Some great suggestions here, guys.
I wish I was clever enough to play blindfold chess. Not even close. Ah, well.
My favourite suggestions so far are Minister’s Cat, B for Bottecelli and I’m Going Camping (which I seem to recall playing when I was a kid, been a long time). But they’re all good!
Thanks,
thwartme
For “play anywhere anytime” drinking games, the name game was our favorite back in the day. We used famous names of any kind: actor, character, cartoon, author, director, athlete, news anchor, whatever. If there was a dispute, at least half the group had to have heard of the name to count. Duplicate names were allowed for different entities. For example, Mike Meyers (SNL) and Michael Meyers (Halloween), or Bobby Brown (crackhead) and Bobby Brown (Zappa song’s titular character.) The only requirements were that the name had to be famous as opposed to someone from the neighborhood, and it had to be an entity as opposed to just a title. For example, “Harry and the Hendersons” wouldn’t count.
Even more endless than you describe. A common variation we used was hand positioning. For example, you had to have one hand “up” and the other “down” to go camping.
I’m bringing a blanket.
You can’t come.
I’m bringing a blanket.
You can come.
heh, that would drive people nuts. There was also the game devoted entirely to hand placement: 1 up 1 down. You can either say 2 up, 2 down, or 1 up 1 down. As above, to be correct you had to say what your hand placement was. Say a wrong one and you have to drink.
We also played the memory game. Much like the 12 days of Christmas, you had to keep repeating the complete verse adding one line at a time. Flub a line and you had to drink. I’m sure there were a million variations, but the one we used was:
A big ole hen
Coupla duck
Three brown bear
Four running hare
Fight fat females fornicating fastiduously
Six Sinbad sailors sailing the seven sees
Seven simple Simons sitting on a fence trying to make a dollar out of 99 cents
Eight egotistical echoists echoing egotistical ecstacies
Nine…<deleted for being racist>
I slit a sheet a sheet I slit and on that slitted sheet I sit
Eleven laughing llamas licking Lana’s lips
(can’t remember twelve)
(heavy lisp): thirteen thwee year olds thwoing thtones
That tenth line was the real killer, though 8 was no picnic.
The most involved hands-free game we played was Zoom-Schwartz-Profligliano. The rules were super involved, and I never really got the hang of it because we only ever started it late when I was already hammered. The idea is that when one of the three terms is said to you, you then say one of the three terms to someone. The only rule I remember clearly was that you can never zoom a zoom.
As kids we had a game called Ghosts we used to play in the car while Dad was driving.
One player starts with any letter of the alphabet, then the next player says another letter, then the next player another, etc - which together with the previous letters must start spelling a valid word but not complete any word. If your move either completes a valid word (even if it’s not the one you were aiming toward) or you cannot see how to add another letter to work towards a word, you lose a life - 3 lives gone and you’re out.
If challenged you must be able to say what word you were working towards or you lose a life; if you can do so successfully your challenger loses a life. You’re allowed to start with A or I even though they are words.
We played that sometimes in college band, but I always figured it was just a Mornington Crescent (except that I didn’t actually know about Mornington Crescent at the time). You mean there really were rules?
I used to play Zoom Schwartz Profigliano. It was sort of “Tag”, played while sitting around a table. Our rules were…
To start, someone said Zoom while looking at another player. That player was now “it”.
“It” now had three options:
Pass on to another (third) player by looking at that player and saying “zoom”.
Pass back to the first player by looking at them and saying “Schwartz”.
Pass back to the first player by looking at a different player and saying “Profigliano”.
Any incorrect combination of looking/speaking was a foul, and you had to drink. Also, the rythym of the game had to be preserved; if you paused too long, that was a foul. I think we had some variations, but I can’t remember what they were. I know there was something that would happen where everyone would have to drink, but I don’t know what it was.
Great game, but for the purposes of this thread, I guess I’m considering alcohol “equipment”. Also, if you’re in a car, it’s probably a bad idea to be playing drinking games … 
Yep, those are the same rules we used. But I seem to remember other terms coming into play. Lemme google around…ouch.
Yeah, too much bother to read through all those variants to try and figure out which one I played back in the day. Let’s just say that I think we used two or three additional “commands”, plus maybe a social and a few specialty rules like you can’t use the same command three times in a row, etc…
Does punchbuggy count? I mean, it involves cars, but any car could be used, really.
I came in here just to mention Mornington Crescent. Although without a good knowledge of the game board, MC does require a copy of the London Underground map.
Access to multiple rulebooks and tournament results does help, though. (I have a draft copy of the 2010 ruleset, Scottish Rite.)
Scuba_Ben - you are falling into the common misconception that Mornington Crescent is a game of moving between London Underground stations (where you might need a tube map).
But it is, of course, simply a game of *naming *Londong Underground stations - albeit governed by many different local rules.
You no more need a tube map than blindfold chess players need a board.
BTW I prefer the simple right-hand rule set myself but YMMV.
When just a young Hook, early to late 50s, when we went somewhere in the car we’d count cows.
If you saw a cow on your side of the road you counted it.
If you saw a cemetary on the other side of the road, that side lost all its cows and went back to zero.
If you saw a white horse you got an extra 100 cows.
We did this a lot when going to see the grandparents. As we were young we never quite tumbled to the fact that we took the same road everytime and there were cemetaries on both sides of the road just before getting there.
A tad lame perhaps when compared to blind folded chess but I recommend it to parents with youngsters who otherwise get bored on long drives.
On car trips we’ll do 20 Questions, Botticelli, Geography.
Another fun one is a variant of 20 Questions. The basic differences are:
You’d be surprised how quickly you can hone in on the correct answer - my sister got “The test launch of the first ICBM” pretty quickly. Someone in Games magazine had a fond memory of getting “the gleam in the eye of a Carpathian werewolf as it howls at the moon”.
“Draw” - this is a physical game with two people. Pick who will draw first. Stand facing each other like wild west gunfighters, hands at your hips. When you draw you either point your fingers like six-shooters or you raise your hands in the air like you’re being held up. Your opponent must draw as soon as you do. Goal is to get your opponent to do the opposite motion. Ties mean a redraw. If your opponent hesitates he loses. If you can fake your opponent out and get him to draw before you do you also win that round. Sounds silly but it’s fun.
“Ha” - There is no point to this one except to make people laugh. You need enough folks so that you can all lie down in a circle with each person’s head on the stomach of the person behind them. Pick someone to start. They say “Ha”. Go around the circle, each person adding one “Ha” (so the third person says “Ha Ha Ha” and so on). Eventually somebody will get the giggles or break sequence, everyone has a laugh and then you start over. There’s something hilarious about feeling somebody get the giggles while your head is on their stomach.
“Push” - two people stand facing each other about two feet apart. You have to keep your feet together. Goal is to get the other person to move their feet without touching anything other than their hands and you can only use your hands - you can try and push them over by pushing against their hands, wait for them to push you and move your hands out of the way so that they lose their balance, etc.