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

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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 

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2. ‍Zorba the Greek

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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!

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3. ‍Mornington Crescent

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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

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4. ‍Charades

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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

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5. ‍Code names

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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

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6. Zimmy Zimmy

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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!

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

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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!

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8. Cereal box, coin game

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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. 
  

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