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Blank white cards available on Amazon

When you’ve had your fill of spoons, hearts and I doubt it, take a look at these weird card games for some fast paced card-slapping fun.

The 2008 Mentalfloss article that explains these fun games in detail doesn’t include any links, so you can check them out below.

1. GUILLOTINE – Relive the French revolution

2. GRAVE ROBBERS FROM OUTER SPACE – If Ed Wood movies were a card game

3. 1000 BLANK WHITE CARDS – Everybody makes the rules (maybe needs some boundaries)

4. KILLER BUNNIES AND THE QUEST FOR THE MAGIC CARROT – Bunnies, you just can’t trust them

5. GOTHER THAN THOU – fun with eyeliner and crying yourself to sleep

6. CHEZ GEEK – maybe too much drunkenness for a youth group game, but here’s the link

7. UNXPLODED COW – think The Hurt Locker only with cows

8. AQUARIUS – Multigenerational connect-the-elements game

9. FALLING – You’re all falling out of a plane, winner is the last to die

Logic games and puzzles are a great way to interact with people when you’re on the move or have a lot of time to kill. Lead with a tricky logic puzzle at the beginning of a road trip or a long hike and it will give kids something to work on all day.

Typically a group will play around with the problems in the puzzle like a Rubic’s cube – turn it over, set it down, pick it up later and keep working on it.

Brain Den has some classic logic games on their site. Also check the tricky puzzles on Math is Fun.

Take a classic board game, play it backwards and fun will ensue – but it can be trickier than it sounds. In Giveaway Checkers the winner is the person who loses all her pieces or can’t make a legal move.

Sometimes called Suicide Checkers or Anti-Checkers, Giveaway Checkers makes it easy to stay in the game if your goal is to avoid losing. But it’s spectacularly hard to win this board game. For one thing, it’s easy enough to avoid capturing the other player’s pieces. And then, as you clear the board, it becomes even easier to avoid being in a situation where you would be forced to capture a player’s piece.

It seems like the most successful strategy would be to do everything you can do to prevent the other person from getting “kinged.” Once the other player has a king he can burn up turns by wandering all over the board. And you can do the same.

Data processing | Photo public domain

The best icebreakers get more people into the mix. Take a little computer science, add some common characteristics of people in the group and shake it all up.

The idea is that you are going to turn the group into a big computer and sort everyone by a particular data set. For instance, “everyone get in line chronologically by birthday” or “get in line by height.”

Keep it fast, keep it snappy, keep it fun. For instance, as soon as the group gets sorted, change to a different sorting criteria.

Other ideas:

• Eye color
• Hair color
• Shoe size
• Alphabetical by first letter of middle name
• Length of hair

Funergizers

If you have a big group you can divide into two or more teams and compete, with prizes for the first team to sort their data.

With Eyes Closed

Line up by:

• Height
• Right or left handedness
• Boy or girl (caution! Stranger danger!)
• Month born
• Grade in school

Without Talking

Have the group pantomime:

• Favorite food
• Favorite animal
• First period class

Become a Computer Programmer for Fun and Profit

Two teams, each team gets in a line. From each team select one “programmer.” The programmer sorts the group according to the criteria you set, by asking a single yes or no question, processing the group again and again until everyone is sorted.

Example: Chronological by birth month.

Programmer asks each person in their entire team “Is your birthday before February?” This puts all the January people in one group and everyone else in a second group. Next question might be “is your birthday before March?” And so forth.

Sources: Kim’s Korner for Teacher Talk, More New Games

People’s Ball is a dodgeball variant that is full of fast action with a twist – people can play even when they are “out.”

Rules for People’s Ball Dodgeball

Start with a typical dodgeball court with center line. Two end zones are designated as prisons.

Game play starts with a ball on the center line and all players in the end zones. At the command players rush out to grab the ball. When a player gets possession of the ball all players on that person’s team must freeze in place. The other team can remain in motion.

The object of the game is to tag players on the opposite team, sending them to “prison” in the end zone behind your team. Game ends when all players on your side are in prison.

While your team is in possession of the ball you may pass the ball to another player on your team, but nobody on your team can move. Offenders are sent to prison.

Out-of-bounds balls are returned to play on the center line unless the ball goes into an end zone. Balls in the end zone are in the prisoner’s possession, who try and earn freedom by tagging out a member of the opposing team. A prisoner can also earn freedom by catching a ball thrown over the heads of the opposing team by the prisoner’s home team.

Dodgeball Variations:

Play with a yoga ball instead of “regulation dodge ball.” A fast-flying yoga ball is kind of freaky and surprisingly hard to catch. Less lethal than a kickball.

Gopher 5″ coated foam balls are fun to throw and less un-fun to get pelted with. Get six of these in play at the same time for turbo-action fun.

Utility balls are great all-purpose indoor balls that don’t create a lot of collateral damage.

Personal Note

More balls = more fun. Up to a point. And for some reason it seems to mess with the game dynamics if you use different size balls – for instance two yoga balls and two Gopher balls.

Worst ball for playing dodgeball = a tetherball. Ouch. Second worst = water polo ball.

Other dodgeball variations.

[Source: M Cox Oxford Tours / Games, an older archive that has a lot of less familiar games.]

This is one of the more active, yet easy games for two people. For a bigger group, use a game ladder and make it a tournament. A gold-painted tennis shoe would make an awesome trophy.

How to play:

Two players face off holding hands. At the signal the goal is simple: tap the top of the other person’s foot with your two. Three taps and you’re the winner. (But if you’ve got the ropa-dope going on, like the pair above, maybe you could call a winner after a single tap.)

Extra points for epic moves.

Fruit Loops | Image by Thinkstock via Seedbed

Based on the age-old question Will It Burn?, Seedbed presents a less inflammatory question, Will It Cereal? This is one of those games for youth that hinges a little bit on the pleasure we take in watching another person suffer, seeing that one unlucky soul is going to have to eat a non-breakfast food if the group decides “yes, it cereals.”

Peanut butter, pickle relish, avocados all go in the mix – as long as it can be served with milk it has the potential to “cereal.”

Check out Will It Cereal and other games for youth at Seedbed.