The best dinner party games

Below is a summary of how to play our favourite games, that we can ensure the whole table will get involved in!

1. Empire

‍

Aim: To create an empire by guessing everyone’s famous character

How to play:

• Everyone round the tables writes down a famous character on a piece of paper (without telling anyone what it is) and puts it into a hat
• In no particular order someone round the table reads out all the names twice, everyone round the table must try remember all the names
• The person to the left of the reader starts by guessing a person who they think wrote down a certain name
• If they guess right that person joins their empire and they are now a team and they get to guess again, if they guess wrong that person then has a go at guessing who wrote down a certain name
• The game ends when the last person manages to build the largest empire by guessing everyone's famous character without being guessed themself

‍

‍

2. ‍Zorba the Greek

‍

Aim: To clap to the song without messing up

How to play:

• Play the song ‘Zorba the greek: Zorba’s Dance by Mikis Theodorakis’, press here for the link to it on Spotify
• The aim is to clap to the beat as the song gets quicker and quicker
• To pass it on you point to the person on your left or right, or you can skip your go
• If you mess up you lose a point or sip your drink!

‍

‍

3. ‍Mornington Crescent

‍

Aim: To work out the rule of the game

How to play:

• You go round the dinner table and each person says a tube stop
• To get an answer right, you have to say ‘umm’ before the tube stop - your allowed to say any tube you want
• Typically, only a few people know this rule so the game is for people who don’t know it to try and work it out

‍

‍

4. ‍Charades

‍

Aim: To guess what phrase your teammate is acting out, without them saying anything‍

How to play:

• Split everyone round the table into 2 groups, team A and team B
• There are 3 rounds to the game
• Everyone should write two different phrases down (either a movie title, play title, song, book, TV show or quote) onto a small blank piece of separate paper
• The phrases are then put into 2 hats, team As into one hat and team Bs into another hat
• A player from each team then takes the opposite teams hat and has 1 minute to try get the rest of the team to guess as many of the phrases as possible by acting them out
• Once every member of the team has had a go at acting out, the team with the most phrases guessed, wins the round
• This is repeated 3 times
• At the end of all the rounds, the team with the highest number of guesses wins

‍

‍

5. ‍Code names

‍

This is a board game that is available to buy here

Aim: To get your team to guess all their code names before the other team

How to play:

• Split the table into 2 teams (blue team and red team), with each team assigning a spymaster
• There is 25 code names on the table
• The spymasters can see which code names are red and which are blue, however the rest of the team can’t
• Spymasters must guide each team to guess the codenames of their teams colour (red or blue) by providing them with a one word clue that link as many of the words as possible
• If your team guesses the wrong code name they could end up losing the game if they choose the assassin or the other teams code name

‍

‍

6. Zimmy Zimmy

‍

Aim: To stick to the rhythm of the beat without messing up

How to play:

• One person is chosen to be zimmy
• To their left, numbers are assigned round the table
• It starts with everyone creating the beat - bang, bang, clap, clap, whilst ‘zimmy’ says (to the beat) “zimmy, zimmy” followed by the number of another player (e.g. Zimmy, zimmy, four, four)
• The person with that number must repeat their number and then pass to another player (e.g. four, four, six, six)
• If you mess up you lose a point or sip your drink!

‍

‍

7. ‍Margaret Thatcher's tea party (Ibble Dibble)

‍

Aim: To get as few dibble ibbles on your face as possible‍

How to play:

• You need a cork and some matches (or a lighter)
• Everyone around the table is assigned a number in order (e.g. if there is 6 people - numbers 1 to 6)
• Play starts by the player who is called, naming himself ("number 4 ibble-dibble"), identifying how many marks he has ("with 1 dibble-ibbles"), then calling another player and identifying the number of marks they have ("calling number 1 ibble-dibble with no dibble-ibbles")
• Each time a mistake is made, another ibble-dibble (mark from the cork being burnt) is put on the persons face and they are made to go again until they get it right
• Every time a mistake is made the player loses a point or sip your drink!

‍

‍

8. Cereal box, coin game

‍

Aim: To create as many activities as possible without landing on them with the coin

How to play:

• Start by having a large flat piece of cardboard or cereal box
• The first person starts by flipping a coin onto the box. They then circle the coin with a pen (as large or small as they like) and write and activity inside the circle e.g. “Sing us 1 minute of your chosen song with no backing music” or “Eat half a chilli”
• The next person then goes, if they land in one of the circles they have to do the activity, if they don’t they can create another activity.
  

‍

If you get the chance to play one of these games at your next HOMETAINMENT dinner party, be sure to send us a photo or tag us on Instagram - @hometainment!

‍