Long car/train/plane ride games: any ideas?

In My Humble Opinion
1

My husband and I are going on a four hour round-trip train ride tomorrow.

We are looking for (mainly verbal) games to play during the trip. We sometimes play a game called GHOST, in which each player takes turns supplying a letter which, in combination with previous letters, may combine to form a word. The first person to complete the word loses. This game is not as much fun to play with only two people, once you learn a few tricks.

We tried 20 Questions, but it isn’t much fun, and nearly ended in violence once when I had my husband try to guess the word “steering wheel.” We’ve also tried celebrity “Dead or Alive?” and a game in which each player must supply, in rapid succession, a very short question (I don’t know what the game’s called). The latter game is much harder than it sounds.

License plate games are out, since we will be in a train. Incidentally, my sister and I used to play a game in which the first person to spot an out-of-state license plate got to punch the other in the arm, but violence on a crowded train is probably not a good idea anyway.

Any ideas? God forbid we get forced into making conversation with each other!

2

One game that my family used to always play was “Connect the Story”. Basically, one person would start the story for a few sentences, say the name of the next person, and the next person would continue it.

It would usually go something like this:

My sister, let’s call her Sally: Ok, so the New Kids on the Block are in our town and they go to school to look for girlfriends! They found a beautiful girl named Sally and they started fighting about who should be her girlfriend. They decided to play a game to find out who would get to be her girlfriend…Mom!
Mom: (disinterested) Um… they all sat down to play checkers, then realized it was a two person game, so they decided to play something else. Fluiddruid.
Me: Then Sally woke up because it was all a dream and killed herself because she is ugly and her mom told her she was adopted. The End.
Sally: MOMMMMMM!!!

Well. I’m sure your story would be better.

3

I can’t imagine playing any game for four hours. That’d get tedious as heck.

Easier to make conversation, I say.

4

Geez, in our defense, we don’t plan on playing a game for four hours straight! Thing is, we often take long train trips, and sometimes are in the mood to play one.

5

I know you are on your little trip ( and I hope you have a nice time) I thought I would add this.

When my kids are getting antsy in the van, in an act of pure desperation, I came up with **Find the Moose ** or **Did you see the Unicorn ? **.

Being in Michigan, the only moosey’s we have are on an island in the UP (eh) and the kids will shut up and scour the landscape for hiding mooseys. ( Moosey is the unoffical plural of moose.) [bi]Moosey* especially like to hide near mailboxes because as everyone knows *Moose Like to get Mail. :slight_smile: *
And **Unicorns ** are everywhere around here, dontchaknow.
Another fun game that we probably drove our Girl Scout leaders to insanity with is:

**I’m going on a trip and I am taking an *Apple **

"I’m going on a trip and I am taking an ** a**pple and a bear. "

and you continue down the alphabet memorizing what the other said and trying to come up with something to throw them off.

6

A few suggestions (although it may be too late at this point). If you liked, but are bored of, Ghost, you should give Superghost a try. In Superghost, you can add letters to the beginning or the end of the under-construction word. (There are also a number of more complex variations, but Superghost is generally the best.)

However, the champion game of that sort, imho, is Botticelli, which works as follows:

One person is “it”. That person thinks of a famous (ie, EVERYONE playing knows who it is) character/person, real or fictitious, alive or dead. This doesn’t necessarily have to be a human being (Toto, Secretariat and Mickey Mouse are all perfectly legitimate), but it must be a single individual (not “The Beatles” or “The Hatfields” or “A Storm Trooper”). The person who is “it” then announces the first letter of that character’s last name (or, in ambiguous cases like “The Human Torch”, whatever letter the character would most likely be alphebatized under.)

All the other players then attemp to think of who it might be, given the information they have. When they come up with a hypothetical possibility, however, they don’t just come out and ask “Are you Bill Clinton?” or whatever. Instead, they ask a question about the character they’re thinking about. “It” has to then correctly identify who it is they’re asking about. If “it” fails to, then the asker gets a “free hit”, which is a yes/no question that “it” must answer truthfully. Thereafter, the field of possible characters to be asked about is restricted to those who fit all the free hits so far asked.

OK, that was confusing. Here’s a short sample game (with commentary):

It: OK, I’m thinking of an M.

Other: Do you have a friend who’s a flying squirrel?

I: No, I’m not Bullwinkle J. Moose

O: Are you someone who is worshipped by large portions of the world’s population?

I: No, I’m not the Virgin Mary

O: That’s not who I was thinking of… are you a male who is worshipped by large portions of the world’s population? (note: the answer given was a legitimate answer to the question… thus the asker had to provide more information, and “someone other than the Virgin Mary doesn’t count as more information”)

I: No, I’m not Mohammed

O: Are you a famous bully?

I: (thinks for a while) I give up

O: Nelson Muntz

I: OK, you get a free hit

O: Are you real?

I: yes

(from this point forward in the game, fictitious characters can not be asked about)

O: Were you in prison for many years?

I: No, I’m not Nelson Mandella

O: Did your most famous moment involve doing something “over the shoulder”?

I: No, I’m not Willie Mays

O: Was your nickname “The Man”?

I: I give up

O: Stan Musial

I: OK, another free hit

O: Are you alive?

I: No

O: Is there a common adjective that consists of your name with “ian” stuck on the end?

I: No, I’m not Machiavelli

O: Were you known as “Il Duce”?

I: Yes, I’m Benito Mussolini.
(end of game)

7

Max that sounds like a fun game.

Thanks for sharing.

8

My sister and I got a lot of use out of this one:

One person says a word.
Next person tries to add a word (or words) to the existing word, so as to form a compound word, title, common phrase, or famous name.
Next person continues this process, building on whatever Person 2 said.

Example:

Person A: chain
Person B: saw (forming “chainsaw”)
Person A: horse (forming “sawhorse”)
Person B: shoe (forming “horseshoe”)
Person A: city (forming “Shoe City”… name of shoe store in this area)
Person B: bank (forming “Citibank”… spelling variation is okay)
Person A: Visa (forming “Citibank Visa”… note use of previous word)
Person B: checkcard (forming “Visa Checkcard”)
Person A: uh… crap! (poor loser)

My sister and I spent almost as much time bickering about the definition of “common phrase” as we did actually playing! :smiley:

This game was actually invented by the writers of the 80’s TV show, “The Equalizer”, and appeared in an episode of the show.

9

Two favorites

Movie alphabet: Start with A. Take turns naming a movie that starts with A (American Gigolo, Amadeus, All About Eve…). The first person who is stumped for a title loses that letter. Move on to B. Keep track to see who wins the most letters. Can also be played with song titles, TV shows, books–whatever you have a lot of knowledge about.

Pick the first two capital letters on the next sign you pass. Name famous people or characters with those initials until you run out of ideas, then pick two more letters. (CB: Charlie Brown, Charles Bronson, Carol Burnett…)

10

You said License Plate games were out, and I don’t know if this counts. I don’t even know that it would work, because it depends highly on the terrain you’ll be travelling.

One game that my family plays on long trips is the Alphabet game, where you spot letters of the alphabet anywhere outside the vehicle (billboards, exit signs, what have you). You can play competitively, where you call out where your letter is so the other person can’t use the same one (or you divide, one person uses anything to the left of the vehicle, one to the right), or you can play cooperatively, where you just try to get through as quickly as you can.

11

My family used to play a game called “I’m thinking of something” that my boyfriend and I play now. It’s similar to twenty questions, but it starts out with two pieces of information:

Me: “I’m thinking of something that’s not alive, and it’s very useful”
BF: asks a series of yes/no questions

One hint is allowed if the asker gets totally stumped. After one hint, either the asker gives up (if he/she can’t get it) or the thinking-of-something-er can give more hints.

You’re allowed more than twenty questions. I’ve stumped my boyfriend on bandaid and postage stamp, and he’s stumped me on the Beastie Boys and a bong.

Another game my boyfriend and I play is the country/place game, though you could use just about any category. One person says the name of a country or state, and the next person has to say the name of a country or state that starts with the last letter of the previous one.

Me: Spain
BF: Namibia
Me: Albania
BF: Arkansas
Me: Surinam

etc.