Too busy for games? Here are some conversational games you can play while you scrub.
Taboo
- Make cards with a Pesach word and five taboo words on each card. For example: The word is matzah, and the five taboo words are water, bread, flat, flour, and eighteen.
- Divide the family into teams. One person picks a card. His teammates must guess the word on the card within one minute to gain a point for the team.
- In describing the word, you may not use the actual word or the five taboo words. You may also not use hand motions or gestures.
Twenty Questions
- A player thinks of a mystery person in his mind, living or dead. The rest of the group asks 20 yes/no questions to guess the person’s identity. If they’ve asked 20 questions and still haven’t guessed, the player gets a point. Players with the most points win.
- For a twist, one player takes on the identity of that mystery person. The other players engage him in conversation. There are no yes/no questions and no direct questions like, “Who are you, where are you from, when did you live… etc.?” The questions must fit into the conversation. So if the group is talking about breakfast, they may ask the mystery person what he ate that morning.
Ghost
- Someone thinks of a word and says the first letter aloud. The next person continues by saying the next letter. (The second person doesn’t know the original word, but must have his own word in mind.) Play continues until a word (any word) is completed. Whoever completed the word gets a penalty letter from the word g-h-o-s-t.
- If it’s your turn and you believe that the person before you doesn’t have a real word in mind, you can challenge him. If he has no word in mind, he gets a penalty letter. Watch out though — if he does have a real word, you will end up with the penalty!
I’m going out of Mitzrayim
- This is the Pesach version of “I’m going to Eretz Yisrael.” The first person says, “I’m going out of Mitzrayim and I’m bringing along with me…” and then he names something that begins with the letter A (something that theoretically could have existed in Mitzrayim.) The second person says, “I’m going out of Mitzrayim and I’m bringing along with me…” and he says something that begins with the letter B, etc. You must name all the items that came before your turn as well as your new item. Can you get all the way to Z?
Would You Rather?”
“Would you rather?” Would you rather be popular or smart? Eat two rotten tomatoes or six overripe bananas? Have 100 spiders in your bedroom or 1,000 grasshoppers in the rest of your house?
How to play: Blow up a large beach ball ahead of time, and with a permanent marker, write wacky “Would you rather” questions all over the ball. You can make the questions thought-provoking or just plain silly, depending on the age of your audience — or you can mix it up.
To play, sit in a circle and simply throw the ball to someone in the family while announcing his name. Whatever question the catcher’s right thumb lands on is the question he reads aloud. He then has five seconds to answer the question before throwing the ball to the next player.
Take it over the top: Play with points. The player gets a point for each question answered within the time limit.
