Does anyone know how many drinks were prompted on an average episode of the Bob Newhart show?
Any other favorite drinking games?
Drinking games, especially those that involve shots, are the work of the devil, as I learned the hard way in my youth. Two drinking games I remember:
“Bums!”: You sit in a round, and loudly count up from 1 to theoretically infinite, but there’s one little caveat: every time the number contains a ‘7’, like 17, or is divisible by 7, you have to say “Bums!” instead of the number (“Bums” meaning something like “Bam!”) If you mess up, you have to drink a shot of booze, and the game starts anew. Of course the more you lose, the more wasted and unable to properly count you’ll get, and for one in the round this always leads to disaster.
“Stiefeltrinken” (drinking from a boot): a specialty from Pilsener drinking regions like mine. There are beer glasses formed like a boot that usually contain 2 liters of Pilsener, like this:
The players order a full glass like this and drink it down taking turns. This time the caveat is this: when the beer level gets lower than the “knuckle” of the boot, at some time inevitably the liquid gets in commotion and will throw air bubbles. And the poor drinker who has this happen to him has to pay the 2 liters of beer.
Both evil games, I tell ya from experience.
The trick to The Boot is to rotate the boot as you reach the “knuckle.”
My cite is years of experience and the movie “Beerfest.”
I recall mentions of “Smurf” where you drink a shot every time they use that word. I don’t know anyone brave enough to actually have tried it.
I just spot checked the subs for about 20 random-ish episodes and the “Hi, Bob” rate per episode is about 1.79.
Some had zero, one had 7, a lot had 1 or 2.
If that’s not enough to wet your whistle, maybe switch to Antiques Roadshow.
I’ve played various versions of drunk pinball. A random drop target is designated as the “shot shot”.
We used to play “21”, in which you sit in a circle and go around saying numbers until you get to 21. The person saying 21 has to down their drink, but they also get to make a new rule, which can be something similar to your ‘bums’ rule, or replacing a number with an action, reversing a few numbers, or whatever you want. If someone screws up, they have to drink and then start the count from 1 again.
Each time the group gets to 21, there’s another new rule, and the rules stack, so you could eg have to do an action and say ‘bums’ if both rules apply to that number.
Also, to make it more unpredictable, each player can choose to say 2 or 3 numbers rather than 1. Saying 2 numbers reverses the direction of play around the circle, and saying 3 numbers skips the next player. There’s usually a rule that you can’t ‘double a double’ or ‘triple a triple’.
Depending on the group, it can get fiendishly difficult!
I have only the vaguest memories of lost days playing the ST:TNG drinking game. We discovered it in the early '90s, when the show was still producing new episodes AND was in syndication - there could easily be three or four episodes available at different times of day. Even if your ‘shots’ were only beer, you’d still end up totally pissed by the end of the evening.
I really don’t remember clearly, it was 35 years ago I last drank from a boot, but wasn’t the trick to drink with the “heel” pointing to your mouth? Or rather to point the glass sideways? I’ve lost that knowledge due to too much beer… 
Start drinking toe-down. When the beer level approaches the tongue of the boot, slowly rotate the boot allowing the toe-beer to flow smoothly down your gullet. The idea is not to allow any air pockets to form, which cause gushing and fouls.
I always kinda wondered if anybody really played these games, or if it was just a roundabout way of pointing out how often “hi, Bob” was said on his show. I guess now I know.
Mine would be to watch America’s Test Kitchen and take a drink every time Julia says “last but not least”. I don’t really see that one catching on.
When we were in Iraq, we once watched the Big Lebowski and had a white Russian every time the Dude had one. He drinks an insane number of them in the movie and we had to keep pausing it so I could make them. It got gross.
I’ve heard of drinking every time the name “Roxanne” is said, in the eponymous song. That one would get pretty poisonous, pretty fast.
My wife is on the consulting board of the local innovation and entrepreneur center, so I go to a lot of startup pitch competitions. I keep telling her I’m going to bring a bottle of tequila and take a drink every time one of these young Steve Jobs wannabes uses the word “billion”. She says I’d need a whole case.
When I read “The Big Lebowski”, I first thought that the rule was to have a shot every time the Dude says “fuck”. This could have killed whole battalions…
A helpful guide, so you know what you’re getting into.
Yeah, I couldn’t remember how many White Russians it was, nine sounds about right. All that milk and Kahlua, it still makes me feel sick.
While in college, I decided to take a drink of beer every time they said “Who” in “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”. I finished a 12-pack in half an hour.
The next show was The Smurf’s Christmas Special. Couldn’t even THINK of doing that one!
There was a singer/songwriter who, over the course of his career, wrote many songs about a guy named Doug, performing them solo, or in various groups he was part of. A reunion concert was held to perform the Doug songs, and it was released on CD. I counted once, and I think the number of "Doug"s was over 130, with 2 "Douglas"s. That would be lethal.
I think there may have been more Doug songs in the years since.
You wouldn’t happen to be a Door County native, would you?