Class Retrospective :: 092208 (or: how to have fun with N people)

Telephone Pictionary = Best. Game. EVER.

Here's how it works:

Gather a group of n people (where n is somewhere between 5 and 10) around, and supply them each with n little index-card-sized pieces of paper (If you're keeping track, this means you'll need n-squared pieces of paper).

Then, round one begins. Everyone participating writes a sentence on the front of their particular piece of paper. It can be sensible or senseless; No worries! Mine was "When I eat skittles, I find that I can fly very, very fast."

After this, Round Two starts: everyone passes their stack of paper (the whole stack) one person to the left. The person reads the sentence, and then draws a picture on the next card that demonstrates what they think it means. Then they put the first piece of paper (the one with the sentence on it) on the bottom of the stack.

In Round Three, everyone passes their stack of paper to the person on their left. This person looks only at the picture- not at the sentence- and writes out a sentence that describes what they think the picture means. They then put the piece of paper with the first picture on the bottom of the stack.

Round Four continues the tradition of Round Two, and Round Five continues Round Three's noble heritage (You can see where this is going).

In Round n, the final drawings or sentences are placed upon the final cards, and the people can then flip the last card to the back. They can then flip through all n pages, laughing hysterically.

After this, they move on to Rounds n+1 through n+n, so that everyone can roll on the floor laughing. In our game, one of the books began "We left all of our t-shirts in the last town," finally concluding with "The queen gets really mad when she can't take a dump."

It's an incredible game. And you have n nonsensical stories to show for it! Who knows which of the cards could have an Academy Award-winning movie idea on it?

Anyway, I loved the last class. We should do it again. More of us. And more often.