Ting Tang Tommy
88 All-Time Great Games
Simon Godwin

For Mum and Dad

‘Why’, said the Dodo, ‘the best way to explain it is to do it.’

Lewis Carroll

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Introduction

The Original and Best Games for a Party

Word Games for Witty People

Games for the Great Outdoors

Everything you Need for a Rainy Day

Games for a Long Journey

Seasonal Specials

Three Games of Murder and Mayhem

Going Home Bag

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Bibliography

Copyright

About the Publisher

Introduction

Good games are like good jokes: they get remembered and passed on from person to person. But sometimes they get forgotten. This book is about remembering the best games we’ve ever known. Games are good for our souls. They are magic recipes for cooking up a good time. Once you know the rules you can bring any situation to life. People crave contact. People crave jollity. People crave games.

This book sets out to prove that you can play games anywhere—on the beach, having dinner with friends, at a barbecue, with your family at Christmas. It’s designed to equip you with loads of simple, memorable games that you can share at any moment of the day.

The Games Renaissance starts here.

Games and Me

I’ve been obsessed with games since I was ten, when I started a club with other kids living nearby. Our club was about one thing only: playing games. We had go-kart races, water fights and football matches that lasted long into the night. We built rafts that we sailed down the local river, sold junk on the street and played wide games in the local park, which was a grassed-over quarry with steep sides called the Brickie. It was a wild time of dusky evenings, confusing crushes and grazed knees. Throughout, being the bossy eldest of four, I got a taste for being in charge and a feeling for what makes the best games great.

As a teenager, I wanted to be an actor so, every Saturday morning, I commuted from St Albans to a drama school in Islington where I learnt ‘acting’ games. These were different from the Boy’s Own world of the Club. They were less about heroism and dousing your enemy with a water bomb and more about being spontaneous and inventive. These games encouraged creativity and collaboration. After each class I would practically run back to the station, flushed with hope and exhilaration. I was discovering how the theatre was another version of the Club. As a student I discovered the work of Théâtre de Complicité and saw how they used games to create imaginative and breathtaking works of theatre. Games were a force in their own right. After leaving university I became a theatre director and have been researching and playing games ever since.

A few years ago I started to share the games I had learnt with my friends and family. I discovered they were infectious. At the same time I began asking people to teach me gam es they knew. I slowly began to amass a collection and the result is this book.

My project is simple: to get grown-ups playing games.

Now, more than ever, we are looking for things to do that are active, communal and affordable: camping, ballroom dancing, knitting, home baking, wild swimming and roller discos are all on the up. People are searching for activities that are easy on the environment, big on fun and which have a whiff of nostalgia for a lost golden age. Games answer this need.

Most of the games in this book are short—fifteen, twenty minutes, half an hour. Played with large numbers of people they can take longer, but my aim is to show that games don’t need to be an ordeal. They can come from nowhere and can be played spontaneously with minimum preparation.

All the games in the book have been tested and many are prefaced with an account of how I came to know them, as well as things to watch out for when playing them and occasional references to their historical origin. There are hundreds, even thousands, of games in the world. There are many that I’ve been forced to leave out. The games that have made it into this book are in the Rolls-Royce category; they are games that I have played and that I know really work.

Where Do Games Come From?

Games are deeply lodged in our culture and history. They have always reflected the beliefs, fears and hopes of an age. Knucklebones grew out of the fortune-teller’s bag of tricks and hopscotch is a distant relation of forgotten legends describing labyrinths and mazes. The earliest record we have of game playing

can be found in the ancient palace of Medinet Haboo, at Thebes, in Upper Egypt. Here there is a wall painting showing Rameses III playing a board game with the goddess Isis, wife of Osiris, Lord of the Dead.

The word for play itself has enjoyed a variety of meanings across different cultures. Plato believed that the origin of play lay in the need of all young creatures to ‘leap’. Kridati is a Sanskrit word that means the play of animals, children and adults, but also refers to the movement of the wind or the waves. Our word for play comes from the Anglo-Saxon plega, which means to move fast, to grasp another’s hands, to clap and to play an instrument. The Indo-European root of game, ghem, means to ‘leap joyfully, to spring’ and was used originally to describe the movement of animals as well as people.

Ghem morphed as it was filtered through different European languages. In Old French it became jambe and in Italian it became gamba. Gradually, words developed that referred to people having fun in groups, such as jamboree and camp and campus. In German the word became gaman, in Hellenic it became kampe and in Old Norse it became gems, which meant ‘to come together and congregate as whales do’.

There is something ancient here conveying a sense of people coming together to generate a tribal happiness. This book reflects these visceral origins of playing by including games that are fast, furious and physical. The outdoor games in Chapter 3 revel in ancient ideas of the hunter and the hunted and the power and thrill of running in the landscape. Playing them today gives you a feeling of being part of a tradition that stretches back thousands of years. In Chapter 6 I describe games that have traditionally been played at particular times of the year. These games also stretch back centuries and combine fun with traces of lost rituals.

Many of the games in this book, however, were first written and collected into anthologies by the Victorians. Although many of these had been played for centuries, the Victorians were the first to make an industry out of them. They developed and invented a huge quantity of new games. During the nineteenth century a vast number of games books were published and games became a national obsession.

Why Was This?

Throughout the nineteenth century in Great Britain there was a mass migration to cities. Between 1841 and 1891 the population of London increased from two million to nearly four and a half million. In Scotland there was a comparable surge in Glasgow. The rise in industry and the increase in urban growth led to the formation of a new middle class. These people had left the old, established practices of rural areas to live and work in the city. The days of fairs, bullock running, pigeon flying, cock fighting and village wakes were over. These new communities needed new ways of having fun. They needed games.

And during the same century the new middle class fought for their rights. They achieved shorter working hours, longer holidays and better pay. These innovations, combined with better transport and communication links, freed up time for people to have fun. In the northern cities men joined brass bands; choral singing caught on in the Welsh valleys and pantomimes and music halls started to grip the public imagination. Whist drives, reading groups, picnics, circuses, billiard halls and working men’s clubs gained popularity as a new kind of organized fun took hold.

As well as going out and taking part in group activities, people wanted to make their own fun at home. And this appetite was fed by a radical change that was happening inside people’s homes: the birth of gas lighting. In our bright, modern homes it’s hard for us to imagine what life would have been like by candlelight. If you try counting the lights in the room where you are reading this, I estimate that you will find at least four or five, not including the ambient light that pours in through and around your curtains. At the beginning of the nineteenth century homes were still lit by candles, which were both expensive and of limited strength. Samuel Pepys had to give up writing his diary at only thirty-six because he was worried about going blind—‘and so to bed, being weary, sleepy, and my eyes begin to fail me, looking so long by candlelight upon white paper’—he wrote in 1663. In the centuries of darkness games were things to be played outdoors while inside people told stories, sang songs and played instruments. Pleasure came from the things you imagined rather than saw.

The social historian Dorothy Flanders gives a detailed account of the development of domestic gas lighting in her book The Victorian House. She explains how Friedrich Albert Winsor became one of the first popular exponents of gas lighting in the home, through a series of public lectures and brochures. In 1814 Winsor founded a company with a single gasometer. By 1852 there were forty-seven gasometers in Britain and a network of gas piping, stretching over two hundred miles. The craze for gas lighting spread fast. By 1816 gas was common in London and by 1823 fifty-three cities had gas companies. By the middle of the century, it had become a presence in most small towns and even in some villages. The contemporary journalist G. A. Sala provides a vivid insight into the difference it made to everyday life:

In broad long streets where the vista of lamps stretches far away into almost endless perspective; in courts and alleys, dark by day but lighted up by this incorruptible tell-tale; on the bridges; in the deserted parks; on wharfs and quays; in dreary suburban roads; in the halls of public buildings; in the windows of late-hour-keeping houses and offices, there is my gas—bright, silent, secret. Gas to teach me; gas to counsel me; gas to guide my footsteps.

As well as illuminating streets, gas changed how rooms were lit. The Argand Lamp became a popular innovation in middle-class homes. In stark contrast to the uneven light of candles, the Argand Lamp burned gas at a higher temperature, which created a purer flame. This new, brighter flame was also contained for the first time in a glass cylinder, which saved it from draughts and allowed the flame to be raised or lowered, rather like the modern dimmer switch. Brightness could now be controlled and modulated at will. It was also possible for gas to be run through pipes and tubes to special fittings in the ceilings and walls, even to tables. Wall sockets had flexible attachment points so that lights could be directed towards particular people or objects. The arrival of gas lighting meant that everyone—not just the rich—could now play games long into the night.

And so, for the Victorians, the stage was set for a games revolution to take hold. Is it time for us to discover once again the easy pleasure and communal happiness that only games can offer?

The Original and Best Games for a Party

I want to show you how games can be played anywhere. But parties are the place where most of us get our first taste, so let’s start there. When I say party I am thinking of a group of adults or a family gathering with a good spread of ages. There have been lots of books on children’s party games so that’s not my remit here. I want to share forgotten but universal games that can be played by all.

At a party, timing is important. You have to wait for a lull. You have to wait until the group wants something new. And not everyone may want to play. This is fine. You are looking for a majority. If you can get most people onboard, a game is possible. Never force people to play. They can either just watch or you can give them special roles—like being the referee, timer or scorer. Everyone likes to feel included.

Arriving

Games that welcome people are fun. You might have a large jar of sweets near the door and get people to write down what they think is the correct number on a sheet of paper nearby. It’s nice to have something to announce later in the evening and even nicer for the person who gets to walk away with the jar of sweets. Another good icebreaker is to ask everyone to bring a photograph of themselves as babies. As people are helping themselves to a glass of wine, you can fix each photograph to a piece of cardboard with a number under each one. On pieces of paper against the numbers, people can write down who they think is who. It’s a great moment at midnight, or towards the end of the night, to bring in the photo board and to ask each grown-up baby to step forward one by one. You can award a prize to the winner but the fun comes from seeing how the babies in the photographs express the intangible essence of the grown-ups they become, something which never quite leaves them.

Mister Hit

This game was taught to me by a teacher of clowning in Paris. It’s amazingly good fun and is a great test of coordination. It’s also very good to play as one of your first games because it gets everyone on their feet and is a brilliant way to learn everyone’s names. As the host of the party, you might know who everyone is but most probably your guests won’t. This is one of those classic games that takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master.

Everyone stands in a circle. Someone is nominated as Mister Hit. Their job is to tap the person standing to their left or right, preferably on the shoulder. The person tapped must say someone else’s name in the circle. This person then becomes Mister Hit and must, in turn, tap someone else to their left or right. So the basics are: when you are hit you call someone’s name and when your name is called you hit someone.

After a few practice rounds the game becomes fun as you explain that there will now be no hesitation between hitting and speaking. There must be an unbroken chain of hits and names. Don’t be afraid to be harsh. As soon as someone hesitates, or speaks when they should hit or hits when they should speak, they are eliminated.

You carry on playing until three remain for a Mister Hit final, after which the two last players are declared the winners.

Lie Detector

This is also not strictly a party game but an ice-breaker. I sometimes use it on the first day of rehearsals to get people talking about themselves in a playful way. It encourages the rest of the group to work together to interrogate the person on the spot. It needs to be played with a group of people who don’t know each other that well so that no one enjoys a particular advantage.

Each player shares three things about themselves. Two of these must be true. One must be false. In the spirit of Radio Four’s The Moral Maze, everyone in the group is given the chance to interrogate the speaker. The group grills the speaker to discover how well they can back up their claims. You can limit the number of questions each person is allowed to ask if the group is big. When everyone has had the chance to ask their questions, the group decides together which statement they believe to be the false one. This is the most fun part as everyone struggles to reach a consensus. When a majority decision has been reached, you announce your verdict and discover whether you’ve successfully deciphered fact from fiction. Watch out for hesitation, faintly concealed smiles and discreet blushing.

Blind Man’s Buff

In the ancient Egyptian tombs of Beni Hassan there is a mural showing a man kneeling with his head down and others standing behind him with clenched fists raised above his back. It has been suggested that these men are playing Hot Cockles, or ‘Who Struck?’ as the game was also known.

Hot Cockles is a violent game with a rich tradition. It belonged to what the Greeks called the kolla bismos family of games: ‘buffeting’ games. A player is blindfolded and then struck by each player in turn. The blindfolded player had to guess the identity of his assailants by the quality of their slap.

The game also contained the potential for romance. It seems that the fun lay in decoding the hidden suggestions within the blow. In a Christmas edition of the Spectator from 1711, a joke correspondent wrote: ‘I am a Footman in a great family and am in love with the House Maid. We were all at Hot Cockles last night in the Hall; when I lay down and was blinded, she pulled off her shoe and hit me with the Head such a Rap, as almost broke My Head to Pieces. Pray, Sir, was this Love or Spite?’

Alongside Hot Cockles there developed the variation we all know, Blind Man’s Buff. This game proved too rowdy for Samuel Pepys. On 26 December 1664 he wrote in his diary, ‘I to bed, leaving them to their sport and Blind Man’s Buff.’ We later discover that the party continued until 4.00 a.m.

Today there are loads of variations but the version I prefer is a silent one. Any game that encourages the gentle crossing of boundaries is supercharged with fun and danger. Just taking out a blindfold can cause minor hysteria and as soon as an element of touch is introduced people go crazy, especially after a few drinks.

A brave individual is blindfolded. Everyone else takes up their positions—in corners, on chairs, lying on the floor, wherever feels most fun. They must remain there without making a sound. The blindfolded player must identify each player only by touch. As chuckling or giggling gives the game away immediately, it’s very important that everyone keeps silent. The game lasts either until everyone is correctly identified or you can switch after the first person is identified, that person then taking over the blindfold.

A wacky variation is to arm the blindfolded player with two spoons. He then uses these in place of hands. You can just about make out height, hair length, size of nose, breasts or not etc. Here avoiding laughter is impossible: the feeling of two cold spoons being passed over your face and other parts is quite overwhelming.

General Post

The Penny Post was started on 10 January 1840 and Sir Rowland Hill was the first Postmaster General. Throughout the nineteenth century steamships and trains revolutionized the train service, so it’s no surprise that a game arose reflecting the impact of these dramatic changes. Playing the game today, there is something pleasurably antique about it. It’s also surprisingly lively, gets the blood flowing and allows you to use your blindfold once again.

Everyone sits on chairs in a large circle. Someone is appointed Postmaster while everyone else chooses cities in the world. These cities are destinations for the post and the Postmaster must remember them all. It will be his job to call out the origins and destinations of the mail. At the start, one player is blindfolded and placed in the middle of the circle. The game begins when the Postmaster calls out the first journey using the cities around the circle. He might say, ‘The post is going from Berlin to New York’. And so now the person who is Berlin must change places with the person who is New York. They must do this without the blindfolded player either touching them or getting to an empty chair before they do. The player who is touched, or whose chair is taken, must take over the blindfold. To get everyone moving, the Postmaster can occasionally call ‘General Post’, which means that all the players have to change seats, giving the blindfolded player an excellent chance to grab someone or a seat. Play until everyone who wants to has had a go in the middle.

Caterpillar

This is a more urgent version of General Post, played without the blindfold. It’s used a lot by theatre directors to create a ‘group mind’. It encourages everyone to work together and it’s fantastic when the whole group is working as one. It’s both fast and physical.

Begin by making a circle of chairs. Everyone sits down apart from one person who remains standing in the centre. His or her chair remains empty. The game revolves around this player’s attempt to sit down on an empty chair while the other players work to stop them. To do this players have continually to move from one chair to another. As soon as one chair has been vacated another bottom must fill it. Players can move from side to side and across the circle. As soon as the centre player manages to occupy a seat, the dislodged player takes over.

Psychiatrist

This is a game that, in the nineteenth century, would have been called a ‘catch’ game because you are looking to catch someone out. You can only play the game if someone in the group doesn’t know the secret and is willing to be a good sport. It’s pretty difficult and I’ve never known anyone to solve it without plenty of clues. It works best if all your players are aged ten upwards.

A Psychiatrist is selected from the group. It’s his job to diagnose the condition everyone is suffering from. He leaves the room while the group agrees what condition they might all have. There are unlimited options but the classic ruse is that everyone answers as if they are the person sitting to their left. The Psychiatrist returns to the room and starts to ask questions of his or her patients. How are they? What do they like doing? Do they have any particular fears, dreams etc? People have to answer as accurately as possible according to their knowledge of the person to their left (which itself proves very revealing). When the Psychiatrist is completely baffled you can help him by suggesting he ask each patient their name.

The Scissors Game

This is another ‘catch’ game. I am always the last to catch on to the ‘key’ of these games, so I am very happy to pass on the secret to this one. If you are ever asked to play it, you will now be one of those in the know.

This game works best with plenty of people. Everyone sits in a circle, and only a small number (ideally no more than two) should know the rules of the game. A pair of scissors is passed around and around the circle. Each time you pass it to the person next to you, you have to say ‘I PASS THE SCISSORS CROSSED’ or ‘I PASS THE SCISSORS UNCROSSED’. The recipient has to say ‘I RECEIVE THE SCISSORS CROSSED’ or ‘I RECEIVE THE SCISSORS UNCROSSED’. The people who don’t know the rules will begin by assuming that the words relate to the state of the scissors and whether the blades are open or not, and the people who know the rules can take advantage of this. Actually, each statement refers to whether the players who are passing and receiving the scissors have their LEGS crossed or uncrossed. As you go around the circle, as people make statements that are false they lose a life. Three lives lost and they’re out. People become more and more frustrated but eventually they begin to cotton on to the rules and subtly try and keep the people who don’t understand from working them out. When all the players left in the circle get it, the game is over and everyone can have another drink.

Word Tennis

Every Friday during my teenage years I would catch the train from St Albans to King’s Cross and walk up Pentonville Road to the Anna Scher Theatre School. I was obsessed with acting and had decided that this was to be my path into show business. The walls of the foyer were covered with photographs of famous pupils, past and present. Most of the cast of Grange Hill were up there, alongside stars from EastEnders and actors like Kathy Burke, Jake Wood and Patsy Palmer.

The school was one big studio in which all the classes took place. At the back of the room, on a raised platform, sat three washing baskets filled with props and costumes, a bus stop sign and a small record player. Every week I would enter, pay my pound for the class and sit quietly at one side of the room. There would be little talking, just an atmosphere of silent expectancy as we waited for the arrival of Anna. Everyone would sit, carefully scanning each other.

There were sixty of us in a class. Kids came from all over London but especially from the areas nearby—King’s Cross, Islington and Highbury. These were not privileged stage school types, but local working-class kids who loved acting. There was no audition or interview, just a four-year waiting list. When your name came up you would start the following week.

The school was like a boxing club. You went there and for two hours you improvised the most intense, unflinching scenes you could. Domestic violence, drugs, alcoholism and broken families all featured heavily. For the first six months I was practically silent. I felt nervous and confused. Acting had always been about scripts. Doing a play involved being given a part, learning my lines and then performing on the night. But in this world spontaneity was everything. With your partner you would be given a first line (‘That was bang out of order!’, ‘You do nothing round the house!’, ‘I’ve had it up to here with you!’) and, in front of everyone, you would have to improvise a situation. There was no time for throat clearing—bang, you were in the scene. And the style was direct, confrontational and fast. The scenes rocketed up the emotional scale as you let rip on your colleague. This training taught me a lot about how to play games. My eight years at Anna’s taught me that thinking on your feet and embracing the unexpected is the place where creativity begins.

Some weeks, if the class had been particularly intense, we would end with a game. The one I enjoyed most was Word Tennis. Since learning the game at Anna’s I’ve played it in many different contexts. It can be played standing up in a line or sitting down and children and grannies love it. It’s called Word Tennis because the aim is to keep the word rally going for as long as possible.

Everyone sits in a circle, either on chairs or round a table. Someone starts by suggesting a category with lots of members, for example, Sports. The person gives an example of the category (football) and the game begins. Travelling in a clockwise direction, each person must give an example from that category. If it’s Sports, people might say basketball, hockey, or tennis. You keep going until someone hesitates, repeats a name or can’t think of another one. After a few trial runs you can start eliminating people. When someone is out you start again with a new category. If you have been playing sitting down, when you get to the last four people still in, ask them to stand up. This increases the stakes. You keep going until only two people are left in. Everyone suggests categories for the final and you have a dramatic showdown.

Fun categories really help. Here are some you might like to try:

Sweets and Chocolates | Fairytale Characters
Things that Live Under the Sea | Five-Letter Words
Types of Footwear | Fairground Rides
Things People Do to Keep Warm | Three-Letter Words
Things You Might Find in a Convent | Precious Stones
Things People Do When They’re in Love | Horror Films
Dwellings | Fashion Designers
Things that Cost Under £1 | Sandwich Fillings
High-Street Stores | Objects with Doors
Contents of a Lady’s Handbag | Politicians

Empire

Some games have a beautiful form, like this one. Its design is simple but deeply satisfying. Although you might feel it’s too simple to last very long it’s surprisingly difficult and unravels slowly. It’s perfect for a big crowd and tremendously accessible.

Everyone writes the name of a famous person down on a scrap of paper. They then fold up their bits of paper and throw them into a hat. The umpire also writes a name on a piece of paper and adds it to the hat. This name will be known as the Wild Card.

The umpire takes the names out of the hat and reads them aloud to the group twice through, explaining to the group that they must remember as many names as possible. The names are now put back into the hat, which is placed to one side. The umpire then selects a player to start. This player must try and guess which player has written which name. They might start by suggesting that their bookish elder brother is Paul Auster, or their trendy younger sister Vivienne Westwood. If this player guesses correctly then the person whose name they have guessed must join their empire. They may confer with their new recruit to keep remembering names and guessing who wrote them. If they keep guessing correctly, their empire expands accordingly.

If a player guesses wrongly, the turn passes to this player whose name hasn’t been guessed. They take over and begin to guess names. If they manage to guess the name of a person who has already accrued an empire, this person and all her captured players move to this new emperor. The game ends when one person has subsumed everyone into one huge domain. The aim is to remember all the names and to match them all accurately to their source.

The first time you play this, you might want to ask every-one just to write down names without telling them what is to come. People will write names that clearly reflect their interests and tastes. They will be easy to guess. You will play the first round and people will be a little non-plussed. Then, having played the game, ask everyone to disguise themselves by writing a name no one would expect. So the young proto-feminist in the group might write Jeremy Clarkson, the bookish elder brother Sporty Spice and the mild-mannered granny Sid Vicious. This time the game takes longer and becomes fascinating as everyone tries to guess who is behind each name. The names act like masks. Crucial to the game’s success is the Wild Card. The status of the Wild Card cannot be established definitively since the umpire who wrote it cannot be questioned. Empires have to establish for themselves which name is the red herring.

The aim of the game is world domination. So what’s new?

Cheeky Golf

When I learnt this game recently at a party I was pretty alarmed and sceptical; was it dangerous? Was it too shocking? Was it even possible? Well, after having played the game myself I can testify that it’s perfectly safe, deeply strange but very good fun. It is a game in which participation should not be made obligatory, for reasons that will become clear. And no articles of clothing need be removed. It was taught to me by a woman wearing a skirt and I did fine in jeans…

You need a fifty pence piece and a pint glass. Establish a line a few metres from the glass and ask a volunteer to stand behind it. The player then takes the fifty pence piece and clenches it between his buttocks. Keeping hold of the coin, the player then attempts to walk forward before successfully releasing it into the glass. Players can either drop the coin from a height or try and squat over the glass. Although the idea may strike the assembled company as too awful for words, it’s actually very straightforward. Our muscles in this area are strong and carrying a coin around is actually pretty easy. There is also the most remarkable joy in hearing the tinkle of the coin landing in the glass: it’s probably the nearest we’ll come to the satisfying pleasure of laying an egg.

If you have the appetite to go further, you can think about creating an obstacle course between you and the pint glass, using chairs and other bits of furniture.

The Cereal Game

If you’re playing with a big group, it’s especially important to find games that sustain people’s interest even after they have been eliminated. You need games that are fun for spectators as well as participants. This game fits that bill well. It’s fun watching men struggling with it, since it’s often women who are more supple and therefore better at it. It can be a bit tough on the neck, so if you have problems in this area, steer clear of the game or make sure you do a few stretches first. People who do lots of yoga invariably do very well.

The aim of this game is to pick up the cereal box using your teeth, with only your feet touching the ground.

Place the cereal box in the centre of the circle, far away from any coffee tables or furniture. Go around the circle, with everyone having a go. Most people will manage to bend over and lift the box into the air using their teeth without too many problems. Next, using a pair of scissors cut off a strip around the top of the box, so that it’s something like a fifth lower. Now, go round again, remembering that if any part of the body—apart from the feet—makes contact with the ground the person goes out. This includes players losing their balance. Keep going for about five rounds, with the packet being cut down lower and lower each time. More and more people will go out until you are left with your finalists. If the remaining individuals are demonstrating a rare expertise, then for your very final round you can cut off the lip of the packet entirely so that players have to suck the horizontal piece of card off the floor while essentially being upside down.

I have seen it done.

Clap Volleyball

When I was at Cambridge I shared a dream with my friend Charles Dean of touring a play around Russia. For both of us it quickly became an obsession. Charles was a producer and his vision was that we would travel the country, performing the show in exchange for food and accommodation. The challenge began to engross him more and more. He persuaded a girl studying Russian to become the tour translator and the project grew in scale. In his small attic room he pinned on the wall a huge map of the former Soviet Union and nearby countries. Red pins would signify a confirmed date. Every time I visited Charles, the red pins would have multiplied and after some months we had dates in Moscow, St Petersburg, Belarus, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland.

We had decided to tour The Winter’s Tale, with a cast of ten and minimal props. Even with no scenery, transporting cast and equipment became a major headache. Trains were cumbersome and journeys time-consuming. We only had a month during our holidays and Charles was determined that we made all our dates. I was becoming more and more anxious but Charles reassured me that he would find a way and that I should simply concentrate on casting and rehearsing the show.

On the first day of the tour we gathered outside the Maypole pub in Cambridge to find one large coach and two rather confused-looking drivers. The plan was simple. We were to climb aboard and then drive, via Berlin, to Moscow for our first performance. From there we would drive across the former Soviet bloc, criss-crossing countries to deliver our pared-down version of Shakespeare. And so began a remarkable month of eleven overnight journeys, bus drivers being taken to the verge of madness, passionate love affairs, late-night border inspections and unending streams of vodka.

Somehow we made it on time for our first performance in Moscow. The show went well and the cast and I were invited to attend a workshop at the Moscow State University, given by a director and expert in the Stanislavski Method. We expected two hours of rigorous emotional exercises. What we got was a lot of clapping. The director explained how awareness, contact and speed were at the heart of his approach to theatre. And so he taught us this simple but potent game, which I have played in practically every rehearsal room I have been in since. It works with friends, too. You need a big space, but the joy is that, although it’s a kind of volleyball, you can play it indoors since there is no ball to break anything with…

You need a minimum of seven players: two teams of three plus one umpire. Begin by asking the teams to choose names, and then get them to stand opposite each other in two lines. Just as in real volleyball, appoint someone on Team A to serve. Their job will be to make clear eye contact with someone on Team B and fire the clap to them. Without hesitation, this player must send the clap back to someone else on Team A and so a rally begins. Teams drop points by indirect clap throwing. Equally, if the clap is clearly aimed at someone but they are dozing and there is a split-second lull, the other team gains a point. The aim is to create fast and furious rallies that last until concentration reaches breaking point.

Smashes are allowed, but they carry risks. Rather than directing the clap straight to the opposite team, players may pass the clap down the line to someone on their own side. However, if this person is distracted and hesitates then the other team wins a point. The clap may be passed along a team as many times as players wish, but everyone must maintain their position in the line and any hesitation must be leaped on and penalized by the umpire. The first team to score five points wins.

When I’m the umpire I build tension by winding up both teams as much as possible to win. When you’ve appointed a player to serve, tell them to wait for a visual cue. This gives everyone a chance to regain their focus. Position yourself between the lines at one end and begin by crying, ‘Let’s play Clap Volleyball!’

Mickey Mouse

When I was starting out as a theatre director one of my earliest projects was a collaboration with the poet Simon Armitage. I had been a fan of his work for ages and, after leaving university, I had the idea of trying to persuade him to write a new version of a Greek tragedy called Heracles. Often, Greek tragedies are translated by academics rather than poets and I was convinced Simon could bring a raw, contemporary edge to the language of Euripides. I sent Simon the script of the play and he wrote back saying he would be very interested in doing the job, provided I could guarantee the play would actually get staged. Faced with this Herculean challenge, I began contacting theatres, trying to find a venue that would not only pay for the commission but would give an assurance that, barring natural disaster, they would stage the play. Theatres were excited about Simon Armitage but were less excited about Simon Godwin. Eventually, I persuaded the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds—Simon’s local theatre—to meet me. Over the course of an hour I struggled to communicate my passion for the original play and its potential impact if rewritten by Simon.

Touched by my overpowering enthusiasm (if nothing else), the theatre decided to commission the play and so began a two-year process of writing and workshops to develop a new work—Mister Heracles—based on Euripides’ original.

The plot of the play was profoundly serious. The drama tells the story of a triumphant Heracles returning home after the completion of his labours only to suffer a breakdown and murder his wife and children. During rehearsals it was easy to become sucked into the play’s darkness and, to keep our spirits up, we played games. In order to work, these needed to be as silly and lively as possible. One of the actors in the cast taught us this game, which fitted the bill perfectly.

This game doesn’t need many players to work. Playing with a small number of people is actually better as you have to be on your toes even more than usual.

Everyone stands in a circle. The player who starts covers his nose with his fist to make a Mickey Mouse nose. The player to his right places his left hand behind his left ear to make a Mickey Mouse ear. The player to the left places his hand behind his right ear to make a Mickey Mouse ear on the other side. So you now have a nose and two ears made by three different players. The player with the nose now throws it across the circle to another player who ‘catches’ it. That person now has the Mickey Mouse nose and the two players either side of him must make the ears on the correct sides.

The nose is now ‘thrown’ faster and faster around the circle. You will find that people consistently forget to make the ears at the right time on the right side. Keep going until the nose is constantly moving, with hands moving from ears to noses to ears. The aim is to heighten everyone’s awareness of what is happening and to develop fast, intuitive reactions.

You can introduce a competitive edge by eliminating people who make a mistake. Or you can just play for the fun of it—enjoying the swirl of ears and noses. Some years later, I saw one of the actors at a crowded opening night in a theatre in London. Across the crowded stalls he ‘threw me a nose’.

Chinese Pictures

It’s always exciting to spot new games as they hit the scene. No one knows where they come from but suddenly there is a tipping point and everyone is playing them. I was thrilled to discover this game a few months ago. It’s already being played by more and more people I know and when you play it you’ll understand why. It’s a very well structured game and I think it’s a ‘non-submersible’, which means that it can withstand any context or degree of skill. It comes with its own inscribed magic.

This game is a variant on the Consequences model, which I discuss in Chapter 4. The origins of this game are hinted at in a book called Kate Greenaway’s Book of Games from 1889. Here one player draws a famous scene from history or fiction and the other players have to write down what they think it is, before folding their suggestion over and passing their paper on. At the end players unfold their papers and read out a list of possible definitions. But this version, where everyone is constantly drawing and writing, is a lot more fun.

Everyone begins with a pile of papers, each about the size of a quarter of a piece of A4. It’s crucial that you begin with the right number of papers. For an odd number of players you’ll need the same number of papers; for an even number of players you will need one less. So for nine players you’ll need nine papers, for eight you’ll need seven. On their first piece of paper everyone writes down a film title. Now everyone passes their entire pile, with the title still on top, to the person on their left. This player looks at the title and places it at the bottom of the pile. Now they must attempt to draw the film title on this new piece of paper. They can do this either by breaking down the title of the film or by drawing an image that communicates its essential content. When this is done, players pass the entire pile to the player on their left. This person looks carefully at the picture and then puts it to the bottom of the pile and on the next new piece of paper writes down the title that it suggests to them. When they have done this they pass their entire pile to the person on their left, who reads the title, places it on the bottom and draws the picture that expresses it. It’s essential that the entire pile is passed on each time and this process of reading/writing/ drawing continues until people get their original title back.

After they have been reunited with their original title, each player now reveals their sequence of words and pictures. Players talk through their sequence, holding up one paper at a time. A potential example might go: I wrote down One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Dad drew [show strange drawing of a flying bird]; Granny wrote Chicken Run, Mum drew [an abstract figure distantly related to a chicken fleeing a prison] and Grandpa wrote The Fugitive, and so on.

It’s fantastically rewarding when one series of papers manages to successfully convey one consistent title, but this is pretty rare. There is no winner; the pleasure lies in the often crazy relationship between image and title. Players should do their best to be as precise and detailed as possible but more often than not this is a celebration of distortion. Also, don’t be put off by people being confused or grudging at the start. The game reveals its magic gradually and it’s always thrilling to discover the way you arrive back at your title and the mad journeys everyone has gone on.

It’s a Knockout in Your Living Room

Playing games with lots of people is not easy. Arriving at a party, people’s expectation is to drink a lot and talk. So when someone proposes a game there may be some resistance. There is a failsafe way to short-circuit this and that’s by exploiting the human animal’s competitive gene. As soon as you put people in a team they are overtaken with a desire to win at all costs. Suddenly, you have people obsessed with potential strategies and ways to prove their skills to their team-mates. Everyone becomes desperate to avoid the humiliation of being the one who lost the match.

You will discover how, once a team has played a game together, they become hungry to stay together to play more. With this in mind, I have put together a series of games here that can be played consecutively. If you are feeling really motivated you can create a score board and build up a championship-type vibe. I’m thinking a ‘games decathlon’. You can have an interval halfway through when people can drink and chat before getting going again, with even crazier and more adventurous games.

Slap Penny

This game is good because it’s a relatively sedate way to start a run of team games. It takes skill but it’s not too complex or too physical. It allows people to start working together and the penny slapping technique is not as easy as it seems.

For this game you’ll need two teams with a minimum of four people in each team. The two teams stand facing each other. At either end of each row place a chair (so you’ll need four chairs in total). On the two chairs facing each other at one end of the line, place a pile of ten pennies. When the umpire shouts ‘Go’, the two players on each team standing next to the chairs pick up a coin and place it on their hand. They have to hold their hand and palm upwards, with the penny resting in the palm.

The penny is then slapped from that palm to another and then onto the palm of the next player, who in turn transfers it to his other hand, and so on. The first player palms the coins from the pile as quickly as he can to get as many pennies travelling down the line as possible. The last player in the line drops the coin onto the chair standing beside them.

A penny may never be clutched. If it is dropped, it must be returned to the starting point on the chair. If you really want to test your players, when all ten coins have arrived you can demand that they send them back again. The first team to slap all their coins home wins.

Leaping Cards

Playing cards are fiendishly difficult to throw. They are resistant to too much force and their shape means that you have to find an oblique approach to getting them on target. This game was originally played by the Victorians who would try and throw cards into a top hat. Sadly, most of us don’t keep one to hand anymore. But you do need a stiff hat with a wide brim. I have an old trilby, for example, that works perfectly well. Alternatively, a pudding basin or small bucket will both work well.

Here I have adapted the original, rather sedate game into a high-octane team competition. The game has acquired a greater urgency as you now have to balance accuracy with speed.

The aim of the game is to be the team that wins as many points as possible. The game ends when one team has managed to throw all their cards.

Begin by spreading a newspaper on the ground and placing your hat in the centre of it. Using a jumper, scarf or the edge of a rug, establish a line around 1.5 metres from the hat. This will be where players throw their cards from.

Divide the company into two teams. Each team is given half a pack of cards. One team has the red cards and the other the black cards. On ‘Go’, one by one a member of each team goes to the line and throws a card towards the hat. For every card that makes it successfully into the hat, players are awarded three points, for any that land on the rim players get two points and for any card that at least makes it onto the newspaper, players get one point. In the fast and furious snowstorm of cards, leave the scoring until all the cards have been thrown.

Both teams scramble to throw their cards as accurately and as rapidly as possible. When one team has succeeded in throwing all their cards, the game stops. At this point the two team captains begin by collecting all their team’s cards that have landed around the room, which are discarded as they are worth no points. They then collect all the cards on the newspaper, which are worth one point. The captains should count as they go, moving on to gather cards on the brim (two points) and then in the hat itself (three points). The team with the highest score wins.

Picture This

There are various board games that you can buy in the shops based around drawing. Pictionary and Articulate are two good examples that revolve around a very simple premise. Indeed, the premise is so simple that you can easily play your own versions at home, with stuff you already have. Unlike Chinese Pictures, this game is competitive and is played with a time pressure; this means you can happily include it in your games tournament.

Drawing games are like charades in that they ask for skills that most people don’t have to any great level. This is exactly why they are such fun.

You need a pinboard, which you can cover with sheets of A4 paper, or single sheets of A3, depending on what you have to hand and the size of your board. After forming two teams, each player writes three everyday objects on a different piece of paper and throws those bits of paper into a hat. The game begins with the first player pulling out a piece of paper from the hat and drawing the object on the board, which must be guessed by the rest of her team. Each player is given only thirty seconds to try and draw as many objects as possible. As the names are guessed correctly, the team keeps their papers to add up when the hat has eventually been cleared. The team with the most names at the end wins.

The Sofa Game

It is with some trepidation that I share this game. It’s a game that can end in tears and possibly even injury. It takes the childhood fun of making obstacle courses and gives it a competitive edge. However, only play this game if you have the right sofa. You need one which is low, soft and bouncy. I have one in my flat that is essentially just a piece of foam. For sitting on, it’s hell. For this game, it’s perfect.

This game is a relay race. To prepare, you’ll need two plastic bottles. They can be large mineral water bottles or medium-sized plastic milk bottles. Form two lines. On ‘Go’, the first player of each team must put the bottle between their knees, climb over the sofa, touch the back wall of the room and clamber back again. If the bottle slips from between their legs, they have to stop and replace it. The returning player tags the next in line and the first team to make it home wins.

You should position the sofa in the middle of the room, some way from the back wall. Inevitably, the sofa will tip over with the weight of two players fighting to scramble over it, so you need plenty of space and a light sofa that isn’t going to crush anyone. When I played the game recently it was hilarious seeing a group of people in their early thirties coming up with the most amazingly ingenious solutions to scaling the sofa while maintaining control of their bottle.

Puff Balloon

Games with balloons first became popular during the late nineteenth century. In 1896 Parker Brothers brought out a new game called Pillow Dex, which was a forerunner of Ping Pong. The kit provided all the ingredients you would need to volley a balloon across a net stretched over your parlour table. You can imagine this more genteel version of table tennis in action, with Victorian ladies gently wafting the balloon from one side of the net to the other. This game is my own addition to the tradition of balloon games. You might want to use it to build on the crazy momentum of the Sofa Game; it’s equally silly but slightly less perilous.

You need two teams with at least three players each. In the centre of a room place a dining chair. Each team is given a balloon. On ‘Go’, the first player in each team sets off to try and blow their balloon underneath the chair to the other side. Once successfully blown under, the balloon is then puffed back directly to the starting line so that the next player can go. The first team to bring all their members home wins.

Players aren’t allowed to touch an opponent’s balloon but they may blow it. This becomes particularly relevant when the balloons clash on entering the vicinity of the chair. As players scramble to get their balloons under the seat, all sorts of breathy interventions are allowed by the two players fighting it out. Those waiting to race, however, must remain behind the line. The only pressure they’re allowed to exert is via cheering.

The Hat Game

Finally in this section, I would like to share with you the King of Team Games. If there is one game to take from this book, I would like it to be this one. It’s like a rich, delicious stew with all your favourite ingredients. It’s so versatile and open to so many different ages and levels of skill that everyone seems to be playing it. Indeed, it conforms very well with the theory put forward by the historians and great game collectors Iona and Peter Opie. They argue that, as games become more popular, they begin to attract additional rules, become more elaborate and the length of time needed to play them increases. I believe that this game is relatively recent and has been around in this form for no more than fifteen years or so. It’s now very common and, as the following explanation demonstrates, it is still growing and developing.

I learnt the Hat Game when I was touring Russia with The Winter’s Tale. A crowd of us were killing time in a dingy hotel in Minsk when someone suggested this game. There couldn’t have been a better place to learn this epic, three-stage event and I’ve been hooked ever since.

Begin by giving everyone a pen and a sheet of paper. Everyone tears up their paper to make seven smaller pieces and writes on each a different name of a well-known public figure. The papers are folded and placed in the hat. You will have plenty of names. The group is then

divided into two equal teams.

Team A nominates a member of their team to start. They are given a minute—timed by someone on the opposing side—to take names out of the hatand describe the people on the card without saying their name. Any name that is correctly guessed the team keeps, so by the end of the minute they have collected a nice pile of names. The hat then passes to the other team who repeat the procedure. The hat goes back and forth until all the names have been guessed. At the end of the round, each team counts the names they have won, records the total and the papers are returned to the hat.

Round two works on the same principle except that now the names are described using three words only. For the game to work you must be very strict. ‘Ums’ and ‘ahs’ are counted as words. If someone says ‘um, ah, celebrity’ then that’s all they’re allowed. No more can be said until the name is guessed. The team may spend the entire minute trying to guess just one name. The stakes are high! As before, when all the names have been guessed teams tot up their total and all the names go back into the hat. Now is the final showdown. In this round players must act out each name. They can break the name down into syllables, as in Charades, or do a silent impression of the character; becoming for a few priceless seconds Winston Churchill, Marilyn Monroe, Amy Winehouse etc. As acting takes longer than speaking, the time is normally extended for this round, with everyone being given two minutes rather than one.

When the hat has been cleared for the last time, the three totals for each round are added up and the team with the largest number wins.

Stop Press. At the time of writing there are rumours of a fourth round. I have never attempted this but my brother, who is a film director and therefore much more glamorous than me, spent New Year playing the game with some members of the Hollywood crowd (the game’s popularity is spreading). They introduced him to this innovation which, he assures me, provides a surreal and hilarious new twist.

So, for the first time in print:

Players once again remove the names one by one. Now, however, rather than using words or actions, players must make a single sound. This sound must embody the essential characteristics of the name on the paper. It might be a low moan, a triumphant roar, a nervous giggle or a stifled sob. Sounds like a challenge, doesn’t it?

Word Games for Witty People

In sixteenth-century France a new vogue for verbal games took hold. These games were played in courtly circles and were known as jeux d’esprit. They were part of the burgeoning world of the salon and were played alongside discussions of courtly themes such as love, society and politics. These games reached England via some of the first books of games, such as the anonymously written The Mysteries of Love and Eloquence (1658), which describes old word games like Crambo. Many of the games that follow have their beginnings in this early flowering of word games and verbal jousting.

Word games grew in popularity during the nineteenth century and took shape in public events such as the Spelling Bee. ‘Bee’ was a term that became popular in America during the eighteenth century. It was used to describe events where large numbers of people came together—much like bees—to participate in some communal activity. People would gather to weave, spin, make quilts and, eventually, to compete in spelling matches. The first of these Spelling Bees took place in America during the 1870s. The spelling obsession soon made it across the pond and, in 1876, The Leisure Hour

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