At a party the other night, I got talking to some of my wife’s work colleagues, one of whom mentioned that they were getting into board games. I mentioned two parlour games – by which I mean games that need no special equipment – just pen and paper – or no equipment all. For example Charades, which my family played to excess on childhood ski trips.
Since they hadn’t heard of either of these games, and I dug out a write up of these games I made for a another friend some time ago. As an experiment, I figured I’d publish them here.
That Game (or maybe The Hat Game)
This is probably my favourite parlour game. A group I learnt it off and played it most with called it That Game, as in, “Let’s play That Game”. I think this may be a corruption of “The Hat Game”, since drawing from a hat is part of the game. Whatever you call it, it is a great game.
This is how it works. Everyone needs a pen and some paper slips to set up – ten paper slips per player is a good number, but you can adjust for length. Each secretly writes the names of people or characters on their slips of paper, one per slip. Ten makes for a medium length game. The names should be “known to people at the table” – a bit famous, or relatives or friends. You can add clarifying comments in brackets if you need to – for example “Madonna [singer]” or “Madonna [religious figure]”.
Form teams of two – or three if the numbers work better – sitting interleaved – uneven teams will work fine. All the names go into a hat – or bowl – and then a player gets one minute to have their teammates guess names drawn at random. The team must guess exactly what is on the slip, ignoring clarifying comments. After the minute, the turn rotates. There are three rounds.
In the first round, the player drawing the name can say anything except what is written on the paper. You cannot say words in the notes either, even though these do not need to be guessed. The drawing player may not skip a card, and the guesser must keep guessing. After the minute, play passes to the next guesser and their team. The table collectively goes through the whole set of names. If you like to score, give each team 1 point for each correct name.
After the first round, players can check with the group to explain any names they don’t know, and also at this point you should discard duplicates, which always seem to arise, so that each name is in the set exactly once. Don’t forget the explaining step here – this really helps as people don’t always have the same expectations of well known, but this step makes that mostly unimpactful. Return the slips to the hat for the second round.
In the second round, the player drawing the name can say only one word. Only one. It cannot be anything written on the slip they are looking at – the name or notes. The guesser only gets one guess per slip – an incorrect guess is a fail. The drawer can skip a name by passing, and this is treated as a fail. Failed and passed slips go into a separate pile. You cannot return to a failed or passed slip in the same one minute turn. If you run out your minute, or run out of slips, play passes to the next guesser and their team. If you get through the names, reshuffle the fails and passes, excluding those from the current round, and continue. Keep going until the table has gone through all the names in the second round. Score if you like, and then return the slips to the hat for the third round.
In the third round, the player drawing the name cannot say anything. They can mime, or hum without words, but no verbal communication. This might sound really hard, but you know all the slips from round one, and importantly you know how they were clued in previous rounds – miming a prior clue is a time honoured technique. It is hilarious and high paced. Score the final round to find a winning team if you are scoring.
It’s hard to explain why it’s so good without playing it. I think it has a couple of great properties. It is fun even if you don’t score. It’s quite self correcting – even if a teenager puts in an obscure sports player, or a child puts in every character in their favourite fiction – the first round works because the writer knows the answer, and then everyone does. You can adjust your house rules to deal with things like “can i do sounds like” or “can i break up names”, if everyone agrees it works. For more experienced players you can use notes to exclude words you don’t want the players to use. Every game builds up a shared vocabulary of identifiers – which need not even be true – you just need to get the right name said.
I’ve played with family, friends, and groups of students at maths camp, and it has always worked well.
Claps (or Clicks)
“Claps” (or “Clicks”) is played by a group. It requires no equipment. Send one player out of the room temporarily.
Everyone else in the room agrees on a task to be completed by the absent player. This must of course be G rated and not dangerous. The absent player is called back, and their goal is to perform the specified task which is unknown to them. No one else may speak, but they can but applaud – clap their hands – or click their fingers – when the right thing is done.
As the guesser gets closer they will get a few claps, when they are clearly on the right track – solid applause, make a big mistake – dead silence. Once they have clearly done the task the round is over - congratulate them and a new guesser leaves the room so a new task can be decided.
It’s amazing the tasks you can communicate – some examples i’ve seen are “Select a specific person and waltz with them”, or “Retrieve an imaginary key from the top drawer of a desk and use it to unlock an imaginary safe behind a painting.”
It doesn’t matter if the applauders disagree about a detail – they still must not talk, but continue to just clap or not. This can be hilarious as the realisation about the misunderstanding – or clever idea – spreads around the room.
To increase the challenge, send two people out of the room, and devise a task in which they must cooperate. It can help to “clap in the direction” of the player doing the right thing, but good tasks will require asymmetric co-operation to achieve the goal.