We just used to call it ‘Mexican’. I could never explain it to anyone outside of college anyhow.
Bluffing on Mexican (21) meant chugging a whole beer. So what we would do to screw someone would be to bluff a lower roll than you actually have (especially if you have Mexican). You call the lower roll and say something like “plaaay the game…”. The next guy realizes you are trying to trap someone furthur down the line. The trap is the guy who will be forced to call Mexican has to either call the previous guys bluff (when HE probably has Mexican) resulting in a chugged beer or accept his bluff and call Mexican (which he doesn’t have) resulting in a chugged beer. Good fun.
In college, the favorite games were:
Beruit (AKA Beer Pong) - There are 1000s of variations but most involve two teams tossing ping pong balls back and forth into pyramid shaped formations of cups of beer. You drink when the other team lands a ball in your beer. First one out of beer looses.
Asshole - Basically Uno with regular cards, beer and bad feelings.
Flip cup - A race between two teams. You form two lines along the table. Each person in turn drinks the beer from their cup, places it halfway off the table and flips it until it lands upside down. Then the next person goes on down the line until one side finishes.
Playing I Never with my friends is always interesting because most of the statements start getting to be about sex, and they are all a lot crazier in that department than me so I get to sit back and laugh at them. Definitely a good way to learn stuff about people!
Beer Guy/Beer Die is a game I learned last year. I used to party at a duplex rented by three guys. They made a custom Mizzou Beer Guy table - looks like a rectangular coffee table with a line drawn down the center. You place a full cup of beer on each end and take turns trying to throw a die in the cup. I never fully understood the points system - the guys always kept score when I played - but it’s fun because since you lose points by not catching the die and letting it fall off the table, there is often some lunging for it. It’s out of 5 points I think, and you have to drink if the other person hits the cup, and you drink the whole beer if they get it in.
Beer pong/Beirut (never heard it called that - it’s just Beer Pong here) is a disgusting but fun game. It is probably my favorite one. Any good party house here has a table in the garage. I went to a big house party on my birthday back home and they had a table inside - slightly more sanitary. Everyone knows that the ‘water’ cup doesn’t do much.
Flip Cup is also really fun - it’s the best at big parties when they have numerous tables set up in a long line to play with a big team. I suck at this game sometimes because I can’t chug fast, but it’s definitely fun.
Connections is a game that really messes you up. You divide the deck out equally and you do not look at your cards. You take turns laying down your top card. If you connect (you can play it a couple ways - connecting by only having the same suit or card value, or playing in the way that laying down a 3 then a 4 connects - this way is crazy) you drink while the others take turn counting from 2 on up until they say the value of the card you laid down. At the aforementioned duplex, you could choose to count very slowly or even backward. Mean.
Quarters- played this many many times. Got drunk from it many many times.
Asshole- great game. Got drunk on it many many times.
Zoom Schwartz Perfigliano- tried to play this once at a fraternity, was already pretty baked and couldn’t get it right, so consequently I got very drunk.
(hmmm. there’s a pattern developing here.)
We also used to play a game, we may have made it up so I don’t know if it had a name. Three or 4 people on each side of a table were a team. One team would pass a quarter (after we were bored with Quarters) amongst themselves under the table until someone on the other team shouted “hands up!”, at which point everyone on the quarter-passing team raised their hands above the table in fists, and at “hands down!”, they slammed their hands down flat onto the table. The other team then tried to guess which hand was hiding the quarter, and if they were wrong, they had to drink. Play continued until the quarter was found, then the other team took over. The drunker everyone got, the sloppier they were, and occasionally on “hands down”, the quarter would fly across the table as the holder slammed his hands down on the table. If this happened, the whole team had to chug.
The only one I took part in was during an episode of Baywatch when Mary Lou Retton was guest-starring, and the game was to drink whenever she smiled that big smile or said something cloying.
It goes without saying that we were shitfaced after that hour.
Ooh I forgot one. It’s not really a game, but it gets you messed up.
Power Hour is where you get a beer and a shot glass and take a shot of beer every minute for an hour. Gets you messed up, if you can even make it the whole hour.
Back in my SCA days, I was introduced to Toblero. Love that game.
A friend actually made a custom Toblero board, with light up shot glasses.
My… 25th(?) birthday party was the last time I played Toblero with the hard stuff… shots of Vodka and Goldschlager. The night ended with one of the most memorable threesomes of my life, and my best friends puking all over my bathroom.
Good times.
We still play at just about every party, but these days we fill our glasses with cider or beer.
My personal fav is Categories, otherwise known as Kings, which is basically a mishmash of several drinking games at once. You draw a card on your turn and each card stands for something different. Like 3 would be all guys drink, 4 would be all girls drink, 5 would be one round of Never Have I Ever, etc.
Cannonball gets people pretty drunk quickly, as I found to my sorrow this weekend. You are dealt a card, and you have guess if it’s red or black. If you guess correctly, you get to deal out drinks; if you’re wrong, you have to drink. The next card, you have to guess whether it’s higher or lower than your previous card. The number of drinks taken/dealt out gets higher with each round (I’m not sure how the other rounds go exactly - last weekend was my first time playing this game, and I was already pretty drunk when we started.)
Two: Jenga. Yes, the tower block game. If the tower falls on your turn, you have to buy the next round.
**
Mayer.** I never got verification on the spelling of this I have no idea why this game is called this and the rules involve trying to deceive the guy next to you thinking your hidden dice in your hand are either 21 or something. If you win the bluff: he drinks. If he calls you out: you drink. After the second round, it was a blur. I’m a cheap date.
Not so surprisingly, both these games were introduced to me by Zee German Relations.
Then there is the very hard to find stateside: Kuemmerling . Comes in travel sized packs for drink and gameability or larger sizes to truly kill off some serious gray matter.
It is pronounced: Coo-ma-ling-a ( or coo-ma-ling)
Note the bottles beveled edge. When you lay a bunch on its size ( like 60 or so of the smaller ones) you can form a circle. The object of the night is to form a circle.
Crack open a case ( I believe 24 are in a case, but I could be wrong. and god forbid I actually go and check my freezer where I have two boxes of the stuff from last October.) divide it up amongst all your friends. When you drink the Kuemmerling it is by picking up the bottle between your teeth, tipping back and draining it. When you set it down ( hands are allowed) you have to put it on its side. If you put it on its bottom YOU have to take another drink.
That is all there is too it. (I’m sure there are different rules according to which germanic tribe you might drink with, but this is possibly universal.)
Word to the newbie: Playing any drinking games with Germans will result in you losing. even 80 year old germans can drink you under the table and be up and ready to go at 6 am the next day like nothing happened. You.are.a.pussy. Accept.it.
Everyone sits in a circle with cups of beer. The first person (player A) picks someone (player B) and rolls the dice, if they roll a 7, 11, or doubles, player B has to drink their beer.
Player A then has until player B finishes his drink to keep rolling, if he manages to roll a 7, 11, or doubles again, player B has to fill back up and you repeat step 1.
If Player A doesn’t roll a 7,11, or doubles to begin with, or if player B can finish his drink before player A can roll up those magic numbers, then it’s the next person’s turn.
Small plastic cups, rather than pints or whole beers, are advised for this game.
A group of people sit in a circle and one starts off “I’m a farmer, and I’m going to grow [insert vegetable] here.” The next person follows with, "I’m a farmer, and I’m going grow [first vegetable] and [new vegetable]. Whoever forgets the order of vegetables has to take a drink.
Oh, the kicker? Everything has to be said without showing your teeth. So, it winds up sounding more like “Amma fahmah, an’ ahm gon gwow…” If you laugh, you also take a drink.
Worst. Ever: The Scrabble Drinking Game
So it was once decided that it’d be a good idea to play Scrabble. With liquor. 100 proof Southern Comfort to be exact. And to take a shot for every five points. With an average game running between three people to about 150 points each. The idea was abandoned quickly, but not quickly enough. I had a fun time looking after people that night…
Oooh, I remember playing “Zoom” a few times, as well. We also had a game called “Zap,” that involved dice. You roll five dice and try to get fives and ones (a one is 100, and a five is 50.) Four of a kind are worth that much times 100, and five of a kind are that much times 1000 (except 1, where it’s worth 1000 and 10,000, respectively.)
You can’t get “oin the board,” until you get at least 750 in one round (you take out the point scroring dice and roll the rest. If at any time you roll and no dice score points, your turn is over.) Once you are “on the board,” you can from that point on stop at whatever point amount you want.
I forget the exact rules to drinking, but it has to do with drinking difference between scores.
Goes like this: I drink. I point at another player. That person drinks, then points at another player. Game continues like this until the beer is gone.
Even better (or worse) is the Century Club. A shot of beer every minute for 100 minutes. Doesn’t sound too tough, but hooo-boy. After the first 50 or so it starts to get rough. The key is to have a non-drinking buddy on the clock/watch and enforcing the rules. I’ve never seen people so happy to have a 60-second reprieve from ONE OUNCE of beer.
Make sure the area is prepared, because someone WILL have the trampoline-beer stomach.
I tried to do it twice, succeeded on the second try and never felt the need to do it again.
We played a more complex vresion of that in college (Ah, college. So much to learn.).
In it, each person has a vulgar hand gesture that’s theirs. So I’d make my sign, and point to the next person. She’d then have to make my sign, her own sign, and the sign of the next person to drink. Etc. You screw up, you drink. Just gets more and more hilarious and inappropriate the longer it goes on.
The Beerhunter was hugely popular for a while. Two guys put headbands on and start channelling De Niro and Walken. Then one of the crowd gets a 6-pack of cans, shakes one up furiously, and hides it back with the others while the players look away. The two players then pick one beer each and hold it to their heads. Players simultaneously pick the tab while pointing the opening to their temples. If you picked the shaken one, it explodes all over your head and you have to skull both beers.
Simplest I know is Peanut Submarine. Each player starts with a freshly poured beer (cold lager like VB, Fourex, etc). Each player takes one peanut from the bowl on the bar, and drops it into his beer at the same time as the other does. The peanut sinks to the bottom straight away, but the salt and oils cause gas bubbles to develop around the peanut, and it eventually floats to the surface. Whosever peanut comes up last skulls. The other player gets to reuse his beer for the next round.
