# Identify this single-player pencil-and-paper game, something to do with running a lemonade stand
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-this-single-player-pencil-and-paper-game-something-to-do-with-running-a-lemonade-stand/1024064
**Category:** The Game Room
**Created:** [October 17, 2025, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-this-single-player-pencil-and-paper-game-something-to-do-with-running-a-lemonade-stand/1024064 "2025-10-17T19:23:43Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2025, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-this-single-player-pencil-and-paper-game-something-to-do-with-running-a-lemonade-stand/1024064/1 "2025-10-17T19:23:43Z")
WAY back in the day – and by that I mean mid-to-late 1970s – when I was a wee lad, and handheld games weren’t a thing, a relative taught me a game that I could play by myself using just a pencil and paper (and maybe dice or some other means of generating a random outcome). The concept was that I was running a lemonade stand. That’s literally all I remember about it.
Does this ring a bell for anyone?
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### Author:  [@Hoopy\_Frood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hoopy_Frood)
#### Post date: [October 17, 2025, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-this-single-player-pencil-and-paper-game-something-to-do-with-running-a-lemonade-stand/1024064/2 "2025-10-17T23:57:19Z")
There was an old computer game about running a lemonade stand that came out in 1973 and later ported to the Apple II in 1979. The rules were pretty straightforward to the point you could easily transform it into a pencil and paper game with randomization of the overhead costs, the weather and the customers. These days the code is available open source so anyone could transform it.
So maybe back then someone knew how the stats and randomization was determined so they made a pencil and paper version of it.
> **[Lemonade Stand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemonade_Stand)**
>
> Lemonade Stand is a business simulation game created in 1973 by Bob Jamison of the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC). In it, the player moves through several rounds of running a lemonade stand, beginning each round by making choices dependent on their current amount of money about their stock, prices, and advertising. In each round, the results are randomized based on the player's inputs, as well as affected by random events such as thunderstorms and street closures. Each round en...
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [October 18, 2025, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-this-single-player-pencil-and-paper-game-something-to-do-with-running-a-lemonade-stand/1024064/3 "2025-10-18T18:51:36Z")
That was my first thought, too, but you couldn’t really implement that game, as written, with paper and pencil. One of the randomly-generated variables is the overall demand level for lemonade, and one of the major aspects of gameplay is that the player starts off not knowing that, and has to determine it from how much is sold at various prices. You can do that in a computer game, which doesn’t have to show all of its internal calculations, but not when the player is doing the calculations themself.
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### Author:  [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)
#### Post date: [November 16, 2025, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-this-single-player-pencil-and-paper-game-something-to-do-with-running-a-lemonade-stand/1024064/4 "2025-11-16T02:16:49Z")
I too thought of the computer game. Is there any chance dice were involved? In that case I could see it translating to a pencil and paper game.
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### Author:  [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)
#### Post date: [November 16, 2025, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-this-single-player-pencil-and-paper-game-something-to-do-with-running-a-lemonade-stand/1024064/5 "2025-11-16T02:19:36Z")
> [@pulykamell](#):
>
> I too thought of the computer game.
Me three.
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### Author:  [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)
#### Post date: [November 16, 2025, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-this-single-player-pencil-and-paper-game-something-to-do-with-running-a-lemonade-stand/1024064/6 "2025-11-16T02:21:06Z")
Oh, I didn’t realize this was a slightly older thread. Anyway, I do wonder if the OP is forgetting a randomizing element like dice.
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### Author:  [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)
#### Post date: [November 16, 2025, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-this-single-player-pencil-and-paper-game-something-to-do-with-running-a-lemonade-stand/1024064/7 "2025-11-16T03:59:28Z")
Not unlikely.
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### Author:  [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)
#### Post date: [November 16, 2025, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-this-single-player-pencil-and-paper-game-something-to-do-with-running-a-lemonade-stand/1024064/8 "2025-11-16T04:17:59Z")
I’ve been digging around a bunch on this, but all I could find is references to the 1973 MECC Lemonade Stand computer game. I can’t find any pen and paper adaptation of it. I’m curious as to what this was.