Suggest some road-trip games

[Birdmonster]

Millions,

So, I'm in a band that spends a majority of its waking hours in a four-seat Ford e-150. With only so much music & conversation to go around, we sometimes devolve into road-trip games. You know, I Spy or 20 Questions or the lesser known "Name that Bloke" (basically, someone chooses a living famous (or pseudo-famous) male and everyone else tries to guess it; no hints are given, games last months).

Basically, those few options are pretty tired now. We need new ones. Got any?

[gigi]

Would You Rather? can get pretty funny if you don't mind being gross or infantile with the questions.

Would you rather --eat a whole deer's head
or --have to wear the deer's head around your neck for a month as it rots

Would you rather --have to sit on a 500-foot-high tower for a week
--have to sit in a 500-foot-deep hole for a week

etc.

[cmkeller]

Are you located in the US or Canada? It takes a little pre-prep, but you can have lots of fun with License Plate Bingo.

Basically, just fill out a 5x5 grid with the names of states and Canadian provinces, trying to not make rows and columns heavy with more commonly-seen ones (and the "FREE" square in the center should be the state your own car is licensed in), and then mark off squares as you spot other cars with license plates from those states.

[Birdmonster]

Oooh! License plate bingo. It's been a while. Thanks for the reminder.

And, "Would You Rather" has indeed been played, usually at a sophmoric or sexual level, I must admit.

[Jayrot]

Highway sign alphabet -- played this one across the country a few times. Just take turns A-Z, you have to spot a sign with a word that starts with your letter. Heading west, we passed the exit for Zzyzx Rd. (Nevada, I think) just in time. This game can be played concurrently/in the background with other games.

The name game -- choose a topic like a sport, music, movies, etc. Each person has to name someone whose first name begins with the first letter of the previous person's last name. For ex: Roger Clemens --> Craig Biggio --> Barry Bonds --> Bronson Arroyo --> Alex Gonzales.

Drinking games without the drinking:
Bust a rhyme -- go around, saying a line that rhymes. Can't use the same rhyming word. I bought a cat --> Then I sold my bat --> On the ground I spat --> I yelled out "Drat!"

Categories -- just pick a category and name as many things in it as possible (brands of cars, beers, Russian first names, etc.)

[Lute Skywatcher]

Highway sign alphabet -- played this one across the country a few times. Just take turns A-Z, you have to spot a sign with a word that starts with your letter.We played that with any sign, including billboards.

[Lute Skywatcher]

Oh yeah, and we didn't take turns. Whoever called out the letter first got credit for it.

[Gordon Urquhart]

My wife and I have whiled away many miles on the open road by playing a variant of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees_of_Kevin_Bacon), in which we name two actors off the top of our heads and then attempt to come up with a chain of movies that connects the two.

For instance, if the actors are, say, Alan Alda and Rachel Weisz, I would say that Alan Alda starred in The Aviator with Leonardo DiCaprio, who starred in The Man in the Iron Mask with John Malkovich, who starred in Being John Malkovich with John Cusack, who starred in Runaway Jury with Rachel Weisz.

Whoever makes the connection first wins, no matter how many movies it takes.

Loads of fun.

[Arnold Winkelried]

Variations on the "categories" game mentioned by Jayrot: names in a certain category, but do it each letter in turn. We played this as kids, calling it the "animal" game: Starting with the letter A, each person names an animal starting with A until someone gives up, then go onto B, etc. Part of the fun will be arguing if the word starting with A fits the category. i.e. is the AIDS virus an animal? Do you allow extinct animals? Foreign words?

A memory game (more for children I suppose, though you can make it challenging by picking objects with extremely long names):
First person: "I am flying to the moon, and I am taking with me an alliaceous acrobatic alligator".
Second person: "I am flying to the moon, and I am taking with me an alliaceous acrobatic alligator, and a bumbling bucolic bufflehead".
etc.
Each person adds an object but has to recite the full list of all the objects in the list so far. Spice it up with extra rules like the first person that makes a mistake gets his pants thrown out the window or has to drink a shot glass of tabasco.

[Birdmonster]

...but i need those pants.

These are great. Don't think I won't be printing them up at the end and glove-compartmenting them. Oh, I will be.

[Arnold Winkelried]

License Plate Bingo.I remember having a fun with this as a child in Switzerland, but in the USA it seems too hard. Especially in the large western states like Texas or California, you can drive for a long time without seeing plates from another state. In addition, you will never ever see Hawaii.

Also a game I learned as an adult, but it's not for the pacifists:
slug bug: The first person to see a Volkswagen beetle (the car), you punch as many people as you can saying "slug bug"! If you forget to say "slug bug no returns", then they can punch you back. If you do say "slug bug no returns" and the other person punches you back anyway, then you can punch them twice for breaking the rules. A great way to keep people awake on a long road trip! If your band is a punk band that needs a certain edge and attitude when going on stage, this can definitely put you in the mood.

[Eureka]

A variation on something listed above: the geography game. Each person in turn names a State, Country, River, or City beginning with the last letter of the previous person's addition.

Example:
A: London
B: Norway
C: Yugoslavia (you may then argue about whether one can use names of places that are no longer used)
D: Africa
E: Alabama
F:Alaska
G:Albany
A: Phew, we finally got off the A____A words. What? I have to think of a place starting with Y? Yorktown
B: (with malice--especially later in the game) Nebraska

I've played for hours, with enough people, and enough travel time.

[Birdmonster]

We called that "Punch Buggie." We play it with SWORDS

[Ca3799]

My little talibans, uh kids, like to color clothing on all the underdressed people in celebrity gossip magazines.

[Sternvogel]

I remember having a fun with this as a child in Switzerland, but in the USA it seems too hard. Especially in the large western states like Texas or California, you can drive for a long time without seeing plates from another state. In addition, you will never ever see Hawaii.

When I was a kid, we took a family vacation to South Dakota, and I saw a Hawaiian plate on the back of a Ford Country Squire station wagon that was just ahead of our car on the highway. I've also seen a Newfoundland and Labrador plate "in action", but never a vehicle registered in Prince Edward Island or any of the Canadian territories. A few years ago, I spotted a Grand Bahama plate on a parked car, but a closer examination of the sedan revealed that the valid rear tag was from Indiana, and the front plate was (though apparently authentic) several years out of date -- a mere souvenir.

Also a game I learned as an adult, but it's not for the pacifists:
slug bug: The first person to see a Volkswagen beetle (the car), you punch as many people as you can saying "slug bug"!

Viewers of The Simpsons know this game as Punch Buggy (http://www.beachnet.com/~jeanettem/car.html#PUNCH).

[Cub Mistress]

I remember having a fun with this as a child in Switzerland, but in the USA it seems too hard. Especially in the large western states like Texas or California, you can drive for a long time without seeing plates from another state. In addition, you will never ever see Hawaii.

Also a game I learned as an adult, but it's not for the pacifists:
slug bug: The first person to see a Volkswagen beetle (the car), you punch as many people as you can saying "slug bug"! If you forget to say "slug bug no returns", then they can punch you back. If you do say "slug bug no returns" and the other person punches you back anyway, then you can punch them twice for breaking the rules. A great way to keep people awake on a long road trip! If your band is a punk band that needs a certain edge and attitude when going on stage, this can definitely put you in the mood.

Amazingly, I saw a Hawaii license plate yesterday, in a tiny town in Tennessee.

I dimly remember playing a game where you counted cows and kept up with the points. IIRC, a white horse doubled your points and a graveyard on your side of the road wiped out your points. You could get creative and think up new rules, depending on the kinds of things you are likely to see.

I still play slug bug.

[bup]

Millions,

So, I'm in a band that spends a majority of its waking hours in a four-seat Ford e-150. With only so much music & conversation to go around, we sometimes devolve into road-trip games. You know, I Spy or 20 Questions or the lesser known "Name that Bloke" (basically, someone chooses a living famous (or pseudo-famous) male and everyone else tries to guess it; no hints are given, games last months).

Basically, those few options are pretty tired now. We need new ones. Got any?I know it's not a game, but would anyone be interested in getting audio books? After like 10 music albums, sometimes listening to a book on tape is refreshing.

[Birdmonster]

Bup: We listened to Bill Bryson's Short History of Nearly Everything last trip & thoroughly enjoyed. Any suggestions (readers/books you've really enjoyed listening to?)

[cmkeller]

Arnold:

I remember having a fun with this as a child in Switzerland, but in the USA it seems too hard. Especially in the large western states like Texas or California, you can drive for a long time without seeing plates from another state. In addition, you will never ever see Hawaii.

True about Hawaii, but not true about the big states. People drive from all over. Naturally, you're most likely to see license plates from closer places, but if you're on an interstate, you're sure to see plates from outside.

[LampMan]

I saw a Hawaii plate in Nevada 2 years ago or so.... also saw an Oregon plate in Budapest once.

[Arnold Winkelried]

cmkeller, you're right, I overstated my case. Let's just say that it would take a lot longer to get different states in the USA than it would take me to get different cantons in Switzerland. I realize that road trips in the USA are usually a lot longer. I also re-read your post more carefully and I see that your bingo card didn't contain all the states in the USA, so that makes it more playable. (And I bet you anything it works a lot better on the east coast (of the USA) than it does on the west coast.) If someone had a list of all 50 states and said "game is over when all 50 squares have been checked off", then the game would never end.

[Lute Skywatcher]

"This is the game that never ends...it goes on and on, my friend...."

[bup]

Bup: We listened to Bill Bryson's Short History of Nearly Everything last trip & thoroughly enjoyed. Any suggestions (readers/books you've really enjoyed listening to?)Depends what you like. I have two kids, so we've listened to Harry Potter and other good kids' books.

"Prairie Home Companion" compilations work pretty well, because they were made for radio, after all.

I get histories and biographies for my commute, but I bet that wouldn't go over real well.

Obviously stay away from self-help mumbo-jumbo that tends to litter the audio-book landscape.

[ivylass]

We played that with any sign, including billboards.

We played it where the hard letters (Q, X, Z) could be found on license plates.

[blondebear]

slug bug: The first person to see a Volkswagen beetle (the car), you punch as many people as you can saying "slug bug"! If you forget to say "slug bug no returns", then they can punch you back. If you do say "slug bug no returns" and the other person punches you back anyway, then you can punch them twice for breaking the rules.

In the version of slug bug that I was taught (by a couple of 9-year old girls), you have to say the color:

"SLUG BUG YELLOW!!!!!"

Then, you get to hit the other contestants.

[BrattiAtti]

In the version of slug bug that I was taught (by a couple of 9-year old girls), you have to say the color:

"SLUG BUG YELLOW!!!!!"

I take it a step further to ensure I never get hit. If someone called it, I would follow up with more detailing: "Slug bug, yellow, moon roof, tinted windows, broken tail light. I WIN!!!" Be emphatic with the last part so your travel buddies know there's no way to argue your victory. It really irritates my 10-yr-old brother when I do that. :D

Road games: the acronym game. Pick a word/brand/arrangement of letters that you see (we usually pull them from semi's) and decide what those letters stand for. The stupider the funnier, and don't overthink it. (I have no examples because now I'm overthinking it.)

We also play "three trailer": watch for trucks hauling three trailers. It's just like slug bug - "Three trailer Fed-Ex! I win!" Bonus points if it's UPS (just because they were the company we created the game with on a road-trip to Portland - seeing one now warms my heart with memories).

[Birdmonster]

Pseudo-random tangent: When you guys were kids, did you ever do that thing where you stared out the window at rows & rows crops, watching for that one moment when they're exactly perpendicular to the road & you could see all the way down the crop alley-thing for a nano-second until the next one took it's place?

Man, I hope that made sense. I'm a little too groggy this morning to explain it any better. Just curious---

[Birdmonster]

..."rows & rows OF crops"...

sheesh

[Asimovian]

Heading west, we passed the exit for Zzyzx Rd. (Nevada, I think) just in time. I just had to comment that this is actually in California (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zzyzx%2C_California), but most of us locals associate it with the drive to/from Vegas, so thinking it was in Nevada isn't surprising. It's actually fairly close to the Nevada border.

Unfortunately, I have nothing useful to contribute to the topic itself. :(

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

Pseudo-random tangent: When you guys were kids, did you ever do that thing where you stared out the window at rows & rows crops, watching for that one moment when they're exactly perpendicular to the road & you could see all the way down the crop alley-thing for a nano-second until the next one took it's place?
I do that every time I drive past a field. It's ineffably cool.

Twenty questions can be especially fun if you leave off the obvious (no "John Travolta") and go for the weirdest thing you can come up with that people have still heard of. I once kept folks guessing for a long time with "The air in the holes in Swiss cheese." Emotions, temperatures, substances, and the like are all fair game. If you play this way, you may need to be very generous on your yes-no answers, sometimes giving some elaboration.

Another game: take the letters at the beginning of a license plate and make them into a word. VTX becomes Vortex. AJB becomes Adjustable. That sort of thing. I'm not sure how tot turn this into a group game, but it's something I do to amuse myself on long trips.

Daniel

[Birdmonster]

I do that every time I drive past a field. It's ineffably cool.
You have no idea how happy that made me.

[yellowval]

The name game -- choose a topic like a sport, music, movies, etc. Each person has to name someone whose first name begins with the first letter of the previous person's last name. For ex: Roger Clemens --> Craig Biggio --> Barry Bonds --> Bronson Arroyo --> Alex Gonzales.

We play this one, except when you use a name that has both first and last names starting with the same letter, it bounces back to the person who gave the letter to you. So from Jayrot's example, the name Barry Bonds would send it back to the person who said Craig Biggio, and it would keep going backwards until someone else used a double name.

[silverfish]

I like crambo, which is similar to I-Spy. You think of a word, and then say another word that rhymes with it. Then the other players have to guess your word, but they can't say the word directly, they have to describe it. When someone guesses, it's their turn to choose a word.

So you might get a round like:

The word rhymes with dress
Is it another word for newspapers?
No, it isn't the press
Is it what you write on letters?
Yes it is an address

I like it because the guessers have to do more than just say what they think the word is.

[Troy McClure SF]

The name game -- choose a topic like a sport, music, movies, etc. Each person has to name someone whose first name begins with the first letter of the previous person's last name. For ex: Roger Clemens --> Craig Biggio --> Barry Bonds --> Bronson Arroyo --> Alex Gonzales.
The way we play, Barry Bonds would make the rotation go the other way, since the first & last names start with the same letter.

Another game is the Three Things. This is really only interesting if everyone playing knows a lot of the same people. You give one of the players the names of three people, and they have to decide which one they would have sex with and never see again, which one they would live with forever but never have sex with, and which one they'd toss off a cliff.

[delphica]

Birdmonster, I also do the crop row thing. In fact, I have to make an effort not to do while I am the one driving the vehicle.

Not really a game, but more like a structured conversation that we do on long road trips involves money. You start with a small sum, say $5, and everyone has to answer the question "If you were given $5 right now, what would you buy?" At the little amount, the answers are pretty routine. You increase the amounts to $50, $100, $500, $1000 and so on.

The rules are that the things have to be things that exist, so you can't buy a time machine, and they have to be for sale, so you can't buy the Mona Lisa, as presumably it isn't on the market.

I know this sounds a little dry, but as the numbers get higher, we have a lot of fun figuring out how to spend our money. You have to spend all of it, so if you "buy" something that costs $21,000, you have to figure out what else you could get for $4000. We've gotten into very heated debates about how much you would have to pay for, say, a giraffe, plus how much it would cost for the permits, and then how much it would cost for upkeep and property where you would be allowed to keep your giraffe legally.

[LiveOnAPlane]

I can't believe I'm actually admitting I even played this game, but hey, you asked.

"Poochie, Poochie."

You spot a dog on the trip, you call "Poochie, Poochie." This goes on until you pass a cemetary. First one to spot it calls, "Bury Your Poochies!"

The caller gets a 3-Poochie bonus. Tally up how many poohies you've called. Best score is the winner.

[Rodgers01]

Apparently in addition to license plate bingo, you can also play license plate poker, with a couple modifications (no suits obviously). Never tried it, but there's a famous episode of an old radio show where the plot turns on just such a game.

I wouldn't be too surprised to see Hawaii license plates in many parts of the country; I see them in my Pennsylvania town fairly regularly -- it's because of the Army base here. People get transferred here from Hawaii all the time and drive around with their old plates.

[Airman Doors, USAF]

We play the license plate game, although rather than bingo we try to collect all 50 states.

Our more violent games, with the violence increasing depending upon who you're playing with:

Cruiser Bruiser involves finding PT Cruisers, with the convertible worth 2.

PunchBug ,with varying values based upon the rarity of the VW vehicle:

New Bug: 1
New Bug Convertible: 2
Old School Bug: 3
Old School Bug Convertible: 4
Punchbus: 5
Old School Wagon: 6
Karmann Ghia: 7
The "Thing", aka "The Holy Grail": 8

There's also Pididdle and Pidink (headlights and taillights), with the exceptionally rare Pidinkle being worth 3 shots. Last but not least, there's Beaverwood, which involves finding a car with the old fake wood paneling, each of which is worth one pop a piece.

My sister and I end up black and blue after long drives, let me tell you. When Aaron gets bigger I'm going to get crushed, I just know it.

[Zeldar]

We tend to rotate through several guessing-style games:

1) N-Questions where we go for anything (doesn't have to be a material thing, could be a concept or something imaginary or something as bizarre as a book title) and don't count the questions, just keep going until one of us gives up or guesses whatever it is.

2) Initials. One says "I'm thinking of an Initial-Initial" (example: EP) The other(s) respond by saying something like "Did you have a hit song named "Hound Dog"? Then the one with the initials either says, "No, I'm not Elvis Presley" or "Yes, I'm Elvis Presley" or "I don't know." In the third case the person guessing gets to ask one specific yes-no question about the person. You keep going until the person is guessed or everybody gives up.

3) Props. Somebody will name an outstanding prop or setpiece from a movie and the other(s) tries to guess the movie in as few "props" as possible. Example "shower curtain" should bring Psycho pretty soon or else lead to other props like "stuffed bird" or "wad of money in a purse" or whatever.

[Only Mostly Dead]

Another game: take the letters at the beginning of a license plate and make them into a word. VTX becomes Vortex. AJB becomes Adjustable. That sort of thing. I'm not sure how tot turn this into a group game, but it's something I do to amuse myself on long trips.

Daniel
I do this when I'm just driving by myself.

I've found that a good way to make it a game is to say "whoever comes up with the longest word" or "gets a word the quickest" or, and this invites plenty of debate, "the strangest word."

So for longest word, if you have PLE, one person may say "apPLE." Somebody else has to beat the length. "PLiablE." Longer. "PaLEstine." Longer. "PLEistocene!" Then the fingers come out. "PaLEolithic...damn, it's [counting on fingers and one toe] eleven letters, just like pleistocene..."

[Scuba_Ben]

We used to play "I Took A Trip," a straightforward memory game.

The first person stars by saying, "I took a trip to -- " and names a place. Under standard rules, this is any place beginning with A; we almost always started by naming where we were going. For example, on the drive from Sanford, FL (the auto train terminal) to Orlando, we might start with: "I took a trip to Disney World."

The second person repeats what the first person said, then "brings along" an item beginning with the next letter. Ex: "I took a trip to Disney World, and I brought along eggs."

The third person repeats all of that, then adds the next letter. And so on, and so forth: Each person repeats the entire list, then adds another item. Anybody who misses an item is out. Last one in wins, but to win they have to recite the whole list.

The last time I remember playing this game, we went all the way around -- a full 26-item list -- with nobody missing any items. At that point, everybody won.

[Draelin]

Another game is the Three Things. This is really only interesting if everyone playing knows a lot of the same people. You give one of the players the names of three people, and they have to decide which one they would have sex with and never see again, which one they would live with forever but never have sex with, and which one they'd toss off a cliff.
We call this "Marry, Screw, Kill." We usually pick three celebrities or ficitional characters, or what have you. From then on, it's the same--only we allow for the possibility of sex after marriage, because otherwise it's no fun at all. ;)