When I was much younger it was “Come I come” and “alphabet” that would make the miles go quicker.
Lately we’ve been playing three that seem to work.
“N Questions” where we don’t waste brain power keeping score, but do expand the possibilities to include non-material things like concepts and ideas. Hard to get the right bifurcating questions, though. Example: fire took me the whole trip to get right.
“Props” where one tries to guess which movie the prop came from in as few guesses as possible. Person with the prop tries to pick a prop that’s close to unique to a specific movie. Example: “flash bulbs” – Rear Window
“Initials” where A gives something like “EP” and B has to come up with somebody who has those initials and ask questions that would apply to B’s guess. A must then say either 1) no, it’s not Ezio Pinza; 2) yes, it’s Elvis Presley; or 3) “I don’t know.” Option 3 allows B to ask a direct question about A’s identity, such as “Are you living?”
There are other games we’ve tried but we keep coming back to these mainly. Even bought a book of this sort of game with a title something like “Botticelli and Beyond.”
When the driver has to be able to play along with the passenger(s), what have you found to be the most fun?
When I go traveling with my friends, we bring a few small CB radios. This is cool for playing games, since you can play on teams and have conversations with the people in your car/on your team without the other team hearing it.
Lately, we’ve taken to playing a game where team A will say, “I can name X songs by Y artist,” or, “I can name X movies by Y actor/actress.” The other team will say they can name X+5 and so forth until you make them name them. We can do that literally for hours.
We’ve always played what we call “Juan Cabrillo” (named after one of the people my mother always chooses).
Basically it’s twenty-ish questions (we also don’t keep score, we go until it’s answered) trying to name a famous (or at least someone everyone would know) person dead or alive.
My grandmother was big on license plate poker. As cars pass (or you pass them) people each “get” a different plate. The winner has the best poker hand from it (pairs, straights etc, using both the letters and numbers). This was before the popularity of vanity tags, but you could probably count words as straights, the longest word wins.
My brother and I used to play “Count the Cows” when we were kids. The object of the game is to have counted the most cows on your side of the car by the time you reach your destination. There are two catches, tho: first, your opponent must agree with the number of cows you count. That is, when you pass a herd of cows, you do a quick count, pad that number by a couple hundred percent, and declare, “I have 3000 cows.” Your opponent will counter with something like, “Oh, horse crap. There’s no more than 75 out there.” Eventually, you negotiate how many cows there were. Keep a running total, and the highest cow count wins.
Oh, I did say there were TWO catches, didn’t I? The second catch is that if you pass a cemetery on your side, your cow count goes to ZERO, and you have to start over!
Sometimes, Dad would get in on the fun. There were several destinations where we knew what side was going to have a late cemetery, or a dairy farm or stockyard on it. Dad would take a different route without telling us ahead of time.
I don’t think this is the kind of game that kids in the city play, tho…
The I No Yes Game: One person asks questions. Any question. The other person can answer with any complete sentence that does not contain the words I, no, or yes.
Song Titles: You may converse only in song titles. If you pause for more than 3-5 seconds, you are out. If your contribution does not forward the conversation or does not make sense, you are out.
Questions only: You can only speak in questions. Similar rules to Song Titles.
My aunt and I once spent an entire three hour trip on one game of Geography, where each person has to name a geographical location starting with the last letter of the previously name place. We ended up having to make “a” a wildcard, though.
I also like to play Categories – pick a category (flowers, animals) and go back and forth naming category members beginning with each letter of the alphabet. I remember a fun game where the category was diseases. You can add special rules for difficult letters if necessary.
And there’s always Ghost – you say a letter, I say a letter, first person to make a word loses (but you can challenge if you think that the other person doesn’t have an actual word in mind).
Come I Come was a child’s game we played. I think variants include “I Spy With My Little Eye” where a game runs like:
A: Come I come
B: Whatcha come on?
A: C
B: Cow?
A: No
B: Cadillac?
A: No
B: Cloud?
A: You got it – Mama he cheated!
(Has to be something visible outside the car at the time that “hand” starts. It could disappear before being guessed.
Alphabet may have other names, but it’s basically having the left side “team” vs. the right side “team” race for going through the alphabet by getting letters off signs on the side of the road. No more than one letter per sign. Passing cars don’t count, but a license plate on a parked car would.
Left side team spends most of its time craning to see the signs facing the other way.
We always looked for a Quaker State sign for Q. And the “JCT” signs for J.
I read about this one in a book many years ago.
In some states, the last 3 characters of a license plate are all letters. The game is to make a word of those 3 letters in the same order they appear.
Example) License plate 452-BRK – “Brook” would be 1 answer as well as “brink”, “break”, etc.
Obviously the game gets tougher when you encounter license plates such as ZQJ.
Some restrictions
No proper names
No plurals
No past tense
no verbs with “ING” endings. (Oh yeah “bring” is acceptable but NOT “running”, “swimming”, “playing”, etc. I guess those are called gerunds aren’t they?
This game is fun.
A fun one I’ve played on car trips is called “Movie Bomb”. Someone starts with an actors name. The next person names a movie the actor was in, the next person names another actor from the same movie, etc. Finally someone will get stuck, and just like in “Horse” they get a letter from “bomb” and they start the next round. Once someone has all four letters the game is over, person with fewest letters wins. (You could also just eliminate that person from the game and keep going I suppose, or have a tiebreaker round).
Also, the person starting the round by naming an actors name has to pick one that the second person can get. And immediate repitition isn’t allowed (so no “Harrison Ford” -> “Star Wars” -> “Harrison Ford”).
My sister and I were fond of what we called “the Equalizer game”, so named because we got it from an episode of the old “Equalizer” TV show.
One person says a word, next person has to say another word which forms a compound word or common term when added to the first. First person who fails to do this is “out”.
