the item.

• Of course, this tactic relies on all players understanding the real meanings of AND and OR. For an OR question to have the answer ‘yes’, only one part of the question needs to be true, but if both are true you’ll get the answer ‘yes’ as well. For an AND question to have the answer ‘yes’, both parts of the question must be true. For more on this topic, ask a pedant.

LEVEL-UP

• You could instigate a ‘winner stays on’ rule, where for as long as you get a ‘yes’ answer, you may ask another question. This is fun but really not necessary as it makes the game a little more about yourself and less about the group.

83. Say What You See

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Easy

Up to 1 hour

TAGS:
ARTY,
STRATEGY,
GUESSING,
GRAMMAR

IN SHORT: Guess what’s being drawn the fastest and it’s your turn to draw!

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Paper or mini whiteboard, large enough for everyone to see, and pencil/pen.

• List of words (Ideas Bank 2, 3 and 4 here) printed and cut up.

• Optional: colouring pencils/felt tips OR a drawing app on a tablet.

HOW TO PLAY

The best thing about this game is that it can be as simple or as difficult as you want to make it.

At its simplest, one player, the artist, draws a word from the hat (or chooses one), and attempts to draw it for the other players. The guessers’ aim is to guess the word. The artist may not use any words, letters or numbers in her image, and she may not speak at all. The guessers may shout out as many guesses as they like, but the first to guess the correct word wins the round, gets a point and is next to draw.

If you want a challenge, then there’s a quick twist that makes this game way better. I didn’t put this in the Level-Up section because I think it’s really worth trying once you’re confident with the game.

The twist is this: choose to ban common and proper nouns. Take out all the words from the Ideas Bank 4 here, for a start. This means that simple objects (cat, dog, chair) and names (London, Gal Gadot, Manchester United) are not allowed. Instead, you may choose one of the following types of words to draw. I won’t give you too many examples because if everybody reads them then they will be easy to guess.

• Abstract nouns: things, but not things you can touch, e.g. pride, success, love, or any word ending in -ment or -tion.

• Verbs: actions, e.g. running, crying, losing. (You can accept the guess in the present participle form – with the -ing ending – or the infinitive form, e.g. run, cry, lose.)

• Adjectives: words that describe a thing, e.g. muddy, ugly, exhausted.

• Prepositions: words that locate a thing, e.g. under, over, between.

You could, if you like, begin by telling the other players which type of word this is. Then begin to draw.

TIP

• Remember that it’s difficult to see what someone’s drawing if it’s upside down or far away. Either everybody should sit on one side of a table, or you need to set up some sort of screen or easel, or mount some big paper on the wall so that everyone can see what you are doing. With lots of players, think about this well in advance of the game or it gets annoying.

LEVEL-UP

• If some players brute-force a victory by yelling every word they know until they finally get it, you could limit each player to three guesses per round. Watch how they carefully wait until they’re almost sure, before guessing!

• You could extend the game to use well-known idioms or phrases, such as ‘Don’t put the cart before the horse’ or ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth’.

84. The Exquisite Corpse

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

3+

Medium

20 mins

TAGS:
GRAMMAR,
VOCABULARY,
SILLY,
COLLABORATIVE

IN SHORT: Follow a sequence of word types to make your own brand of nonsense.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Paper and pencil for every player.

HOW TO PLAY

A game about grammar that’s good for Christmas? But school’s out! Nobody wants an English lesson. Well . . . this one’s a proper chuckler for every generation. Give it a go.

Many sentences follow the same pattern of word classes. In other words, we can generate sentences just by blindly following some simple rules. So, we’ll use this to make mischief.

Each player should write a determiner at the top of their piece of paper, then fold the top over so that the next person cannot see it. Then everybody passes their paper clockwise.

On the paper that you were passed, write an adjective, then fold it over.

The order of the words, which every person must use, is as follows:

• A determiner (‘a’, ‘an’, or ‘the’)

• An adjective (a descriptive word, like ‘sloppy’)

• A noun (a thing, like ‘letterbox’)

• A verb (an action, like ‘jumped’)

• An adverb (describing a verb, like ‘politely’)

• A preposition (positioning two nouns in relation to each other, like ‘under’)

• A possessive pronoun (a word that shows ownership, like ‘his’)

• Another adjective (a descriptive word, like ‘red’)

• Another noun (a thing, like ‘spoon’)

Once all nine words have been written on each piece of paper, it’s time to unroll it and see the sentence that has been created!

Looking up at my list, my sentence reads as follows: The sloppy letterbox jumped politely under his red spoon.

TIPS

• The more players, the better. If there are only three (or fewer) of you playing, you might get too much say over what each particular sentence does.

• If your sentence doesn’t make sense grammatically, feel free to add or alter a couple of words at the end of the game. For example, ‘a apple’ might need changing to ‘an apple’.

LEVEL-UP

• Feeling bold? Use your random sentence as the first line for a story. See where it takes you.

85. Identity Crisis

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

4+

Medium

20 mins

TAGS:
WIND-DOWN,
GUESSING, CIRCLE
GAMES

IN SHORT: Work out who on earth you are, while helping others do the same.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Address labels or other stickers that will stay on a forehead. (I’ve seen people play this game with normal paper, a lick and a prayer. If you’re disgusting, like them, then go ahead.)

HOW TO PLAY

This game is a massive giggler, and perfect for bringing the family together because you’re all working to help each other.

Every player must clearly write the name of a celebrity or fiction character on their sticker, then stick it on the forehead of the person on their left. It really helps if this character is well known, particularly by the person who’s about to have it stuck to them. You also need to make sure the person on your left doesn’t see what you’ve written.

As soon as the sticker is on your forehead, everyone can see your ‘new name’ except you. So, it’s your job to work out who you are! Each player now takes it in turns to ask the group a yes/no question about themselves, going around the circle. So, you might ask, ‘Am I real?’ or ‘Am I famous for making something?’

If you think you know who you are, you may have a guess, but that will count as your turn. Once you have guessed correctly, then you may rip off your sticker (plus the top layer of your forehead skin), and spend the rest of the game just answering questions, not asking them.

TIPS

• Whatever your question, try to gain as much information as possible from the others’ response. For example, if granny isn’t answering your questions as much as other players, then perhaps you are better known by young people. If everybody laughs when you ask, ‘Do I have a special talent?’ then perhaps you are somebody who has questionable skill at something, like Justin Bieber.

• This game doesn’t work in a room with lots of mirrors, for obvious reasons! Similarly, don’t let anybody go to the toilet unless they’ve already guessed their name.

LEVEL-UP

• Here’s a fun ice-breaker for a party situation. Before your guests arrive, the host writes all the names on stickers, choosing related pairs of names (for example Micky/Minnie, Ant/Dec, Torvill/Dean) and then sticks them on the guests’ foreheads as they come through the door. Rather than taking it in turns, each player may ask questions about themselves, but only one question to any one guest. So, they’ll be talking to as many people as possible, trying to work out who they are. However, the real aim is not only to work that out, but to find your pair. Once you and your pair think you’ve identified each other, link arms and ask another guest, ‘Are we a pair?’ If so, you’ve won! Rip off those stickers and enjoy the rest of the party.

• If you play this version of the game, it’s important that you never flat-out guess who you are. If you see ‘Prince Philip’, and think you might be the pair, you may not ask somebody, ‘Am I Queen Elizabeth?’ You could, however, ask, ‘Do I live in a palace?’ or ‘Am I covered in corgis?’

86. Letter Links

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Medium

10–20 mins per chain

TAGS:
STRATEGY,
MEMORY,
SPELLING, WIND-
DOWN

IN SHORT: Take it in turns to make a chain of related things, linked by letter.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

A good circle game that dredges up all sorts of interesting ideas and memories from your turkey-plumped brains.

So, pick a nice broad category containing lots of members. You can find these here, or pick your own, but make sure it’s a category that has hundreds of members. Musical artists or animals is a great start. Only pick a category within which everyone can name plenty of items. It’s no fun if you pick cricket players and your mum doesn’t like cricket.

One player should start by naming any member of that category. Rotate about the room clockwise, naming members of that category that begin with the letter that ended the previous word.

The game continues for as long as you can continue the chain. If somebody gets stuck, help them with clues, but don’t give away an answer or it’s just you having another turn.

EXAMPLE

The players have decided to name musical artists or bands. For bands that begin with ‘The’, they skip this word.

Player 1: ‘Beatles.’

(Player 1 has ended her answer on S. Player 2 must begin his with S.)

Player 2: ‘Shirley Bassey.’

(Player 2 has ended his answer on Y. Player 3 must begin her answer with Y.)

Player 3: ‘Yeah Yeah Yeahs.’

Etc.

TIP

• Quite quickly, you’ll learn the danger letters. I’ve always played this as a team game, so ending your word with ‘x’ is bad manners, really. If you want to be competitive, however, then it’s a good ploy.

87. First Lines

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

4+

Medium

30 mins

TAGS:
WRITING,
CREATIVE, WIND
-DOWN, CIRCLE
GAMES

IN SHORT: Can you fake the first line of a book?

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Pencil and slips of paper for each person.

• A sheet of paper to keep score.

• A shelf full of books, preferably old or strange ones.

HOW TO PLAY

It’s Boxing Day. Your enormous extended family: cousins and uncles and aunts (oh my!), have all gathered at your granny’s house, but there’s nothing there but parquet floors, comfy chairs and books. How on earth will you have a good time? This creative, cockle-warming game is all about mimicking the writing style of a book based on the cover and title. It’s absurdly satisfying and, depending on who’s playing, can be either hilarious and silly or a legitimate literary challenge.

Each round, one player becomes the librarian. They select a book from the bookshelf. It could be fiction or non-fiction, old or new, well known or obscure.

Now the librarian displays the cover of the book for all of the other players. They could read the title aloud, show the cover image and even recite some of the blurb. What they must not do is open the book up. Once everyone feels like they know what the book’s about, it’s time to play.

All of the players (except the librarian) must create what they think sounds convincingly like the first line of the book. You could decide together here whether you are going to write just the first line (ending in the middle of a sentence) or run on to the end of the first sentence. Both work great.

Write the line on a slip of paper and hand it to the librarian, making sure that nobody else sees it. Meanwhile, the librarian opens up the book to the first proper page (skipping over quotes, title page and foreword, etc.) and writes down the real first line, adding this to the pile of fake first lines.

Once everybody has written a line, the librarian shuffles them up and reads them aloud. Everybody must listen carefully and decide which they think is the real line. At the end, each player except the librarian gets a guess.

• If you guess the correct first line, you get 1 point.

• If someone mistakes your fake first line for the real one, you get 1 point.

After the points have been added to the score sheet, the librarian should pass the job to the person on their left, and you can play another round! This time, try a completely different style of book.

EXAMPLE

The librarian picks out The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane.

Librarian: ‘The Old Ways, a Journey on Foot, by Robert Macfarlane. It’s got a winding footpath on the front and a guy walking barefoot on the back. There’s no blurb, I’m afraid.’

Player 1 writes: ‘On a cool Thursday morning in February, I laced up my boots and set off for a walk that would change my life.’

Player 2 writes: ‘When Tom Robertson lost his left foot in a terrible lawnmowing accident, he thought he’d never walk again.’

Player 3 submits: ‘I slept in a hedgerow that night, nestled amongst blackberries and their prickly twins, the thorns.’

The librarian adds the real first line: ‘Two days short of the winter solstice; the turn of the year’s tide.’

The librarian shuffles the lines, then reads them aloud. Players 1 and 3 vote for ‘Two days short . . .’ and get a point each for a correct guess. Player 2 votes for ‘On a cool . . .’ so Player 1 gets another point for fooling somebody.

Now Player 1 becomes the librarian, and he picks out Casper Candlewacks in Death by Pigeon, by Ivan Brett. That sounds terrible.

TIPS

• The librarian should read through the first lines in their head before reading them aloud, just to make sure that they don’t struggle to read any handwriting, which would clearly give away which one was made up. Also, it might help them get any potential giggles out of the way.

• When writing, think about the age of the book, the style of language used in that type of book, the intended audience and the content. They should all affect your first line.

LEVEL-UP

• If you’re in a group of people who like to be silly, the librarian can give special bonus points to the entry that earns the loudest laugh each round. This just means that people who had great ideas that weren’t very convincing can still score points. It’s best to award all these points before revealing who wrote each one, to avoid favouritism.

• How about flipping this around, and having the players design the cover? Every player closes their eyes and the librarian picks out a book that they think nobody knows. Just from the title, every player has to sketch the cover, including image, text design, perhaps a quote. The closest to the real cover wins. (If you own the bookshelf, you might remember the cover, too, so for you to win your cover will need to be perfect.)

88. Consequences

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

3+

. . . but the more the better!

Medium

10 mins per round

TAGS:
WRITING,
GRAMMAR,
COLLABORATIVE,
SILLY

IN SHORT: The classic fold-over game where everybody’s ideas mix around to make odd stories.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Lots of paper.

• Pencils for each player.

HOW TO PLAY

If you haven’t played this with your family at Christmas, it’s time to start. It’s an oldie that I couldn’t faithfully write a book of games without including. Every player starts with a piece of paper. Each round, they will write something, then fold the paper over so that their idea is hidden, and pass the paper to their left.

The whole idea of this game is that the stories end up being very silly indeed. So be creative about your words! Look in the examples for more help here.

The following is the order of what each person writes:

• An adjective that describes a person.

• A man’s name.

• An adjective that describes a person.

• A woman’s name.

• A place.

• An item of clothing.

• An item of clothing.

• A sentence to be spoken aloud.

• A sentence to be spoken aloud.

• The consequence (or what happened next).

• What the world said (a general opinion).

Now here’s the fun part. Once each piece of paper has been written on, and folded over, eleven times, it is passed one final time and unrolled fully. Now, players take it in turns to read out the story on the paper they’ve ended up holding using the following structure, but dropping in the words on your page in the right places:

One day, 1 2 met 3 4 at 5. He wore 6. She wore 7. He said 8. She said 9. In the end, 10, and the world said 11.

EXAMPLE

Once Player 1 has unrolled her piece of paper, she reads the story, using all of the suggestions in order.

‘One day, wonky Steven met three-metres-tall Emily on Mount Everest. He wore a pair of flying goggles. She wore a coat made of newspaper. He said, “Pass the jam.” She said, “That’s a very rude thing to say to a woman!” In the end, they started a band and toured the world. And the world said, “No thanks.”’

LEVEL-UP

• There are only so many times to play this without it getting a little repetitive, but the game doesn’t end there. Make up your own orders to create whole new stories. Use this one below, or create your own.

1. Name

2. Place

3. Reason (because s/he . . .)

4. An event (something happened)

5. An event (something happened)

6. A feeling or emotion

7. A verb (action – use past tense, e.g. ‘exploded’ or ‘ate a banana’)

8. Name

9. A verb (action – use present tense, e.g. ‘ride a unicyle’ or ‘pick his nose’)

1 went to 2 because s/he 3. First of all, 4. Then, 5. After all that, s/he felt 6 so s/he 7. In the end, 8 had to come and 9 to sort it all out.

89. Brian! Brian?

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Hard

5 mins +

TAGS:
NOISY, MATHS,
ACTING, CODE

IN SHORT: The weirdest method you’ll ever use for counting to twenty.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

Shake off the dead weight that was that extra portion of Christmas pudding by getting involved with this noisy, silly counting game.

I learned this one from a friend, Alice, and thought at first that she was kidding. It’s full of performance and fun, and comes with a crack-up guarantee: if it doesn’t make you laugh, I’ll send you a replacement game.

Learning how to play takes a couple of stages, so bear with me.

Firstly, let’s talk about Roman numerals. As I’m sure you know, the Romans used a combination of letters to stand for numbers. Here you will just need to be familiar with the numbers from 1 to 20:

On we go to the next stage. We’re going to replace each letter with a couple of words:

I = Brian!

V = Your friend Ian is here!

X = He wants to know if you can come out and play!

So, for example, the number 16 (XVI) would be, ‘He wants to know if you can come out and play! Your friend Ian is here! Brian!’

So, with this new code, you can count from 1 to 20 in a whole new way. In this game, players take it in turns to say the next number in the sequence, first translated into Roman numerals, then translated in Brian numerals.

But wait . . . there’s more! The whole game should be performed as if you’re an annoyed mother, calling upstairs to her son to alert him of a visitor at the door. When I was told this game, the mother was also Australian. I don’t know how important that aspect is, but if you’ve come this far, you may as well go with that extra complication.

Take your string of motherly nags and really act it. You could join sentences, change emphasis or anything, really, except changing the words or order.

Rather than this game being competitive, if somebody goes wrong or gets confused, give them a hand remembering the order and then let them have a crack at it again. It shouldn’t be a mean game, especially when acting is required.

EXAMPLE

Player 1: ‘Brian!’

Player 2: ‘Brian! Brian?’

Player 3: ‘Brian! Brian? Brian!’

Player 4: ‘Brian? Your friend Ian is here!’

Player 1: ‘Your friend Ian is here!’

Player 2: ‘Your friend Ian is here, Brian!’

Etc.

LEVEL-UP

• If you need more, then here it is. Look at the game Twenty-One Dares in this very book (here). The game can be played not with numbers, but Brians, for total confusion for anybody listening in.

• Or, if you don’t want to turn it into a dares game, just keep counting. How about 50 (L) being ‘He’s still waiting!’ and 100 (C) being ‘For God’s sake!’ Now 162 would be ‘For God’s sake! He’s still waiting! He wants to know if you can come out and play! Brian! Brian?’

90. Blabbermouth

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

3+

Hard

20–40 mins

TAGS:
CREATIVE,
MEMORY,
STRATEGY,
COMPETITIVE

IN SHORT: A take on the classic talking game, which forces you to think on your feet.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• A stopwatch that can count down. Almost every smartphone has this function.

• Talking topics (here) printed out or photocopied, then cut out and put into a hat.

• Invisible buzzers, one for each person. (You could use a bell or a kazoo, or anything noisy, but personally, I’m a big fan of creating my own invisible one. Not only is it free, but you can also spend multiple hours honing your own personal noise. I do a kind of honk while pressing downwards with my fingers knitted together, but don’t let that sway you.)

• Paper and pencil, to keep score.

HOW TO PLAY

This old favourite gives everyone a chance to have a natter, and is perfect when you have different generations sitting together. Choose one player to be the judge. This will change after every round, so don’t fret about who goes first. The player directly to the judge’s right, the speaker, picks a talking topic from the hat. She reads it aloud to the other players, and then the judge immediately begins the countdown timer.

The speaker has to speak for one minute on the topic in hand. However, there are rules. Any other player (except the judge) may buzz the speaker if she breaks one of these three rules:

• Pausing: The big one. You cannot stop to think. Any pause longer than a hurried breath is punishable by a buzz.

• Going off topic: If your subject is ‘Bees’, and you talk about honey, and then honey on toast, and then beans on toast, that’s off topic. (If you talked about bees on toast, then that would be fine. Also delicious.) Another example of going off topic is speaking in nonsense or just counting, for example.

• Repeating a word: This is a tricky one. For experts, you should not be allowed to repeat any word except for the ones on the card. For beginners, repetition of high frequency words such as ‘the’, ‘but’ and ‘I’ could be allowed. Make sure that you agree on the rule before you begin, to avoid arguments. (And don’t try repeating the words on the card again and again. That’s mega-cheating.)

As soon as another player buzzes in, then the judge stops the timer. The player explains which rule has been broken, and if the judge agrees then the buzzing-in player gets a point, as well as becoming the new speaker. The timer re-starts with whatever time is left and the new player must talk about the same subject. If the buzz-in was wrong, then the speaker gets a point and is allowed to carry on.

Whoever is the speaker when the time runs out is rewarded with an extra point. The judge passes the stopwatch to the player on their left, and the player who was the judge now picks a new card.

EXAMPLE

Player 1 picks the subject ‘Roller Skates’. The judge begins the timer and calls, ‘Go.’

Player 1: ‘I hate roller skates because I always fall over. I always go too fast and then––’

Player 2: ‘HONK! Repetition of “always”.’

Judge: ‘Yes, correct. Player 2, you get a point and have 55 seconds. Go.’

Player 2: ‘I’ve always been better on a skateboard than roller skates. They have more wheels and you can do tricks.’

Player 3: ‘BEEP! Off topic. She’s talking about skateboards.’

Judge: ‘Yes she is. Player 3, you get a point and have 48 seconds remaining. Go.’

Player 3: ‘I used to go with my brother to roller skate around the multi-storey car park. One day we––’

Player 2: ‘HONK! He stopped.’

Judge: ‘No, he was just taking a breath between sentences. Player 3 gets a point and continues with 41 seconds. Go!’

Etc.

TIP

• This game is all about improvising under pressure. If the fear of being buzzed is freezing one of the players up entirely, be more generous with the rules and just let your opponent talk for a while. You could even remove the buzzing altogether and give the player a minute to talk however they like. You could discuss how they did afterwards. This is just as much fun, but altogether less stressful.

CHAPTER 10

JUST CHILL OUT

It’s been a tough day. It started when you opened the fridge too hard and the orange juice toppled out. Even after you’d mopped up the explosion, you had sticky footsteps all day and had to change your trousers. Weather-wise, it was the sort of rain that doesn’t look bad enough for an umbrella until you’ve been out in it for ten minutes and realise you look like a soggy water vole. You had made a vital to-do list at work, but an unwanted 9 a.m. email meant you spent the whole day on the phone with the IT person, trying to re-route the UDI credentials, or something. And worst of all, your lunch leaked in your bag so everything you own now has the colour and scent of balsamic vinegar. By the time you get home, you just need someone to look after you, but your other half comes through the door even grumpier than you.

You need to chill out.

And I have just the set of games for that!

It may not feel like games are quite the solution right now, but these will heal a frazzled brain with their soothing, low-intensity nature and ability to take your mind off the world’s stresses. Here are word games, alphabet challenges and streams-of-consciousness that will wipe clear your mind and relax you right down.

They are also great games for helping kids (or over-excitable adults) keep chilled and calm in any situation. Perhaps you’re expecting an important phone call and need a bit of peace, or you want an alternative to family movies on the telly one lazy afternoon.

I’ve even thrown in a couple of insanely inspiring writing games, for those who relax by getting a little creative.

91. Word Association

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Easy

5 mins

TAGS:
VOCABULARY,
CREATIVE,
WIND-DOWN

IN SHORT: A stream-of-consciousness back-and-forth game.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

One player starts with a word – any word – and says it to the group. Working clockwise, the players have to come up with a synonym (a word that means the same thing) or really any word that’s linked in some way. The entertaining part is to see where the trail leads, and how much the meaning can change over time. Words with double meanings, or ‘homonyms’ (‘fair’, for example), are particularly useful because you can change direction so suddenly.

EXAMPLE

Player 1: ‘Blue.’

Player 2: ‘Sky.’

Player 3: ‘Television.’

Player 4: ‘Film.’

Player 1: ‘Camera.’

Etc.

LEVEL-UP

• In Word Association you have to use words that had some relation to the previous one. In Word Disassociation, you have to choose a word that has absolutely no relation to the previous word.

• The really fun part comes when you challenge other players. If you see a relationship between the words that the others didn’t, then you can force them to think of another word.

EXAMPLE

Player 1: ‘Egg.’

Player 2: ‘Chelsea.’

Player 3: ‘Green.’

Player 4: ‘Sandal.’

Player 1: ‘Mayonnaise.’

Player 2: ‘Seagull.’

Player 4: ‘Challenge! They’re both white!’

Player 2: ‘OK then. Thursday.’

Etc.

TIP

• There are many ways for words to associate. They could rhyme, start with the same letter (alliteration) or any number of other things. Most words could probably be associated with each other, so try to find that link!

92. Why?

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2

Medium

10 mins

TAGS:
STRATEGY,
CONVERSATION,
CREATIVE

IN SHORT: Why?

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

WARNING: This game can become intensely annoying if you’re not playing. It is, however, great for pushing further and further into the reasons why things are the way they are. But be aware of others. If they are getting annoyed, choose another game.

One player, the explainer, begins by making a statement.

The other, the questioner, asks, ‘Why?’

The explainer answers the best she can.

The questioner asks, ‘Why?’

The game continues for as long as possible. The explainer should try not to repeat herself, or use answers like, ‘It just is.’ Try to really think why something is the way it is.

Once you get stuck, switch roles and begin with a new statement.

EXAMPLE

Explainer: ‘My lasagne is taking ages to arrive.’

Questioner: ‘Why?’

Explainer: ‘Because it takes a long time to cook.’

Questioner: ‘Why?’

Explainer: ‘Because it has to go in the oven.’

Questioner: ‘Why?’

Explainer: ‘Because if you cooked it in a saucepan it would get all mashed up.’

Questioner: ‘Why?’

Explainer: ‘Because you’d have to stir it.’

Questioner: ‘Why?’

Explainer: ‘Or else it would burn on the bottom.’

Questioner: ‘Why?’

Explainer: ‘Because when you use a saucepan, the heat comes from below the pan.’

Questioner: ‘Why?’

Explainer: ‘Because that’s how hobs work.’

Questioner: ‘Why?’

Explainer: ‘Because somebody designed it like that.’

Questioner: ‘Why?’

Explainer: ‘Because they’d seen people cook over fires, and this is similar.’

Etc.

93. Fit-It

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2

Medium

20 mins

TAGS:
SPELLING,
GUESSING,
COMPETITIVE,
STRATEGY

IN SHORT: A bit like Hangman, but far more interesting.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Whiteboard and pens, or pencil and paper.

HOW TO PLAY

I created this game when trying to think of a more interesting alternative to Hangman to use in tuition. The aim was to encourage children to think of a word differently, as a combination of prefixes, roots and suffixes, and to ask questions like, ‘What sort of word has a G as the final letter?’ If that all sounds a bit too schooly, swallow that thought then just try. It’s a fun little two-player game no matter what.

The aim of the game is to guess a secret word. One player, the leader, thinks it up in their head (no names or slang: the usual rules), then at the top of the page draws a horizontal dotted line, one line for each letter, just like the start of a Hangman round.

However, this is where the two games diverge. The guesser must guess the entire word, not a letter. The aim is for the word to ‘fit’. So at this stage, it’s easy: the guessed word must be simply the right length. The guesser writes their guess down, and as long as it fits, they score 1 point.

Unless they’re incredibly lucky or can read minds, they probably got it wrong, so now the leader fills in one letter of the mystery word at the top of the page. It could be any of the letters in the word, but make sure it’s in the right place!

The guesser must again write a word that fits, both in length and now taking into account the letter that they know. Once again, they get a point as long as their guess fits.

If, at any point, the guesser simply cannot think of a word that fits, then they can pass. They will get no points for that guess, but earn another letter in the word to help with the next one.

This carries on, with the leader giving away an extra letter with every incorrect guess, until the guesser correctly finds the word. At this point they get 2 points for every empty letter still in the word. Then the score is tallied up, and the players swap over with another word of the same length, so that it’s fair.

EXAMPLE

Leader has chosen the word SALMON. She writes _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ at the top of the page.

Guesser guesses JUMPED. It’s wrong, but it fits, so she gets 1 point.

Leader gives away one mystery letter. The word at the top now reads _ _ L _ _ _.

Guesser guesses PILLAR. It’s wrong, but it fits with the L, so she gets 1 point.

Leader gives away another letter. _ _ L _ O _.

Guesser tries to guess BALOON, but that’s not how you spell it. Instead, Guesser guesses BALLOT. It’s wrong, but it fits, so she gets 1 point.

Leader gives away another letter. _ _ L _ O N.

Guesser tries to guess BOLTON but that’s a name. She passes, for 0 points.

Leader gives away another letter. S _ L _ O N.

Guesser guesses SALMON, giving her 4 points (2 for each letter that was still unknown). Overall, she scored 7 points.

TIP

• To master this game, you must think about prefixes and suffixes. These are sets of letters that affix to the front and back (respectively) of a word, changing its meaning or function. For example, the ful of wonderful and the im of impossible. Once you’re looking for these, you’ll be able to use clues to fit more letters around the ones that you know. So if a word ends in G, it’s likely to end in ING, because that’s a really common suffix.

94. A–Z of . . .

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

1+

Medium

10 mins per alphabet

TAGS:
CREATIVE,
SPELLING,
COLLABORATIVE,
PASS THE TIME

IN SHORT: A to-and-fro alphabet game.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

The aim of the game is to complete an alphabet of a certain category. You’ll take it in turns to think of 26 things within that category and call them out, and if you make it to the end of the alphabet you all win.

Pick a category from here, or make up your own. Remember, some categories are easier than others.

You could write your answers down on paper, but there’s no need. If a player gets stuck she can ask for help if she needs it. If you want to make it competitive, give each player a time limit and if they can’t think of an answer within the time, they’re buzzed OUT. (In truth, this game is better if you work as a team, but some people love a competition.)

EXAMPLE

The players choose A–Z of chunky things.

Player 1: ‘Apple.’

Player 2: ‘Brick.’

Player 3: ‘Chocolate chunks.’

Player 1: ‘Doughnut.’

Etc.

TIPS

• Don’t get too stuck on whether an answer is right or wrong. Even if it doesn’t quite fit (like ‘Orange’ in your A–Z of Red Things) just accept it and move on.

• Here’s a secret: I actually use this game to go to sleep almost every night. Pick a really tough subject and experience your mind wandering to odd, sleepy places trying to find a sticky thing beginning with C. (Chewing gum. Took me ages!) You’ll be asleep before you know it.

• Another way to play this game is to write an alphabet on a piece of paper or whiteboard, and the category at the top. Then try, as quickly as you can, to cross off each letter by shouting a word in that category. You can do this in any order, so it becomes a scramble to get off the easy ones and then seek out the more difficult letters. You’ll need someone to adjudicate to make sure your answers all qualify – why not ask them to time you too, so you can try to set a world record? Then you can challenge yourself to beat it with a different category.

• For a competitive written version of this game, try Category Scramble (see here).

95. Word Ladders

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

1+

Medium

15 mins

TAGS:
SPELLING,
VOCABULARY,
STRATEGY,
WIND-DOWN

IN SHORT: Change a letter, change a letter, change a letter. How far can you go?

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Pencil and paper (or mini whiteboard and pens).

HOW TO PLAY

One player writes a four-letter word on the whiteboard. The second player is allowed to swap one letter for another, and write a new word below it. This goes on for as long as you can, replacing just one letter each time. No repeated words, names or slang!

EXAMPLE

TURN

BURN

BARN

BARK

BANK

BUNK

BUCK

BULK

TIPS

• If you find this hard, write out an alphabet and use it to help you.

• Part of what makes this hard is not even knowing which letter to swap out. If you’re playing with somebody who needs some support, try to think of a valid word in your head and then write out the three letters that stay the same. The other player simply has to find the missing letter, knowing that there will be an answer. For example, after ‘SAND’ you could write ‘_AND’, after which he might find ‘HAND’.

LEVEL-UP

• If this game is too easy, pick one four-letter word to start with and one to end on, and try to get between them in as few steps as possible. This can be furiously difficult, but definitely worth a try. Can you make a ladder from BLACK to WHITE? DOG to CAT? DAWN to DUSK?

• A tip for this version of the game is to try to get vowels and consonants in the right place before you worry about the particular letters.

96. Right on Target

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

2+

Hard

Ongoing

TAGS:
MATHS,
COMPETITIVE,
STRATEGY

IN SHORT: Reach a number between 1 and 1000 as fast as you can.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Whiteboard and pens, or pencil and paper for each player.

HOW TO PLAY

This simple maths challenge is difficult at first, but great practice for keeping that brain of yours fizzing along. Also, if you’re competitive, it’s great for racing.

At the top of your page or board, choose five digits between 1 and 9, and the number 100. These will be your tools: the numbers you’ll use to get to the target.

Next, it’s time to pick the target. Search online for a random number generator. There are loads. Otherwise, pluck a number out of thin air. Either way, it should be somewhere between 1 and 1000.

As soon as all the players have the tools and the target, it’s time to begin. Add, subtract, multiply and divide your way to the target. You don’t have to use all of the numbers, but you cannot use any number twice.

You could do this part in a number of ways. Either give yourself a time limit, say two minutes, to get the answer, or stop the clock as soon as the first player gets it. Then it’s time to put down your pencils and share results. You may only score points based on what’s on your whiteboard/page, to avoid copying, so write down your method clearly.

If you hit the target, you get 10 points. Then it’s 9 points if you were 1 off, 8 if you were 2 off, and so on.

Keep on playing to build your score. First to 100 points wins!

EXAMPLE

The players choose the numbers 2, 3, 5, 6, 9 and 100. The random target is 541. After two minutes, they share results.

Player 1: ‘5 x 100 is 500. Then add that to 9 x 6, which is 54. 554–3 then –2 is 549.’ (549 is 8 from the target so scores 2 points.)

Player 2: ‘5 x 100, that’s all I got.’ (500 is too far away. Player 2 scores 0 points.)

Player 3: ‘6 x 100 = 600, then do 5 + 2, multiply that by 9, that’s 63. Take away 3 makes 60. 600–60 is 540.’ (540 scores 9 points.)

TIPS

• The simplest tactic is to shoot for the right number of hundreds and adjust from there, but take care that you’re getting as close as possible. For example, if your target was 786, you might try to reach 700, but 800 is actually much closer, if you can get there.

• Remember that you can adjust the numbers before multiplying by 100. If you have 7, 2 and 100, and want to get to 900, add the 7 and 2 first.

• If you really are stuck, work backwards from the target. Sometimes that helps.

LEVEL-UP

• The TV show Countdown has a similar game, but there are more options with your starting numbers. 100 is replaced by 25, 50, 75 or 100 and you can choose to have another of those in place of one of your digits. Also, they have big cards and a massive clock. Even if you can’t find a massive clock, the rest is still available to you with a bit of printing and cutting.

• It’s really worthwhile trying to put your entire method into one number sentence, using brackets to keep the calculations in the right order. For help on brackets, ask a child, because they’ve been to school more recently than you!

97. Ten-to-One Story

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

1+

Hard

20–30 mins

TAGS:
CREATIVE,
WRITING,
VOCABULARY,
WIND-DOWN

IN SHORT: A short-story writing challenge with one simple, yet tricky, rule.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• List of story titles (see here).

• Paper and pencil.

HOW TO PLAY

Your challenge is to write a story using one of the story prompts. However, it may only have ten sentences. The first sentence must have exactly ten words. The second must have nine, the third must have eight, and so on, until the final sentence only has one word. This game forces you to be aware of the words that you use, and the impact of each one.

You could put each sentence in its own paragraph, like I have done, or put them all together into one block of text. Set it out however you like.

If you have spare ink in your pen, you could do the same but with twenty-to-one.

Good luck!

EXAMPLE

I used the story prompt ‘My Last Day on Earth’.

‘Ten, Nine, Eight,’ began Mission Control, and the engine roared.

I held my breath until the voice reached zero.

The force was intense: gravity wanted me back.

Finally, I was leaving all life behind.

Now I floated alone in space.

The eternal darkness embraced me.

Then I saw them.

The moon’s eyes.

Waking up.

Hungry.

TIPS

• There’s no single way to play this game, and the best way would just be to start and see what happens. BUT, if you want your story to have a knockout ending, think about the last word first. It’s alone in its own sentence. Make that word have real clout. Could it be a twist? A cliffhanger?

• Try to vary the structure of your sentence and avoid repetition. I’ve played this game with people who cop out with stories such as ‘Fuzzy bunny wanted to eat a delicious, yummy, orange carrot. Fuzzy bunny went to the carrot shop for one. Fuzzy bunny bought a carrot and ate one.’ Seriously, stop that.

98. Grow a Word

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

1+

Hard

20 mins

TAGS:
SPELLING,
VOCABULARY,
STRATEGY

IN SHORT: Teamwork game where you add and jumble letters to make a word as large as possible.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Pencil and paper (or mini whiteboard and pens).

HOW TO PLAY

Work as a team for this game. Here’s how it plays:

Start with a two-letter word. (No names or abbreviations.) The challenge is now to add one letter, any that you like, and form a new three-letter word. You are also allowed to jumble the letters that you already have.

Continue adding one letter and jumbling the existing letters, if needed, to make new words. How far can you get? It’s possible, with time and effort, to grow enormous words from the tiniest of seeds.

EXAMPLE

TO

TOE

NOTE

TONER

MENTOR

TORMENT

TORMENTS

(. . . and that’s as far as I got. Can you go further?)

TIP

• Anagrams are hard. On a piece of paper or a whiteboard, write your letters randomly in a cloud shape and play around with them. Look for common letter blends such as ‘sh’ or ‘-ing’.

LEVEL-UP

• If you get stuck, you could agree that taking away a letter is permitted as a move, as long as you don’t return to the same word as before. In that way, you could work laterally to get to the biggest word possible, even if it takes you a few failed attempts.

99. Write Against the Odds

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

1+

Hard

45 mins

TAGS:
CREATIVE,
WRITING,
WIND-DOWN

IN SHORT: A bunch of ideas that make writing stupidly hard, but stupidly fun.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Lists of story titles (here) or first lines (here).

• Paper and pencil.

HOW TO PLAY

In a similar way to Ten-to-One Story (see here), giving yourself a weird limit on how you are allowed to write should force you to be creative in a number of new and interesting ways. Try it! Here are a few limitations you can place on your own writing. Choose one or more (not all of them!), pick a story prompt, and begin:

• Pick a letter. You may not use this letter anywhere in your story.

• Your story must be exactly 101 words long.

• You have five minutes to write your story. Do not stop writing, or look up from the page, until the five minutes are up, even if that means writing nonsense. (This is also called a ‘splurge’.)

• Spell every word wrong.

• You may not use the same word twice.

• Start at the bottom of the page. Write the final sentence, then the penultimate sentence, and so on until you write the first sentence.

• Every character is called David.

• You may only write when your eyes are closed.

• Write the whole thing with your wrong hand.

• Your whole story is one long sentence. No full stops and lots of conjunctions!

• Hold your breath. Every time you breathe as you write the story, draw a spiral over the word you just wrote.

• Every word must contain three letters.

• Pick a letter. Every word must contain that letter.

100. Talk Like Shakespeare

PLAYERS

DIFFICULTY

TIME

1+

Hard

Learn in 10 mins, practise for life

TAGS:
CONVERSATION,
VOCABULARY,
GRAMMAR, PASS
THE TIME, LONG
TERM

IN SHORT: Learn about the glories of iambic pentameter, then spend your life using it.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Nothing at all.

HOW TO PLAY

You may be a Shakespeare fan or totally put off by his dense language, but either way, you have to admit that there’s something special about the way that he writes.

Well, part of it is the rhythm. You see, Shakespeare writes almost entirely in iambic pentameter. That is, every line has exactly five groups of two syllables (so ten overall) and in each pair, the second is more stressed than the first.

So, in plain English, a line of Shakespeare’s verse should sound like this:

Da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM.

It has a certain pace to it, and a flow. When you read Shakespeare in full knowledge of iambic pentameter, it actually reads better. Try reading this extract from the prologue to Romeo and Juliet aloud:

Two households, both alike in dignity,

In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

Anyway, here’s where you come in. See if you can speak in iambic pentameter. Have a feel for which words and phrases work best. And most of all, prance about the place as if you’re in Elizabethan times while you do it. You could even wear a ruff.

EXAMPLE

Player 1: ‘I really want a piece of toast with jam.’

Player 2: ‘Then go ahead and make one, greedy guts.’

Player 1: ‘But my poor head is aching, and I’m tired.’

Player 2: ‘I’m not your slave; get your own stupid toast.’

APPENDIX

Ideas Bank 1:

TALKING TOPICS

Specifically for use in Blabbermouth (here), this is a set of cards to pick from a hat, each giving you something to talk about for one minute. Of course, feel free to make your own, too.

My favourite holiday

How to bake a cake

The world’s worst job

If I ruled the world

My biggest secret

Sandcastles

The neighbours

Hallowe’en

My proudest achievement

Wolves

The human brain

Water slides

Knitting

The best season

Chilli peppers

The guitar

The city where I live

Treehouses

Broken bones

The internet

Strange pets

Supermarkets

Hottest day of the year

Chores

Playing the piano

How to draw a horse

Dreams

Rhubarb

Video games

Chocolate

Cliffs

Bicycles

Thursdays

Cousins

If I were a cat

Ten years’ time

Fruit vs. vegetables

Superman vs. Batman

Girls vs. boys

My perfect burger

The panda

The United States of America

Vegetarianism

Magic tricks

Spiders

How does digestion work?

Aeroplanes

My claim to fame

How I got this scar

The best meal I can cook

Adverts on TV

Rock climbing

Ideas Bank 2:

STORY INGREDIENTS – CHARACTER

For various games in this book you will need some random story ingredients. Photocopy these pages or just copy them out if you have a spare minute, cut them up and keep them separate from the other categories in bags. Pick one out every time you need a new character.

King

Princess

President

Homeless person

Queen

Prince

Acrobat

Model

Athlete

Hacker

Vampire

Werewolf

Scientist

Doctor

Gardener

Soldier

Pilot

School child

Teacher

Criminal

Old man

Old woman

Police officer

Runaway

Explorer

Fireman

Teenager

Footballer

Artist

Singer

Vandal

Spy

Truck driver

Ninja

Bully

Clown

Rich person

Servant

Con man

Ghost

Refugee

Hunter

Detective

Guard

Knight

Pirate

Astronaut

Alien

Chef

Rock-climber

Bus driver

Hiker

Sailor

Fire-breather

Thief

Pickpocket

Gangster

Superhero

Bodybuilder

Wrestler

Zombie

Giant

Baby

Fashion designer

Diver

Skydiver

Cleaner

Preacher

Musician

Salesman

Busker

Mugger

Thug

Ballerina

Dancer

Farmer

Plastic surgeon

Bin collector

Camper

Motorcyclist

Shop assistant

Genius

Hypnotist

TV presenter

Newsreader

Bird watcher

Fisherman

Hairdresser

Ideas Bank 3:

STORY INGREDIENTS – PLACE

For various games in this book you will need some random story ingredients. Photocopy these pages or just copy them out if you have a spare minute, cut them up and keep them separate from the other categories in bags. Pick one out every time you need a new place.

High street

Bus stop

Up a tree

Cliff top

On a stage

Zoo

Supermarket

Clothes shop

Restaurant

Alleyway

Train station

Airport

By a river

On a roof

Train

Jungle

Woodland

Stadium

School

TV studio

Aboard a ship

The Arctic

Desert

Park

Swimming pool

Cinema

Hospital

Mountain

Motorway

Prison

Beach

Barber shop

Graveyard

Mansion

Castle

Factory

Basement

Dungeon

Space ship

Casino

Circus

Art gallery

Theme park

Police station

At home

Rock concert

Battlefield

Wedding

Birthday party

Church

Summer fair

Festival

Camp site

Holiday

Penthouse

Garden

The moon

A very long queue

Furniture shop

Coal mine

Playground

Swamp

Pyramid

Hotel

Café

Underwater

Lift (elevator)

Book shop

Market

Maze

Farm

Bank

Ski slope

Log cabin

Ruins

Desert island

Tiny boat

Football pitch

Building site

Backstage

Haunted house

Walk-in freezer

Launderette

Rubbish tip

Car park

Skyscraper

Belly of a whale

Skate park

Ideas Bank 4:

STORY INGREDIENTS – OBJECT

For various games in this book you will need some random story ingredients. Photocopy these pages or just copy them out if you have a spare minute, cut them up and keep them separate from the other categories in bags. Pick one out every time you need a new object.

Mysterious box

Scissors

Coin

Hose

Flower

Poison

Letter

Suitcase

Seed

Hamburger

Cup

Cat

Computer

Tablet

Toy

Telephone

Spider

Sock

Towel

Elastic band

Hat

Fake moustache

Glasses

Tie

Shoes

Butter

Swimming trunks

Needle

Bucket of water

Fish

Drone

Ball

Trophy

Medal

Key

Watch

Rock

String

Poster

Newspaper

Cushion

Bird

Cucumber

Rat

Lightbulb

Test tube

DVD

Pen

Paint

Ironing board

Walkie talkie

Headphones

Mask

Chocolate bar

Hot water bottle

Map

Lunchbox

Handcuffs

Helmet

Wellington boots

Cup of tea

Guitar

Trumpet

Crown

Coat hanger

Walking stick

Horse shoe

Pad of paper

Wooden spoon

Champagne glass

Teapot

Spade

Joystick

Skateboard

Scooter

Bicycle

Book

Guinea pig

Paperclip

Tooth

Snorkel

Compass

Jewel

Ring

Magnifying glass

Jam

Magnet

Pickaxe

Ideas Bank 5:

STORY INGREDIENTS – ACTION

For various games in this book you will need some random story ingredients. Photocopy these pages or just copy them out if you have a spare minute, cut them up and keep them separate from the other categories in bags. Pick one out every time you need a new action.

An argument

An agreement

A lie

A secret

An apology

A message

A plea

A promise

A betrayal

A theft

Something is found

A loss

A purchase

A sale

An order

A law is broken

A quest

An adventure

A journey

A gasp

Somebody runs

A fall

A climb

A mistake

Confusion

Something grows

Something shrinks

Somebody sleeps

A victory

A defeat

A death

An injury

Something heals

A trial

A trick

A fight

A chase

Something is caught

A race

A game

A leap

A meeting

A search

Something is built

Something is destroyed

A plan

Something is written

A laugh

Something is burnt

Somebody cries

A wish

A slip

A fright

Somebody tiptoes

Somebody hides

A decision

Something is drawn

A swim

A dream

A gift

Somebody fails

A collapse

A lick

A scream

A whisper

Something flies

A secret meeting

A choice

Something gets wet

A phone call

Something stinks

A taste

A reveal

A rush

Something freezes

Something rolls

A handshake

A high-five

A U-turn

A screech

A panic

A scratch

Somebody digs

A flip

Something is opened

A held breath

Something is closed

A thump

Ideas Bank 6:

100 STORY TITLES

These are needed for Ten-to-One Story (here) and Write Against the Odds (here), but they’re a useful resource more generally.

A fellow writer and friend was astonished and appalled that I’d give away 100 free titles, with the opinion that I’d run out of them to use for my own books. Well, if that happens then at least you’ll have some for yours. Take any, write it at the top of your paper and get writing.

If you want to make this a little crazy, search online for a random number generator. Set the maximum number to ‘100’ and press ‘generate’. Whatever number comes up, pick that title and go.

If your stories are normally too long, or you never finish them, give yourself a time limit. If they’re always too short, set a page target to achieve. Good luck!

100 TITLES

1. Curse

2. The Day that Lasted a Year

3. Pathetic Peter

4. Nobody Leaves Until . . .

5. Broken

6. Spaghetti Massacre

7. Calm Before the Storm

8. Mirror World

9. My Iron Eyes

10. Greed

11. The Longest Journey

12. Take-Off!

13. Last Train South

14. Behind the Walls

15. Sea Rising

16. Rivals

17. Grandmother’s Rug

18. Night of the Wasps

19. ENTER PASSWORD

20. Girl with a Red Hood

21. Ten in a Broken Lift

22. No Parachute

23. Meal of Worms

24. There Is No London

25. The Missing Dagger

26. How Many Cats Is too Many Cats?

27. 5% Battery

28. Alone

29. Bridge

30. Death of the Sun

31. Hell Has Free Parking

32. Last Breath

33. Simon’s Claws

34. Down the Drain

35. Revenge of the Bananas

36. My Undead Family

37. The Crying Wall

38. Worst Birthday Ever

39. The Man Who Climbed a Tree and Never Came Down

40. Jealous of You

41. Stopped Clocks

42. Under My Feet

43. World Record

44. It’s Always Night in Space

45. Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

46. Friend Factory

47. Hat Glue

48. No More Teachers

49. The Bird Magnet

50. Poison Jam

51. I Planted a Spoon

52. Chocolate Dreams

53. Man on Your Roof

54. Downhill Race

55. One Character in this Story Is a Murderer

56. Everybody Knows Your Secret

57. No Way Out

58. Allergic to Air

59. Last Boy on Earth

60. Tooth Thief

61. One Roll of the Dice

62. Nobody Knows My Real Real Name

63. A Second Me

64. A Day in the Fridge

65. Pocket Elephant

66. Sky Pirate

67. Final Challenge

68. Hidden Inside

69. One Hundred Degrees

70. Nobody Believes Me

71. Happy Death Day

72. Top of the Clock Tower

73. Somebody Spat on Me

74. Walking through Walls

75. Mushroom City

76. Storm Clouds

77. Copycat

78. Just STOP Growing!

79. George and the Dark Place

80. One New Message

81. Second Best Treehouse

82. I’m Not Pretending

83. Old Smugglers’ Road

84. My Best Friend, the Whale

85. Craig Collects Coins

86. Angel Trap

87. Lightning Shop

88. Around the World in Eighty Hours

89. Stuck in a Tube

90. What’s Over the Horizon?

91. Noah’s Ark 2

92. The First Word Ever Spoken

93. Science Class Will Never End

94. Bent Steel

95. A Story without Words

96. Pest Control

97. Plague

98. Picnic on the Motorway

99. Never Touch the Ground

100. Fortune-Teller

Ideas Bank 7:

100 OPENING LINES

These are needed for Endless Sentence (here), Ten-to-One Story (here) and Write Against the Odds (here), but they’re a useful resource more generally.

The hardest part of a story is the first line. So, since I’m so kind, I’ve done the hard part for you! Below are more opening lines than you’ll ever need. Take any, write it on the first line of your paper and get writing.

1. The beast had stopped snoring. That could only mean one thing . . .

2. My mum looked different this morning. All through breakfast I couldn’t place what had changed.

3. My name is Albert, and I am dead.

4. Usually, there’s a portrait on my wall of a boy and his dog. Today, there’s just a dog.

5. The woods were dark and deep, but a distant light shone, far ahead.

6. Harry was probably the first person you’ve ever met with a pet tiger.

7. ‘Sleep well,’ said Dad, and he closed the door. But I wouldn’t sleep. Not tonight.

8. As the countdown reached zero, the crowd roared. It had begun.

9. She had been hiding on this train for three days so far.

10. ‘Roll up, roll up!’ announced the circus-master. ‘Step inside my house of horrors!’

11. Fifty-five burgers sat on the table in front of him.

12. I began to shrink at lunchtime.

13. On her three-thousandth birthday, Zoe had an idea.

14. ‘Come with me if you want to live,’ said the huge man.

15. How far underground was I now?

16. I think I’m the only human in this classroom.

17. ‘You’re grounded!’ shouted Mum. ‘For a year!’

18. When Dave awoke, he had the strangest feeling that he was sinking.

19. ‘Water,’ I gasped. ‘I need water!’

20. I didn’t know my pizza was magic until I had finished the final slice.

21. It started as a sore throat. Then, Sasha had a cough.

22. The curtain rose; the audience fell silent. This was my moment.

23. From inside the suitcase came a soft ticking noise.

24. ‘It is finished!’ cried Professor Spitz. ‘My time machine is finally ready to test!’

25. ‘I’m sure of it,’ groaned Simon. ‘We’re lost.’

26. Dear Diary, this may be my last entry.

27. Most villages have an idiot. The village of Corne-on-the-Kobb has hundreds.

28. The old house had boarded-up windows and a door that hung open invitingly.

29. ‘That’s funny,’ said Matt, ‘I don’t remember downloading this app.’

30. Life is strange when you’re a bird.

31. Once upon a time, deep underground . . .

32. I had brought an umbrella with me, but that doesn’t help so much when it’s raining frogs.

33. It all started when I looked inside my satchel and realised that I’d forgotten my PE kit.

34. Dear Superman . . .

35. Jesse awoke with a strange squealing in his ear.

36. How far out to sea was I? There was certainly no sight of land.

37. I used to love cakes. That is, until yesterday.

38. The floods are coming.

39. The coin was silver, chipped, and older than anything he’d ever seen.

40. The postcard was for me, or so it said. But I didn’t recognise the handwriting.

41. Do you believe in dragons?

42. I think it was the day after tomorrow when time started going backwards.

43. Midnight, 1 January 1988.

44. ‘Everyone to their posts. Spades at the ready!’ called the mayor.

45. It was the day they lost the boat.

46. Mubbly was a very unusual creature.

47. ‘Ker-flip’ went the large brown envelope as it landed on the hall floor.

48. Aurora looked down at the fang marks on her left hand.

49. The beast was striped with gold and white. Its eyes were flames.

50. I looked at the boy and frowned. ‘Don’t I know you?’

51. As the plane landed, Jack felt a little nervous.

52. The room felt hot. Almost too hot.

53. It was when I took off my shoes that I noticed the roots.

54. The weatherman said it was going to be a sunny day, but outside Susanne saw only snow.

55. Purple. Everything was purple.

56. ‘I’ve buried it,’ she said, ‘and they’ll never find it.’

57. The mountain was shrouded with cloud, yet the blood-red summit still poked out from above.

58. ‘Good morning, your majesty,’ said the well-dressed stranger.

59. In the beginning was a toad.

60. ‘Just a little off the fringe, please,’ smiled Lottie as she sat in the hairdresser’s chair.

61. The sun never rose today.

62. When the fire burnt down, all that remained of the forest was a sea of charred stalks.

63. Why do all my best friends have sticky-out ears?

64. ‘Come over here!’ whispered the bush. ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’

65. If Tom had any idea what was going on in Sophie’s head, he wouldn’t have sat next to her that morning.

66. There was once a god who started a primordial soup kitchen.

67. I jumped in headfirst and the freezing darkness enveloped me.

68. The witch stirred her cauldron, a malicious grin on her face.

69. ‘Darling? This soup is delicious, but don’t you think it tastes a little . . . muddy?’

70. Everything I say seems to rhyme.

71. The ice cracked.

72. When the darkness fell, it came quickly and without apology.

73. It had been three weeks since I set foot outside this room.

74. The end.

75. This corridor used to have four doors coming off it. Now there are five.

76. That day, I brought my brother along.

77. ‘Who’s there?’ I called, but there was no reply. This was no joke.

78. ‘Jimmy! Stay away from the edge!’

79. Somewhere in space, a telephone rang.

80. ‘I’m free!’ he cried, as the cell door slammed shut.

81. Do you believe in aelfs? I don’t.

82. Did I ever tell you about the day I learned to fly?

83. ‘Let go!’ I screamed. I would regret that.

84. It wasn’t exactly a dog. Dogs don’t have all those tubes.

85. The moment she began to sing, the first lightbulb smashed.

86. Tails. Heads. Tails. Heads. Tails. Heads. Tails. Heads.

87. Nobody spotted the sack under Monty’s arm when he arrived at the zoo that morning.

88. ‘Platform five for the 11:36 to Bradley Castle.’

89. Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock . . .

90. It looked like a raspberry. It smelled like a raspberry. It sounded, however, like Beyoncé.

91. ‘So tell me, Adam,’ she said. ‘When did you first notice you had no reflection?’

92. The pennies jingled in little Emmy’s pocket.

93. I’m down to my final crust of bread.

94. There is a map of Africa on the ceiling above my bed.

95. ‘Steve?’ Mrs McCauley sung. ‘It’s time for your dance presentation!’

96. There is a thing in the bath. It’s green, and slimy, and it wants to know my Wifi password.

97. Anne had lived in her house for thirty-three years. Long enough to know everything about it, right?

98. I found the diamond ring baked inside my morning muffin.

99. ‘One million green bottles, sitting on the wall,’ she began.

100. Then, I popped.

Ideas Bank 8:

CATEGORIES

These are for use in Top Ten of Everything (here), Pat Clap Click Click (here), Category Scramble (here), Letter Links (here) and A–Z of . . . (here). Each is a category of things, some more literal than others, some wider and easier to fill than others.

Animals

Makes of car

Boys’ names

Girls’ names

Countries

Landmarks

Musicians

Historical figures

Food and drink

Kitchen items

Colours

Films

Christmas things

Words with four letters

Dog breeds

Brand names

School subjects

TV shows

Hobbies

Sweets

Clothing

Bathroom items

Football clubs

Flowers

Baddies and monsters

Sports

Towns/cities

Video games

Cartoon characters

Toys and games

Green things

Red things

Black things

White things

Crunchy things

Bouncy things

Light things

Heavy things

Big things

Small things

Messy things

Ugly things

Expensive things

Round things

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Writing this book was not a single-player campaign. Wittingly or not, my dozens of tutees and hundreds of pupils have helped refine these games over the years. I owe my pals Charlie, Marianne, Charlotte and Alice who eagerly taught me particular games in this book, as well as a lifetime full of colleagues, teachers and friends who have inspired many more.

Thanks to Eve White, my agent, and to Kate Miles and Lindsay Davies at Headline Home for their amazing editing. Thanks also to Becky Hunter, Caroline Young, Louise Rothwell, Sarah Badhan, and Rob Chilver at Headline.

So much of this book can be blamed on my incredible parents, who know the value of a good game and never made the mistake of telling me to grow up.

Most of all, I want to thank the two women in my life, Olive and Amy, one of whom is a cat and the other isn’t, but that’s not her fault.

INDEX

A–Z of . . . here, here

Acrophobia here
acrostics: Double Acrostic here
acting games: Brian! Brian? here
active games: Bang! here

Co-Op Musical Islands here

Control the Robot here

The Floor is Lava here

Murder in Paradise here

Pan-Tapping here

Silly Word Snowballs here

Sniffer Dog here

Squashed Sardines here

Who’s the Leader? here

Adjectival Animals here
after-dinner games here
alliteration: Adjectival Animals here

Word Association here
alphabet games: A–Z of . . . here

Category Scramble here
anagrams: Grow a Word here

Jumble here

Animal, Vegetable, Mineral here
animals: Adjectival Animals here

Clap Clap SQUAWK here

Movies About Animals here
around the house games: Blindfold Game here

Control the Robot here

Disregarded Things here

The Floor is Lava here

Fortunately/Unfortunately here

Kim’s Game here

Monsters of the Nook and Cranny here

Pan-Tapping here

The Silent Game here

Silly Word Snowballs here

Sniffer Dog here

Squashed Sardines here
arty games: Monsters of the Nook and Cranny here

1000 Blank White Cards here

Reflect Me here

Say What You See here

Sniffer Dog here

Squiggle Challenge here
as many players as possible: Clap Clap SQUAWK here

Avagat here

background games: Where’s Voldemort? here

Bacon, Kevin here

Baking Musicians here

Bang! here

BattleBots here

Blabbermouth here, here

Blindfold Game here

Boink! here

Bond, James here
books: First Lines here

Botticelli here

Boxes here

Brian! Brian? here
building blocks: Lego Challenge here

Buzz Words here

cabin fever here

Car Cricket here
car games here
card games: 1000 Blank White Cards here

Cat Eats Mouse here
categories here

A–Z of . . . here

Category Scramble here

Letter Links here

Pat Clap Click Click here

Top Ten of Everything here

Category Scramble here, here

Celebritables here
celebrities: Botticelli here

Celebritables here

No More Dogs here

Chappy Tomato here
chill out here

Christmas here
circle games: Bang! here

Botticelli here

Chappy Tomato here

Clap Clap SQUAWK here

First Lines here

Identity Crisis here

Locked Box here

Mafia here

No More Dogs here

One-Word Story here

Pat Clap Click Click here

Who’s the Leader? here

Zip Bong here

Clap Clap SQUAWK here

Co-Op Musical Islands here
code games: Brian! Brian? here

Buzz Words here

Reg! here
collaborative games: A–Z of . . . here

Blindfold Game here

Celebritables here

Co-Op Musical Islands here

Consequences here

Control the Robot here

Endless Sentence here

Essence here

The Exquisite Corpse here

Genre Bender here

Hardest Game in the World here

I’m in Business here

Lego Challenge here

1-2-3-Spy here

Reflect Me here

Role-Playing Games here

Squashed Sardines here

Story Tornado here

Stupid Superheroes here

Switch! here

Top Ten of Everything here

Wavy Gravy here

Who’s the Leader? here
competitive games: Acrophobia here

Bang! here

Blabbermouth here

Car Cricket here

Category Scramble here

Chappy Tomato here

Dice Football here

Don’t Finish the Word! here

Fit-It here

Glom! here

Hangman Mastermind here

Hunt for the Pair here

Jumble here

Mafia here

1000 Blank White Cards here

1-2-3-Spy here

Pat Clap Click Click here

Pub Cricket here

The Questions Game here

Right on Target here

The Silent Game here

Twenty-One Dares here

Where’s Voldemort? here

Yes/No/Black/White here

Zip Bong here
conjunctions: Endless Sentence here

Consequences here

Control the Robot here
conversation games: Avagat here

Essence here

Glom! here

How Did Liverpool Get Its Name? here

I’m in Business here

Mafia here

No, Mr Bond, I Expect You to Die here

The Questions Game here

Role-Playing Games here

Similelarly here

Stupid Superheroes here

Talk Like Shakespeare here

Top Ten of Everything here

Twenty Questions here

Two Truths and a Lie here

Wavy Gravy here

What’s It Worth? here

What’s My Line? here

Why? here

Would You Rather? here

Yes/No/Black/White here

Crambo here
creative games: A–Z of . . . here

Acrophobia here

Adjectival Animals here

Blabbermouth here

Cat Eats Mouse here

Disregarded Things here

Endless Sentence here

Essence here

First Lines here

How Did Liverpool Get Its Name? here

King Henry VIII’s Banquet here

Licence Plate Sentences here

Monsters of the Nook and Cranny here

No, Mr Bond, I Expect You to Die here

1000 Blank White Cards here

Role-Playing Games here

Scat Memory here

Similelarly here

Six Degrees of Separation here

Squiggle Challenge here

Story Tornado here

Stupid Superheroes here

Ten-to-One Story here

Two Truths and a Lie here

Wavy Gravy here

What’s It Worth? here

Why? here

Word Association here

Would You Rather? here

Write Against the Odds here
cricket: Car Cricket here

Pub Cricket here

dares: Brian! Brian? here

Twenty-One Dares here
definitions: Fictionary here

Dice Football here
dinner tables: after-dinner games here
kitchen table games here

Disregarded Things here

Don’t Finish the Word! here

Double Acrostic here
drawing see arty games

easy games: after dinner here
cabin fever here
just chill out here
the kitchen table here
long games for long journeys here
long, hot summer here
one-on-one here
party time here
traffic jams here
a very merry Christmas here

8–30 players: Bang! here

Endless Sentence here, here

Essence here

The Exquisite Corpse here

family games here
family occasions here

Fictionary here

First Lines here

Fit-It here

5+ players: Hunt for the Pair here

5–15 players: Chappy Tomato here

Co-Op Musical Islands here

5–20 players: Who’s the Leader? here

The Floor is Lava here
football: Dice Football here

Fortunately/Unfortunately here

4+ players: First Lines here

Hardest Game in the World here

Identity Crisis here

Murder in Paradise here

4–12 players: Squashed Sardines here

Genre Bender here, here

Glom! here
grammar games: Adjectival Animals here

Avagat here

Boink! here

Cat Eats Mouse here

Consequences here

Crambo here

Endless Sentence here

The Exquisite Corpse here

Fictionary here

Licence Plate Sentences here

Preposition I-Spy here

Say What You See here

Similelarly here

Talk Like Shakespeare here

Grow a Word here
guessing games: Boink! here

Botticelli here

Buzz Words here

Chappy Tomato here

Disregarded Things here

Essence here

Fit-It here

Hunt for the Pair here

Identity Crisis here

Locked Box here

Pan-Tapping here

Preposition I-Spy here

Say What You See here

Shut Your Eyes here

Twenty Questions here

Two Truths and a Lie here

What’s My Line? here

Hangman Mastermind here
hard games: after dinner here
just chill out here
the kitchen table here
long games for long journeys here, here
long, hot summer here
one-on-one here
traffic jams here
a very merry Christmas here

Hardest Game in the World here

Hide-and-Seek: Squashed Sardines here
holiday games here
homonyms: Boink! here

Word Association here
homophones: Boink! here

How Did Liverpool Get Its Name? here

Hunt for the Pair here

Hunted here

I-Spy: 1-2-3-Spy here

Preposition I-Spy here
iambic pentameter: Talk Like Shakespeare here
ideas bank: categories here
opening lines here
story ingredients here
story titles here
talking topics here

Identity Crisis here

I’m in Business here
improvisation: Blabbermouth here
instructions games: Blindfold Game here

Control the Robot here

Lego Challenge here

jobs: I’m In Business here

What’s My Line? here
jokes see puns
journeys: long games for long journeys here
traffic jams here

Jumble here

Kim’s Game here

King Henry VIII’s Banquet here
kitchen table games here

Knock-Knock jokes here

lava: The Floor is Lava here
league tables: Dice Football here

Top Ten of Everything here

Lego Challenge here

Letter Links here, here
licence plates: Licence Plate Sentences here

Reg! here
lies: Two Truths and a Lie here
lists: Top Ten of Everything here

Locked Box here
long games for long journeys here
long, hot summer here
long-term games: Avagat here

Monsters of the Nook and Cranny here

Murder in Paradise here

Talk Like Shakespeare here

Where’s Voldemort? here

Mafia here
maps: How Did Liverpool Get Its Name? here

Mastermind: Hangman Mastermind here
maths games: Boxes here

Brian! Brian? here

Car Cricket here

Dice Football here

1-2-3-Spy here

Pub Cricket here

Reflect Me here

Reg! here

Right on Target here

Twenty-One Dares here
medium difficulty: after dinner here, here
cabin fever here
just chill out here
the kitchen table here, here
long games for long journeys here
long, hot summer here
one-on-one here
party time here
traffic jams here
a very merry Christmas here
memory games: Blabbermouth here

Botticelli here

Chappy Tomato here

Clap Clap SQUAWK here

Kim’s Game here

King Henry VIII’s Banquet here

Letter Links here

No More Dogs here

Pat Clap Click Click here

Please Pass the . . . here

Sail the Seven Seas here

Scat Memory here

Shut Your Eyes here

Sniffer Dog here

Zip Bong here
mime: Please Pass the . . . here
modelling material: Monsters of the Nook and Cranny here

Monsters of the Nook and Cranny here

Movies About Animals here

Murder in Paradise here
music games: Co-Op Musical Islands here

Musical Islands here

naming games: Clap Clap SQUAWK here

Pat Clap Click Click here

No More Dogs here

No, Mr Bond, I Expect You to Die here
noisy games: Brian! Brian? here
nonsense words: Glom! here
number plates see licence plates
numbers see maths games

1+ players: A–Z of . . . here

Acrophobia here

Double Acrostic here

Grow a Word here

Jumble here

Monsters of the Nook and Cranny here

1-2-3-Spy here

Reg! here

Six Degrees of Separation here

Squiggle Challenge here

Stupid Superheroes here

Talk Like Shakespeare here

Ten-to-One Story here

Top Ten of Everything here

Word Ladders here

Write Against the Odds here

1-2-3-Spy here

1000 Blank White Cards here
one-on-one games here
one-upmanship: Cat Eats Mouse here

One-Word Story here
opening lines here

Pan-Tapping here
party time here
pass the time games: A–Z of . . . here

Boxes here

Car Cricket here

No, Mr Bond, I Expect You to Die here

Please Pass the . . . here

Pub Cricket here

Sail the Seven Seas here

Six Degrees of Separation here

Talk Like Shakespeare here

Twenty Questions here

Pat Clap Click Click here, here
pirates: Sail the Seven Seas here

Pitch Perfect here

Please Pass the . . . here

Preposition I-Spy here

Pub Cricket here
puns: Celebritables here

I’m in Business here

Similelarly here

Quest for the Seven Swords here

The Questions Game here

Reflect Me here

Reg! here
rhyme: Crambo here

Wavy Gravy here
rhythm: Clap Clap SQUAWK here

Pan-Tapping here

Pat Clap Click Click here

Scat Memory here

Zip Bong here

Right on Target here
robots: Control the Robot here

Roman numerals: Brian! Brian? here

RPGs (Role-Playing Games) here

Sail the Seven Seas here

Sardines here

Say What You See here

Scat Memory here
scavenger hunt: 1-2-3-Spy here
secret language: Avagat here

The Secret of Mettekahu here

Shakespeare, William here

Shut Your Eyes here

The Silent Game here
silly games: Acrophobia here

Avagat here

Boink! here

Cat Eats Mouse here

Clap Clap SQUAWK here

Consequences here

The Exquisite Corpse here

The Floor is Lava here

Fortunately/Unfortunately here

Genre Bender here

Glom! here

King Henry VIII’s Banquet here

One-Word Story here

Please Pass the . . . here

Sail the Seven Seas here

Scat Memory here

The Silent Game here

Silly Word Snowballs here

Switch! here

What’s It Worth? here

Where’s Voldemort? here

Yes/No/Black/White here

Silly Word Snowballs here

Similelarly here

6–15 players: Zip Bong here

6–20 players: Mafia here

Six Degrees of Separation here, here

Sniffer Dog here
snowballs: Silly Word Snowballs here
spelling games: A–Z of . . . here

Buzz Words here

Don’t Finish the Word! here

Double Acrostic here

Fit-It here

Grow a Word here

Hangman Mastermind here

Jumble here

Letter Links here

Licence Plate Sentences here

Locked Box here

Word Ladders here

Squashed Sardines here

Squiggle Challenge here
stories: actions here
characters here
objects here
opening lines here
places here
titles here

Story Tornado here, here
storytelling games: Endless Sentence here

Fortunately/Unfortunately here

Genre Bender here

How Did Liverpool Get Its Name? here

No, Mr Bond, I Expect You to Die here

One-Word Story here

Role-Playing Games here

Story Tornado here

Switch! here
strategy games: Blabbermouth here

Boxes here

Category Scramble here

Don’t Finish the Word! here

Fit-It here

Grow a Word here

Hangman Mastermind here

Hardest Game in the World here

Hunt for the Pair here

Letter Links here

Locked Box here

Mafia here

Murder in Paradise here

No More Dogs here

1000 Blank White Cards here

The Questions Game here

Reg! here

Right on Target here

Say What You See here

Twenty Questions here

Twenty-One Dares here

Two Truths and a Lie here

Where’s Voldemort? here

Why? here

Word Ladders here

Yes/No/Black/White here
stream of consciousness: Word Association here

Stupid Superheroes here, here
superheroes: Stupid Superheroes here

Switch! here
synonyms: Crambo here

Word Association here

Talk Like Shakespeare here
talking topics here

Ten-to-One Story here, here, here

3+ players: Blabbermouth here

Consequences here

The Exquisite Corpse here

1000 Blank White Cards here

3–15 players: Pat Clap Click Click here

Top Ten of Everything here, here
traffic jams here

Twenty Questions here

Twenty-One Dares here, here

2 players: Blindfold Game here

Boxes here

Control the Robot here

Dice Football here

Endless Sentence here

Fit-It here

Fortunately/Unfortunately here

Hangman Mastermind here

Lego Challenge here

No, Mr Bond, I Expect You to Die here

The Questions Game here

Similelarly here

Switch! here

Why? here

2+ players: Adjectival Animals here

Avagat here

Boink! here

Botticelli here

Brian! Brian? here

Buzz Words here

Car Cricket here

Cat Eats Mouse here

Category Scramble here

Celebritables here

Crambo here

Disregarded Things here

Don’t Finish the Word! here

Essence here

Fictionary here

The Floor is Lava here

Genre Bender here

Glom! here

How Did Liverpool Get Its Name? here

I’m in Business here

Kim’s Game here

King Henry VIII’s Banquet here

Letter Links here

Licence Plate Sentences here

Locked Box here

No More Dogs here

One-Word Story here

Pan-Tapping here

Please Pass the . . . here

Preposition I-Spy here

Pub Cricket here

Reflect Me here

Right on Target here

Sail the Seven Seas here

Say What You See here

Scat Memory here

Shut Your Eyes here

The Silent Game here

Silly Word Snowballs here

Sniffer Dog here

Story Tornado here

Twenty Questions here

Twenty-One Dares here

Two Truths and a Lie here

Wavy Gravy here

What’s It Worth? here

What’s My Line? here

Where’s Voldemort? here

Word Association here

Would You Rather? here

Yes/No/Black/White here

2–5 players: Role-Playing Games here

Two Truths and a Lie here

vegetables: Celebritables here
vocabulary games: Adjectival Animals here

Blindfold Game here

Boink! here

Category Scramble here

Crambo here

Don’t Finish the Word! here

Double Acrostic here

The Exquisite Corpse here

Fortunately/Unfortunately here

Glom! here

Grow a Word here

Hangman Mastermind here

Jumble here

Lego Challenge here

One-Word Story here

Preposition I-Spy here

Talk Like Shakespeare here

Ten-to-One Story here

Word Association here

Word Ladders here

Wavy Gravy here

What’s It Worth? here

What’s My Line? here, here

Where’s Voldemort? here

Who’s the Leader? here

Why? here
wind-down games: Botticelli here

Boxes here

Celebritables here

Double Acrostic here

Essence here

Fictionary here

First Lines here

Identity Crisis here

Lego Challenge here

Letter Links here

Reflect Me here

Six Degrees of Separation here

Squiggle Challenge here

Ten-to-One Story here

Top Ten of Everything here

What’s My Line? here

Word Association here

Word Ladders here

Would You Rather? here

Write Against the Odds here

Word Association here

Word Disassociation here

Word Ladders here

Would You Rather? here

Write Against the Odds here, here, here
writing games: Consequences here

Fictionary here

First Lines here

Stupid Superheroes here

Ten-to-One Story here

Write Against the Odds here

Yes/No/Black/White here

Zip Bong here

Zombie at the Gates here

FOOTNOTES

65. Adjectival Animals
fn1 Newt, Narwhal, Quetzal, Quagga, Unicorn (!!!), Upupa, Xerus, X-ray fish. And yes, of course I looked up most of those. I bet you couldn’t identify a xerus if you saw one in the post office.

Chapter 9: A Very Merry Christmas
fn1 The ‘merry’ part of this chapter is essential. The ‘Christmas’ not so. These games are great for any family occasion, especially ones where baby it’s cold outside.

If you enjoyed this book why not try Ivan’s second collection of games? This time with 101 of them!