The Sofa Game

This is a game you can play with stuff you already have, and it’s too good not to share. It makes a great after dinner game, as you’ll already have the chairs ready.

You will need:

•  8 to 20 players, divided into two teams, with a way of identifying who is in which team. We suggest boys v. girls, or if you have some spare hats you could do hatted v. bare heads.
• some special seating for four people (eg. a sofa), with ordinary seating for everyone else (eg. individual chairs), plus one empty chair, all arranged in a circle.
• a pen and paper

The aim of the game is to fill up the sofa with members of your team.

Start by writing each person’s name on a seperate piece of paper, and distributing them randomly to the players. Each players reads their “name”, without showing or telling anyone else.

Now the person with the empty chair to their left calls out someone’s “name” and the person with that name on their paper comes and sits next to them, and they swap name papers. Repeat, until one team occupy the Sofa. You are not allowed to reveal your own “name” to anyone, except by responding when your “name” is called by the person with the empty seat to their left.

This game is wonderfully simple yet complex at the same time – it will tie your brain in knots trying to remember the twisted path of who is who.