The Middle

A whole room game from Equinox 73

The Middle by Wei-Hwa Huang

In this game, Wei-Hwa posed several trivia and wordplay-adjacent questions, but instead of trying to guess the correct answer, each team's goal was to guess what answer had been given the "middle-most" number of times on social media. It then proceeded to get weirder and more meta as the game went on.

Animal Planet

A whole-room game by Stephen Ng.

Animals remake classic TV shows so they are centered around animals, not humans. Can you figure out the titles of the new shows?

In each round, there are three phases. Guess the title sooner for more points.

1. Just the information printed on the sheet – 4 points.
2. After the audio hint – 2 points.
3. After the visual hint – 1 point.

Handout (PDF), and the audio and visual Hints (Google Slides).

Alternatively, if the audio doesn't work for you in the Slides or you need something that will work offline, you can download this 170MB Zip file containing all of the individual audio files and image files.

Start Wreck Two

A whole-room game by Kid Beyond (Murdoch)

Your mission: Guess a bunch of famous women whose names have been scrambled.

Each attendee gets a two-page answer sheet (PDF). Don't print duplex as page 1 will be used to occlude page 2, sliding it down to reveal one line at a time. The presenter reads instructions aloud from this sheet (PDF).

Turn on, tune in, drop out

A whole-room game from Equinox 68: Turn on, tune in, drop out by Rick Rubenstein (Rubrick) based on a famous quote by Berkeley’s own non-dropout Timothy Leary.

This game might involve psychedelic drugs… or anything else. It’s a guessing game similar to 20 questions.

You’ll need a piece of paper for writing down guesses and questions and keeping track of points.

I will have some thing written down on this piece of paper. Everyone else turns on by writing down a (wild) guess as to what I might have written down.

We’ll then go around the room. The first person gets to ask one yes/no question about my target thing. For example, “is it bigger than a breadbox?” If it is, then everyone whose guess (the thing they’ve written down) is also bigger than a breadbox gets 1 point. If it’s not, then everyone whose guess isn’t bigger than a breadbox gets 1 point. Essentially, you score points for your thing being similar to the one I have in mind. (If the question doesn’t really apply, or is only kinda sorta true, then no one gets any points.)

I recommend you keep track of the previous questions and whether they were Yes or No.

After this, everyone will have a few seconds to write down a new guess (if they choose), and cross off their old one. This is tuning in. Only your most recent guess is relevant (but you keep the points from all your previous guesses).

This continues around the room until some bold person (who can be anyone, not necessarily person whose turn it is to ask a question) thinks they know what the target thing is. They raise their hand, and then get to make a guess. If they’re right, the round ends, and they get a 10 point bonus. Everyone else who also had the target thing written down (but wasn’t brave or quick enough to raise their hand) gets 5 points. Then the round ends.

If the guesser was wrong, they drop out. They can no longer ask questions or score any points. And the round continues.

We’ll do as many rounds as we have time for (or until we stop having fun).

Counting Bee

A whole-room game presented by Ann Daniels (Iolanthe) and Jon Zingman (Plaid) at Equinox 60.
Neil Picciotto (Renfield) compiled the word list.
A version of this game was created by Henri Picciotto, and was played at a very early Equinox party.

Two people get up. A word is read from a list by the emcee.

The first person to correctly state how many letters are in the word wins, and faces another person. After four wins, a player sits down.

A final round can be played among the people who won four times in the first round.

Last Person Standing

A whole-room game  by Martin Eiger (Wrybosh), from Equinox 53: "Last person standing"

Not So Different

A whole-room game from Equinox 51, by Rick Rubenstein (Rubrick)

Two teams attempted to "translate" a series of messages received from an alien civilization called the Noxians by guessing words that might appear in them. The Noxian messages had the same structure and word lengths as their English counterparts, but the individual words were gibberish. Teams took turns guessing words, receiving points for correct guesses. If too many wrong guesses were made in a row, a letter of an unguessed word would be revealed. An attempt at guessing the whole message scored a point for each unguessed word remaining, but risked a 2-point penalty if it was wrong.

Each message was a well-known English saying or quotation, but with an alien twist:

SAYING

O pelfitz gy o zippogak smorj glemp piztro porx o tembat mizlezek.

A journey of a thousand light years begins with a single teleport.

SAYING

Zo mo trenk zat glo'f temgock, feb i sark jebblik poz yag flemp.

If at first you don't succeed, use a time machine and try again.

POEM (title)

Pif Spodzo ka pif Smegojoobee Kizzy Glurkle

The Charge of the Ultraviolet Light Brigade

PROVERB

Scrozz po ix mub semozotz wa mub gegboosy.

Beauty is in the eyestalk of the beholder.

PROVERB

Ga sij nif'z glark pix merz, benk vub lu pix dembro callomo.

If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the fusion reactor.

SONG LYRIC

U nep ziz xorkoll bez, sif temorax gaz ug bixx.

I can see clearly now, the ammonia fog is gone.

JOKE

Q: Xyd zor fex bliggol steez fex degblatz?

A: Trug'z o bliggol?

Q: Why did the chicken cross the monorail?

A: What's a chicken?

SONG LYRIC

...det sco'b flug zeggo nust bub zebb ag u gerjoplock stizz div eep.

...but you'd look sweet upon the seat of a hovercraft built for two.

PROVERB

Ix Drigfizzo e cag flebo zou dembag zall.

An Earthling a day keeps the doctor away.