In the heart of the 1940s, as Britain navigated a world in flux, the humble parlour served as a sanctuary for community and connection. Evenings were often filled with the comforting sounds of laughter and friendly rivalry, sparked by the simple yet engaging pleasure of parlour games. Let’s draw back the curtains on some of these cherished pastimes:
1. Charades
Number of Players: 3 or more (best played with teams)
Equipment: None
How to Play:
- Divide into Teams (Optional): If playing with a larger group, split into two or more teams.
- Prepare Slips (Optional): Write down words, phrases, film titles, book titles, or song titles on slips of paper. Fold them and place them in a hat or bowl.
- Taking Turns: One person from a team goes first.
- Acting it Out: The actor chooses a slip (or thinks of something themselves) and silently acts it out for their team. They cannot speak or make any sounds.
- Giving Clues (Non-Verbal): The actor can use gestures to indicate:
- Category: Miming opening a book for a book title, turning a handle for a film, etc.
- Number of Words: Holding up fingers.
- Which Word: Tapping fingers for the word they are currently acting out.
- Syllables: Holding up fingers for the number of syllables in a word.
- Guessing: The actor’s team members try to guess what is being acted out within a set time limit (e.g., one or two minutes).
- Scoring (If Playing with Teams): If the team guesses correctly within the time, they get a point.
- Next Turn: The next team takes a turn, with a different member acting.
- Winning: The team with the most points after a predetermined number of rounds wins.
2. Twenty Questions
Number of Players: 2 or more
Equipment: None
How to Play:
- The Thinker: One person thinks of an object, person, or place. They keep it secret from the others.
- Asking Questions: The other players take turns asking yes or no questions to try and identify what the thinker is thinking of.
- Yes or No Answers: The thinker can only answer “yes,” “no,” or “maybe.”
- Twenty Question Limit: The guessers have a maximum of twenty questions in total.
- Guessing: If a player thinks they know the answer, they can make a guess on their turn (this counts as one of the twenty questions).
- Success: If the guess is correct, that player becomes the thinker for the next round.
- Failure: If twenty questions are asked and no one guesses correctly, the thinker reveals the answer and gets to be the thinker again for the next round.
- Variations: You can agree on categories beforehand (e.g., animal, vegetable, mineral, famous person).
3. Consequences
Number of Players: 3 or more
Equipment: Paper and pencils
How to Play:
- Prepare Paper: Each player takes a sheet of paper.
- First Line (Adjective): Everyone writes an adjective at the top of their paper and then folds the paper over so the next person cannot see what they have written. They pass the paper to the person on their left.
- Second Line (Noun): The next person writes a noun, folds the paper, and passes it on.
- Continue the Sequence: This continues with each person writing the following in turn, folding the paper after each line:
- A male person’s name
- An adjective
- A female person’s name
- Where they met
- An adjective
- What he said to her
- An adjective
- What she said to him
- What the consequence was
- What the world said
- Unfolding and Reading: Once everyone has contributed to all the lines on the paper they currently hold, the papers are unfolded, and each story is read aloud. The unexpected combinations usually result in humorous and nonsensical tales.
4. Musical Chairs
Number of Players: 3 or more
Equipment: Chairs (one fewer than the number of players), music player and music
How to Play:
- Arrange Chairs: Arrange the chairs in a circle, facing outwards.
- Start the Music: The music begins, and the players start walking or dancing around the circle of chairs.
- Stop the Music: Someone stops the music suddenly and without warning.
- Sit Down: Everyone must try to sit down in a chair as quickly as possible.
- Elimination: The player who is left standing (without a chair) is out of the game.
- Remove a Chair: One chair is removed from the circle.
- Continue Playing: The music starts again, and the remaining players continue to walk around the fewer chairs.
- The Winner: The game continues until only one player remains, who is declared the winner.
5. Kim’s Game
Number of Players: 2 or more
Equipment: A tray, a collection of small, everyday objects (e.g., button, coin, key, matchbox, thimble, small toy), a cloth or cover, paper and pencils.
How to Play:
- Prepare the Tray: Arrange a selection of small objects on the tray.
- Observation Time: Show the tray to the players for a short period (e.g., one minute).
- Cover the Tray: Cover the tray with a cloth or remove it from sight.
- Recall and Write: Give the players a set amount of time (e.g., two minutes) to write down as many of the items as they can remember.
- Check and Score: Once the time is up, reveal the tray and have players check their lists. Award one point for each correctly recalled item.
- The Winner: The player with the most correctly recalled items wins.
- Variation (Changes): For a more challenging version, after the initial viewing, remove or add one or two small items before covering the tray again. Players then try to identify what has changed.
6. Blow Football
Number of Players: 2
Equipment: A table, a small lightweight object (e.g., crumpled piece of paper, ping pong ball), two straws.
How to Play:
- Set Up: Players sit opposite each other at the table. Place the “football” in the centre of the table.
- The Goal: The goal for each player is usually the edge of the table on their opponent’s side. You can also use small objects as makeshift goals at the table edges.
- Blowing: Players take turns (or blow simultaneously) to move the “football” by blowing through their straws. They cannot touch the “football” with anything other than their breath through the straw.
- Scoring: If a player blows the “football” off their opponent’s side of the table (or between their goalposts), they score a point.
- Winning: The first player to reach a predetermined number of points wins the game.
- Variations: You can introduce obstacles on the table (e.g., books, cups) to make the game more challenging.
7. Up Jenkins
Number of Players: 4 or more, sitting around a table
Equipment: A small coin or object
How to Play:
- The Holder: One player starts as the “holder.”
- Secret Passing: The holder takes the coin and secretly passes it from hand to hand under the table. They then secretly leave the coin in one of their closed fists.
- Fists on the Table: The holder then brings both closed fists up onto the table.
- “Up Jenkins!”: The other players take turns saying “Up Jenkins!”
- Reveal Palms: On the command “Up Jenkins!”, all players with fists on the table (including the holder) must simultaneously turn their palms upwards.
- Guessing: The guessers try to determine which hand holds the coin. They can ask questions to the holder or other players (though answers may be misleading!).
- Correct Guess: The first person to correctly guess which hand holds the coin becomes the new holder for the next round.
8. Musical Statues
Number of Players: 3 or more
Equipment: Music player and music
How to Play:
- Start the Music: The music begins, and the players start moving around the room (dancing, walking, etc.).
- Stop the Music: Someone stops the music suddenly.
- Freeze!: Everyone must immediately freeze in whatever position they are in, becoming a “statue.”
- Elimination: Anyone who moves, wobbles, or laughs while the music is stopped is out of the game.
- Restart: The music begins again, and the remaining players continue to move.
- The Winner: The game continues until only one player remains frozen when the music stops, who is declared the winner.
9. The Minister’s Cat
Number of Players: 2 or more, sitting in a circle is ideal
Equipment: None
How to Play:
- First Player: The first player starts by saying, “The Minister’s cat is an [adjective] cat,” choosing an adjective that begins with the letter ‘A’ (e.g., “The Minister’s cat is an amiable cat”).
- Next Player: The next player in the circle repeats the phrase and adds an adjective starting with ‘B’ (e.g., “The Minister’s cat is an amiable, beautiful cat”).
- Alphabetical Order: Each subsequent player repeats the entire phrase, adding a new adjective in alphabetical order.
- Forgetting or Hesitating: If a player cannot think of an appropriate adjective for the current letter or forgets any of the previous adjectives in the sequence, they are out of the game.
- The Winner: The game continues until only one player remains, or until the alphabet is exhausted.
10. Botticelli
Number of Players: 2 or more
Equipment: None
How to Play:
- The Thinker: One person thinks of a famous person (historical or fictional) but does not reveal their name.
- First Question: The other players take turns asking the first question in the format: “Are you [first letter of the person’s last name] like [another famous person whose last name begins with the same letter]?” For example, if the person is Isaac Newton, a questioner might ask, “Are you N like Napoleon?”.
- Clue Answer: The thinker must answer with a clue related to the person they are thinking of. For the “Isaac Newton” example, they might say, “I had an apple fall on my head.”
- Further Questions: Players continue to ask “Are you [letter] like [another person with that letter]?” questions, hoping the clues will help them deduce the identity of the mystery person.
- Guessing: A player can make a guess on their turn.
- Success: If the guess is correct, that player becomes the thinker for the next round.
- Continuing: If the guess is incorrect, the game continues with other players asking questions.
11. Dumb Crambo
Number of Players: 4 or more (best played with two teams)
Equipment: None
How to Play:
- Divide into Teams: Split the players into two teams.
- Secret Word/Phrase: One team goes first and secretly chooses a word or short phrase. They tell the other team only the first word.
- Rhyme Suggestions: The guessing team takes turns suggesting words or phrases that rhyme with the secret word.
- Acting it Out: For each rhyme suggested, the acting team has to act out a scenario that relates to that rhyming word or phrase. They cannot speak.
- Correct Rhyme: The guessing team continues to suggest rhymes until they hit upon the correct rhyme that fits the secret word or phrase in a way that makes sense to them based on the acting.
- Switch Roles: Once the correct rhyme is guessed, the teams swap roles. The team that guessed correctly now chooses the secret word/phrase and acts out the rhymes for the other team.
- Scoring (Optional): You can keep score based on how many rhymes the guessing team goes through before getting the correct one.
12. Proverbs
Number of Players: 3 or more
Equipment: None
How to Play:
- The Actor: One person thinks of a well-known proverb but doesn’t say it aloud.
- Acting it Out: The actor then acts out the proverb, word by word or phrase by phrase, without speaking. They use gestures and mime to convey the meaning.
- Guessing: The other players watch the acting and try to guess the proverb.
- Correct Guess: The first person to correctly guess the proverb becomes the next actor.
- Choosing a Proverb: The new actor then thinks of a different proverb to act out.
13. I Spy
Number of Players: 2 or more
Equipment: None (just your eyes!)
How to Play:
- The Spy: One person chooses an object that is visible to everyone but doesn’t say what it is.
- The Clue: The spy gives a clue by saying, “I spy with my little eye something beginning with the letter [first letter of the object’s name].” For example, “I spy with my little eye something beginning with the letter ‘C’.”
- Guessing: The other players take turns guessing objects that they can see and that begin with the specified letter.
- Correct Guess: The person who correctly guesses the object becomes the next spy.
- Variations: If the group is older, you can make it more challenging by adding colour or other attributes to the clue (e.g., “I spy with my little eye something green”).
14. Beetle
Number of Players: 2 or more
Equipment: Paper and pencils, one die per group
How to Play:
- Establish the Key: Before starting, agree on a “key” that assigns numbers to the different parts of a beetle. A common key is:
- 1: Body
- 2: Head (requires a body first)
- 3: Antenna (requires a head first)
- 4: Eye (requires a head first)
- 5: Leg (requires a body first; a beetle typically has 6 legs, so you’d need six rolls of 5)
- 6: Tail (requires a body first)
- Taking Turns: Players take turns rolling the die.
- Drawing Parts: For each number rolled, the player draws the corresponding part of the beetle on their paper, if they have already drawn the prerequisite parts (e.g., you can’t draw a head until you have a body).
- Completing the Beetle: The first player to draw a complete beetle (one body, one head, two antennae, two eyes, six legs, and one tail) wins the game.
- Variations: You can adjust the number of legs or add other features to make it more complex.
With these detailed instructions, you should be well-equipped to bring the delightful tradition of British parlour games to life! Enjoy the fun and laughter they are sure to bring.