Do you ever find yourself in a situation where you’re sitting at a table with friends, but for some reason conversation is a vacuum, so you need some kind of way to get the social interaction rolling again?
Post your ice breakers here.
For example, here is the Scissors game:
You hold up a pair of scissors. You start out by saying “I receive them open (or closed) and I pass them open (or closed).” You hand them to the next person, and instruct them to do the same thing you did. If they do it wrong, you rag on them, like “No no no that’s not how you do it!” If they ask how they’re wrong, just keep saying “Do it the other way” until they get it right.
The secret: it doesn’t matter whether the scissors are open or closed. Instead, it’s your legs. If your legs are crossed and somebody hands you the scissors, you say “I receive them closed,” no matter what state the scissors are in. Then you uncross your legs and say “I pass them open.” It may come to the point where you have to be super obvious about crossing your legs, but some people still won’t get it because they think there’s some mathematical formula to the scissors.
Eventually, one other person will figure out the secret and join in on the ragging. This could potentially go for hours.
I talk too much and have to remind myself all the time to let conversation die down for a bit and not jump right in and start another topic. Long awkward silences are never a problem if I’m there. I can be a fountain of inconsequential things to talk about most of the time.
I have a social icebreaker type thing I do every finals week. (I teach PE, and don’t make my students take finals, instead we have a “be a gradeschooler” class that allows them to be silly and destress from all of the finals crap.
AT any rate, we play some cool games that I got out of our dept. library, DAMN what the heck is the darned thing called? It’s a big box with several hundred laminated cards, it has active games, semi-active games all the way down to just conversational type games.
At any rate, some of the students’ faves are the “You’re on a desert island and you can only have 3 items” types. There is one set of cards they just love, it has all sorts of psychological situations upon which small groups can philosophize. One of them wasn’t on the cards but was posted here in IMHO a while back (months? years? I don’t remember), but it went something like this and was a very popular thread:
So, you find a large garbage bag full of money that has washed up on shore. Obviously from illegal drug runners etc. With the knowledge that NO ONE sees you and you are absolutely safe from retaliation from the drug lords, how do you work your new found money into your lifestyle without alerting the IRS?
My friends and I have a running game where we name three Tube stations on the London Underground. The first one is where you start; there is a friendly cop on a street corner equidistant to the other two, and a serial killer after you in the next carriage. Which of the two stations do you aim for?
Discussions have included: how long it would take a crazed murderer to wipe out a lift full of tourists at Covent Garden; the best route from the Jubilee line to Platform 19 at Waterloo (the trick is to make like you’re going to change to the Northern line, and then hang a left), and once we even had two teams timing the Piccadilly to Bakerloo change at Piccadilly Circus versus the Piccadilly to Victoria change at Green Park (Piccadilly Circus won at 2:17).
Just to clarify, the main task is not to break the ice. I was just using that as a scenario. What games and tricks might you have for friendly gatherings, with your friends, your family, your workplace, some seminar you went to or led yourself, etc.? **CanvasShoes **and Tracy Lord have the right idea.
I remember a few of those annoying observation games from high school:
Take one hand and hold up all but one finger, point to each finger with your other hand as you say some rhyme to the beat of touching each finger. Then fold your arms and tell someone else to do it. The trick is they have to fold their arms at the end, and you’d be amazed how many people NEVER figure it out.
This one is best if you have a friend that already knows what’s up. Hold a pen or pencil and say, “Is this North?” and they will respond, “No.” Then, “Ummm, is this North?” “Yes.” The simple trick is saying "ummm beforehand for yes.
Enter the room dramatically and say “Ladies and gentlemen! May I have your attention. A horrible crime has been committed. In order to find the perpetrator I’d like you all to stand in a circle, and place your right hand into the jacket pocket (or pants pocket/purse) of the person on your right.”
*Beforehand, you’ve placed some kiddie porn in the jacket pocket of one of the guests, without his/her knowledge.
When the kiddie porn is discovered the group will bond by shaming and expelling the sexual deviant. Also, you’ll learn something about the other people by examining the contents of their pockets.
Sure, one guy gets his reputation destroyed forever, and possible criminal charges, but you can’t make an omelete without breaking a few eggs right?
I am the master of the six-hour group wait at the train stations. I’m a semi-professional at not getting bored.
One of my favorites is “fight scenarios” where you theoretically pit two people you all know (usually bosses and co-workers) and figure out who would win. If that gets boring, you can throw relevant weapons and henchmen into the mix.
Extreme 20 questions can be fun. I’ve had some pretty epic games, the most memorable of which include “the alternate history where the Nazis won WWII” and “Superman’s sperm.”
If you’ve got cards but are sick of card-games, you can keep yourself entertained by making up fortunetelling techniques.
Hokey, but still fools some folks: you lay out nine cards, three by three. Send one of your friends out of the room and have the other guests choose one of the cards. Call your friend back, point at one of the cards, and ask the friend if this is it. The friend says “no” until you point to the right one and he gets it. Your friends gasp in wonder.
The secret: when you point at a card, you point at the area of the card where the card the guests chose is on the 3x3 layout. For instance, if the guests chose the bottom middle card, you point at the bottom middle of each card.
Have a large group of people sit round in a circle. Person1 starts the game by turning to their right and passing the spoon to person2,
with the words “this is a spoon”.
They have to respond “a what?”
Person1 responds “a spoon”
Person2 with the spoon then turns to person3 next to them, and passes the spoon on with “this is a spoon”
Person3 responds “a what?”
Person2 then asks the starter “a what?”
Person1 responds “a spoon”
Person2 tells person3 “a spoon”
The game continues, with the spoon being passed around, but the correct identification of the spoon has to be supplied by Person1.
At some point, Person1 passes a fork to the left, with the words “this is a fork”. Eventually the fork and spoon cross, and confusion (and much hilarity) follows.
The addition of alcohol to this game (as forfeits for failure) adds to the difficulty.
Also Spoons
A pile of spoons are placed in the center of the table, with one less spoon than players. A deck of cards is sorted so that there is a set of four cards for every player. The cards are shuffled and dealt, four to each player. Players all select a card to pass to their left, with the aim of collecting four of a kind. This phase of the game should be rhythmic, with a slap of the cards down, then all players picking up simultaneously. Once a player has four of a kind, they place their cards on the table and grab a spoon. As soon as other players realise what is happening, the attempt to grab a spoon, too. This process can be subtle or allout. One player will miss out on a spoon, and loses a point. Once they have lost all their points (5 is a good number), they are out of the game and one set of four cards is removed from the deck. The game continues until only one player is left.
My mom and I are in charge of “party games” for our family parties - apparently my SIL’s mom thinks we’re geniuses when it comes to party games but really we just steal them off the Internet.
Our last get-together, we stuck “my name is” tags on everyone’s back, each with the name of a different famous American. They had to mingle and ask questions of others to guess who their person was. It got a lot of laughs.
Another time we had a party for my brother and SIL’s 1st anniversary and we set up a version of “The Newlywed Game” with all the couples. It was pretty fun, since we had couples who’d been married for 35 years and 1 year, and everything inbetween.
Every so often we get together random friends and play Bunco. It’s fun because the “rules” involve drinking and eating, and the game itself requires no skill. This is more of a party game than an ice breaker. But since everyone switches teams each round (teams are 2 people), it gets people chatting and having a good time.
We’ve also played Spoons and some of the others folks have mentioned.
