Chapter 4

In many of the games already described mention has been made of "Forfeits." They do not now play quite so important a part in an evening's entertainment as once they did, but they can still add to the interest of games. "Paying a forfeit" means giving up to the player who is collecting forfeits some personal article or other--a knife, a pencil, a handkerchief--which, at the end of the game, or later in the evening, has to be recovered by performing whatever penance is ordered. When the times comes for "crying the forfeits," as it is called, the player who has them sits in a chair, while another player, either blindfolded or hiding her eyes, kneels before her, the remaining players standing all around. The first player then holds up a forfeit, remarking, "I have a thing, and a very pretty thing. Pray what shall be done to the owner of this pretty thing?" To which the blindfolded one replies by asking, "Is it fine or superfine?" meaning, Does it belong to a boy (fine) or a girl (superfine)? The answer is either "It is fine," or "It is superfine," and the blindfolded one then announces what its owner must do to get possession of it again. Of stock penances there are a great number, most of which are tricks which, once known, are necessarily very tame afterward. In the case of those that follow, therefore, something definite and practical is required.

Frown for a minute. Dance for a minute. See how many you can count in a minute. Say the alphabet backward. Do the exact opposite of three things ordered by the company. Crow like a cock. Say "Gig whip" ten times very rapidly. Say "Mixed biscuits" ten times very rapidly. Say rapidly: "She stood on the steps of Burgess's Fish Sauce Shop selling shell fish." Say rapidly: "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper. A peck of pickled pepper Peter Piper picked. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper, where is the peck of pickled pepper Peter Piper picked?" Count fifty backward. Repeat a nursery rhyme. Hold your hands behind you, and, keeping them there, lie down and get up again. Hold your hands together and put them under your feet and over your head. Walk round the room balancing three books on your head without using your hands.

Smile to the prettiest, Bow to the wittiest, And kiss the one you love the best.

Yawn until you make some one else yawn. Push your friend's head through a ring. (Put your finger through a ring and push your friend's head with the tip.) Place a straw on the floor so that you can't jump over it. (Very close to the wall.) Put a chair on a table, take off your shoes and jump over them. (Over your shoes.) Leave the room with two legs and come in with six. (Bring in a chair.) Repeat five times without mistake, "A rat ran over the roof of the house with a lump of raw liver in his mouth." Repeat ten times rapidly, "Troy boat." Ask a question to which "no" cannot be answered. (What does y-e-s spell?) Shake a dime off your forehead. (The coin is wet and some one presses it firmly to the forehead of the one to pay the forfeit, who must keep his eyes closed. The dime is taken away, but the forfeit player still feels it there and tries to shake it off.) Repeat a verse of poetry, counting the words aloud. Mary (one) had (two) a (three) little (four) lamb (five). Dance in one corner, cry in another, sing in another, and fall dead in the fourth.

Two forfeits may be redeemed at once by blindfolding two players, handing them each a glass of water, and bidding them give the other a drink. This, however, can be a very damp business.

The old way of getting rid of a large number of forfeits was to tell their owners to hold a cats' concert, in which each sings a different song at the same time. Perhaps it would be less noisy and more interesting if they were told to personate a farm-yard.

Auctioning Prizes

A novel way of awarding prizes is to auction them. Each guest on arrival is given a small bag instead of a tally card. These bags are used to hold beans, five of which are given to all the players that progress at the end of each game. After the playing stops the prizes are auctioned. Of course the person who has the greatest number of beans can buy the best prizes; so that besides making a great deal of fun, the distribution is entirely fair.

DRAWING GAMES

Many persons, when a drawing game is suggested, ask to be excused on the ground of an inability to draw. But in none of the games that are described in this chapter is any real drawing power necessary. The object of each game being not to produce good drawings but to produce good fun, a bad drawing is much more likely to lead to laughter than a good one.

Five Dots

All children who like drawing like this game; but it is particularly good to play with a real artist, if you have one among your friends. You take a piece of paper and make five dots on it, wherever you like--scattered about far apart, close together (but not too close), or even in a straight line. The other player's task is to fit in a drawing of a person with one of these dots at his head, two at his hands, and two at his feet, as in the examples on page 48.

Outlines or Wiggles

Another form of "Five Dots" is "Outlines." Instead of dots a line, straight, zigzag, or curved, is made at random on the paper. Papers are then exchanged and this line must be fitted naturally into a picture, as in the examples on page 49.

A good way to play Wiggles when there are a number of people to play, is to mark the same line for all the players, either by pressing down very hard with a hard pencil so that the line can be traced from one piece of paper to another, or with carbon copy paper between the sheets. Thus each person has the same line, and the one who uses his in the most fantastic and unexpected way is the winner. The only rule about making the line is that a circle shall not be made. The two ends must be left ready to add the rest of the design. It is well sometimes to limit the pictures to human faces, as this makes the grotesque unlikeness of the drawings all the more absurd.

Eyes-Shut Drawings

The usual thing to draw with shut eyes is a pig, but any animal will do as well (or almost as well, for perhaps the pig's curly tail just puts him in the first place). Why it should be so funny a game it is difficult quite to explain, but people laugh more loudly over it than over anything else. There is one lady at least who keeps a visitor's book in which every one that stays at her house has to draw an eyes-shut pig. The drawings are signed, and the date is added. Such a guest book is now manufactured, bound in pig skin, or in cloth.

"Ghosts of My Friends"

While on the subject of novel albums the "Ghost of My Friends" might be mentioned. The "ghost" is the effect produced by writing one's signature with plenty of ink, and while the ink is still very wet, folding the paper down the middle of the name, lengthwise, and pressing the two sides firmly together. The result is a curious symmetrically-shaped figure. Some people prefer "ghosts" to ordinary signatures in a visitors' book.

The "Book of Butterflies" is on the same order. With the book come four tubes of paint. The paint is squeezed on the page, which is doubled and flattened. The effects are very beautiful, and surprisingly lifelike.

Another guest book is the "Hand-o-graph," in which the outline of the hand of each guest is kept. The "Thumb-o-graph" is on the same principle, except that in this case the imprint of the guest's thumb is preserved, made from an ink pad supplied with the book.

A remarkable collection can be made of ink-blot pictures. A drop of ink, either round as it naturally falls, or slightly lengthened with a pen, is dropped on paper which is then folded smartly together and rubbed flat. The most surprising designs are the result, some of which, aided a little by the pen, look like landscapes, figures and complicated geometric designs.

Drawing Tricks

Six drawing tricks are illustrated on this page. One (1) is the picture of a soldier and a dog leaving a room, drawn with three strokes of the pencil. Another (3) is a sailor, drawn with two squares, two circles, and two triangles. Another (5), Henry VIII, drawn with a square and nine straight lines. Another (6), invented for this book, an Esquimaux waiting to harpoon a seal, drawn with eleven circles and a straight line. The remaining figures are a cheerful pig and a despondent pig (4), and a cat (2), drawn with the utmost possible simplicity.

Composite Animals

In this game the first player writes the name of an animal at the top of the paper and folds it over. The next writes another, and so on until you have four, or even five. You then unfold the papers and draw animals containing some feature of each of those named.

Invented Animals

A variation of this game is for the players to draw and describe a new creature. On one occasion when this game was played every one went for names to the commoner advertisements. The best animal produced was the Hairy Coco, the description of which stated, among other things, that it was fourteen feet long and had fourteen long feet.

A good guessing contest is to supply every person with a slip of paper on which is written the name of an animal. He draws a picture of it and these pictures are all exhibited signed with the artist's name. The person who guesses correctly the subjects of the greatest number of them wins.

Heads, Bodies, and Tails

For this game sheets of paper are handed round and each player draws at the top of his sheet a head. It does not matter in the least whether it is a human being's or a fish's head, a quadruped's, a bird's, or an insect's. The paper is then turned down, two little marks are made to show where the neck and body should join, and the paper is passed on for the body to be supplied. Here again it does not matter what kind of body is chosen. The paper is then folded again, marks are made to show where the legs (or tail) ought to begin, and the paper is passed on again. After the legs are drawn the picture is finished.

Pictures to Order

Each player sits, pencil in hand, before a blank sheet of paper, his object being to make a picture containing things chosen by the company in turn. The first player then names the thing that he wants in the picture. Perhaps it is a tree. He therefore says, "Draw a tree," when all the players, himself included, draw a tree. Perhaps the next says, "Draw a boy climbing the tree"; the next, "Draw a balloon caught in the top branches"; the next, "Draw two little girls looking up at the balloon"; and so on, until the picture is full enough. The chief interest of this game resides in the difficulty of finding a place for everything that has to be put in the picture. A comparison of the drawings afterward is usually amusing.

Hieroglyphics, or Picture-Writing

As a change from ordinary letter-writing, "Hieroglyphics" are amusing and interesting to make. The best explanation is an example, such as is given on pages 52 and 53, the subject being two verses from a favorite nursery song.

Pictures and Titles

Each player draws on the upper half of the paper an historical scene, whether from history proper or from family history, and appends the title, writing it along the bottom of the paper and folding it over. The drawings are then passed on and each player writes above the artist's fold (or on another sheet of paper) what he thinks they are meant to represent, and folds the paper over what he has written. In the accompanying example the title at the bottom of the paper is what the draughtsman himself wrote; the others are the other players' guesses.

WRITING GAMES

Many of the games under this heading look harder than they really are. But the mere suggestion of a writing game is often enough to frighten away timid players who mistrust their powers of composition--although the result can be as funny when these powers are small as when they are considerable. The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.

Simple Acrostics

There are "Simple Acrostics" and "Double Acrostics." The simple ones are very simple. When the players are all ready a word is chosen by one of them, either from thought or by looking at a book and taking the first promising one that occurs. Perhaps it is "govern." Each player then puts the letters forming "govern" in a line down the paper, and the object of the game is to find, in a given time, words beginning with each of those letters. Thus, at the end of time, one player might have--

G ravy O range V iolet E sther R obin N umbskull

The players then describe their words in turn, one letter going the round before the next is reached, and from these descriptions the words have to be guessed, either by any player who likes or by the players in turn. The player whose paper we have quoted might describe his words like this: G---- "Something that makes hot beef nice"; O---- "A fruit"; V---- "A flower"; E---- "A girl's name"; R---- "A bird"; and N---- "A name for a silly person." If any one else has the same word neither of you can score it, and it is therefore important to seek for the most unlikely words.

Another way of playing "Simple Acrostics" is to insist on each word being the same length. Thus "govern" might be filled in by one player thus:--

G rave O ddly V erse E arth R ebel N inth

Double Acrostics

In "Double Acrostics" the game is played in precisely the same way, except that the letters of the word, after having been arranged in a line down the paper, are then arranged again in a line up the paper, so that the first letter is opposite the last, and the last opposite the first. Thus:--

G N O R V E E V R O N G

The players have then to fill in words beginning and ending with the letters as thus arranged. One paper might come out thus:--

G rai N O rde R V ersatil E E ... V R apall O N othin G

This word is rather a hard one on account of the E and V. As a rule, words of only three letters are not allowed in "Acrostics," nor are plurals. That is to say, if the word has to end in "S," one must not simply add "S" to an ordinary word, such as "grooms" for G----S, but find a word ending naturally in "S," such as "Genesis."

It is not necessary to invert the same word in order to get letters for the ends of the words. Two words of equal length can be chosen and arranged side by side. Thus (but this is almost too difficult an example):--

D K I I C P K L E I N N S G

"Acrostics" may be made more difficult and interesting by giving them a distinct character. Thus, it may be decided that all the words that are filled in must be geographical, or literary, or relating to flowers.

Fives

"Fives" is a game which is a test also of one's store of information. A letter is chosen, say T, and for a given time, ten minutes perhaps, the players write down as many names of animals beginning with T as they can think of. The first player then reads his list, marking those words that no one else has and crossing off all that are also on other players' papers. Then the names of vegetables (including flowers, trees, and fruit) are taken; then minerals; then persons; and then places. The player who has most marks wins the game.

A variety of this game is to take a long word, say "extraordinary," and within a given time to see how many smaller words can be made from it, such as tax, tin, tea, tear, tare, tray, din, dray, dairy, road, rat, raid, and so on.

Lists

"Lists" is a variety of "Fives." Paper is provided, and each player in turn calls out something which the whole company write down. Thus, suppose there are five players and you decide to go round three times: the first may say a river; the second, a doctor; the third, a complaint; the fourth, a play; the fifth, a State in the Union; the first again, a musical instrument; the second again, a poet; and so on, until the fifteen things are all written down. Each paper will then have the same list of fifteen things upon it. One of the company then opens a book at random, and chooses, say, the first letter of the third word in the first line. Perhaps it is T. For a given time each player has to supply his list with answers beginning with T. At the call of time one of the papers may present this appearance:--

A river Tees A doctor. Mr. Treves A complaint Tic Doloreux A play Timon of Athens A state in the Union Tennessee A musical instrument Trombone A poet Tennyson A flower Trefoil A mineral Tin A lake Tanganyika A tree Tulip A country Turkey An author Trollope An artist Tadema A preacher Talmage

Each player in turn reads his list aloud, strikes off those words that others also have, and puts a mark against the rest. The specimen list here given is too simple to be called a good one. Players should reject the first thing that comes into their thoughts, in favor of something less natural.

Buried Names

The first thing for the players to do is to decide what kind of name they will bury. The best way is to call out something in turn. Thus, if there are four players they may decide to bury the name of an author, a girl, a town, and a river. Each player writes these down and a fixed time is given for burial, which consists in writing a sentence that shall contain the name somewhere spelled rightly but spread over two words, or three if possible. At the end of the time the sentences are read aloud in turn, while the others guess. Of course, the whole game may be given up to burying only one kind of name, but variety is perhaps better. Examples are given:--

An author: I like to keep the y_ew in g_ood order. A girl: The boy was cru_el, laz_y and obstinate. A town: Clothes that are _new have n_o need of brushing. A river: To see spoil_t ham es_pecially annoys me.

It is permissible to bury the name in the middle of one longer word, but it is better to spread it over two or three. Perhaps the best example of a buried English town is this: "The Queen of She_ba sings to ke_ep her spirits up." This is good, because the sentence is natural, because of the unusual number of words that are made use of in the burial, and because in reading it aloud the sound of the buried town is not suggested.

Letters and Telegrams

In this game you begin with the Letter. The first thing to write is the address and "My dear ----," choosing whomever you like, but usually, as in "Consequences," either a public person or some one known, if possible, to every one present. The paper is then folded over and passed on. The next thing to write is the letter itself, which should be limited to two minutes or some short period, and should be the kind of letter that requires a reply. The paper is folded and passed on again, and the subscription, "Believe me yours sincerely," or whatever adverb you choose, and the signature are then added. (These may be divided into two separate writings if you like.) The signature should be that of another public person, or friend, relation or acquaintance of the family. The paper is then passed on once more, and a reply to the letter, in the form of a telegram, is written. That is to say, you must say as much as you can in ten words. Example:--

THE LETTER

_The first player writes_:--My dear Buffalo Bill. _The second player writes_:--Can you give me any information about suitable songs for our village choir? _The third player writes_:--Believe me yours slavishly. _The fourth player writes_:--Kitchener of Khartoum.

THE REPLY TELEGRAM

_The fifth player writes_:--Be with you to-morrow. Have sheets aired. Am bringing everything.

Telegrams

There is also the game of "Telegrams." In this the first thing to write is the name of the person sending the telegram. The paper is then passed on, and the name of the person to whom it is sent is written. The papers are then passed on again and opened, and the players in turn each say a letter of the alphabet, chosen at random, until there are ten. As these are spoken, each player writes them on the paper before him, leaving a space after it; so that when the ten are all written down his paper may look like this:--

From the DUKE OF YORK To BARNUM AND BAILEY.

H ... A ... P ... N ... W ... E ... K ... S ... F ... T ...

A period of five minutes or more is then allowed in which to complete the telegram, the message having to be ten words long, and each word to begin, in the same order, with these letters. The players should, as far as possible, make the telegrams reasonable, if not possible. Thus, the form given above might, when finished, read like this:--

From the DUKE OF YORK To BARNUM AND BAILEY.

Have Awning Prepared Next Wednesday Evening Kindly Send Five Tickets

In calling out the ten letters which are to be used in the telegram, it is well to avoid the unusual consonants and to have a vowel here and there.

An amusing variety is for all the players to compose telegrams on the same subject; the subject being given beforehand. Thus it might be decided that all the telegrams should be sent from President Roosevelt to Alice in Wonderland asking for her views on the tariff. Then having completed these messages, the answers may also be prepared, using the same letters. But, of course, as in all games, family matters work out more amusingly than public ones.

Initials

Paper is handed round, and each player thinks of some public person, or friend or acquaintance of the company, and writes in full his or her Christian name (or names) and surname. Then, for, say, five minutes, a character sketch of the person chosen has to be composed, each word of which begins with the initial letter of each of the person's names, repeated in their right order until the supply of thought gives out or time is up. Thus, suppose the person chosen is Frank Richard Stockton, the story writer. The character sketch might run:--

F ancifully R ecounts S trange F reakish R omantic S tories. F inds R isibility S urely. F requently R aises S miles.

An occasional "and" and "of" may be dropped in if necessary. Where one of the names begins with a vowel (such as William _E_wart Gladstone) the character sketch can be made to run more easily.

It is sometimes more amusing to give every one the same names to work on; and in some houses the players are not allowed to choose names for themselves, but must pass the paper on. The characters of towns and nations may be written in the same way, using all the letters of the word as the initials.

Riddles