Family Games

Ian42

On Christmas evening our family play Newmarket.

What a memory you have brought back to me.
After Christmas tea had been cleared away some sat in front of the TV watching a variety programme, usually Billy Cotton, and everyone else sat around my Granny's long dining table to play Newmarket. Being very young I was allowed to sit at the table but not play. They only played for pennies but as I was the youngest by far, their winnings would be pushed my way. What with this and the sixpences from the Christmas pudding, it was quite a lucrative day for me.

seasider

At Christmas we play a game that all ages seem to enjoy. To play the host needs to wrap up 5 or 6 random presents (nothing expensive just sweets and cheap tat) which are put in the middle of the circle. A pack of cards is dealt out between all players. The dealer has another pack of cards and when they turn over a card you have in your hand you can take a present. When there are no presents left in the middle you can "steal" one from another player and so on until all the cards have been turned over when the players who have the presents in their possession get to keep them. (we try and ensure the small children end up with something) It does get quite competitive and it was very funny last Christmas watching the adults scrapping over what I knew to be a box of stuffing! .

My gardening group play this when we have our New Year lunch out. The limit is £1 per present but we covet the nicely wrapped ones or those with an interesting shape. We are all pensioners but it can get a bit heated if someone steals the present we had our eye on.
I remember one year when this very long and very thin present was in the middle of the table. It was clear that this was the one everyone wanted. After some pretty unladylike manoeuvres it turned out to be a flexible plastic stick for getting hair out of plugholes!

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On Christmas evening our family play Newmarket.

I can remember being thrilled to bits on Christmas morning if I received a compendium of games. As far as I can recall this was a box containing several games such as ludo and snakes and ladders. It used to keep us entertained for hours.

My grandchildren like the 'Who Am I?' Game, in which you have a post-it bearing the name of someone famous stuck on your forehead and you can ask them questions, answered by yes or no, till you get it. I was Postman Pat, which was impossible to guess, then a schoolfriend whose name I didn't know, but was informed he was famous at school!. They were laughing their heads off, especially whilst learning the game and giving the answer away as they worked out what a clue is.

At Christmas we play a game that all ages seem to enjoy. To play the host needs to wrap up 5 or 6 random presents (nothing expensive just sweets and cheap tat) which are put in the middle of the circle. A pack of cards is dealt out between all players. The dealer has another pack of cards and when they turn over a card you have in your hand you can take a present. When there are no presents left in the middle you can "steal" one from another player and so on until all the cards have been turned over when the players who have the presents in their possession get to keep them. (we try and ensure the small children end up with something) It does get quite competitive and it was very funny last Christmas watching the adults scrapping over what I knew to be a box of stuffing! .

Thank you Glass, I`m OK, still a bit "ouchy", but I`m sure it`ll pass.

In my post I asked about favourite table games.
Having had such fun with 'Bananas 'in the last 3yrs I wondered if there were other table games I hadn't heard of.

number glad to see you back again, hope you are ok x

My MIL was very fond of sitting everyone in a big circle, someone was allocated to be the "pussy", and had to crawl on hands and knees, go up to someone and go "Miaow". The person being miaowed at had to stroke the pussy`s head and say "Poor pussy", but without laughing, if you laughed you became the next pussy. Strangely, the game was called "Poor Pussy"!

On long car journeys, we play a number of games but the favourite is, 'My aunt went to market and bought......' The first player chooses an item beginning with 'a', the next with 'b' and so on through the alphabet with each player having to remember all the items in order. A variation is ' I love my love with an A (then b, c, d etc) because he is anxious. His name is Alfred and he lives in Aberystwyth'. The players don't have to remember and repeat what's been said but the game carries on until someone is stumped for a word that hasn't already been used.

Yes.

On a recent TV program Penelope Wilton mentioned that the cast of Downton Abbey spend lots of time between scenes playing 'Bananas'.
My DD1 bought this for me 3 yrs ago and we now play it every time we have a family meet.
What is your family's favourite table game?

There was something else called "black magic" and it involved two people going out of the room and then coming back in and a lot of questions being asked, but I can't remember how it all worked

We played a similar game to that lucid but without the rhyme. We passed open or closed scissors around the circle saying "I pass these scissors to you like this" - it too ages for some people to "cotton on" to the trick. I think we used to fold our arms after passing the scissors - I seem to remember playing it at the table so our feet would not have been visible.
I love the rhyme though as will copy that out to learn and pass the game on to the next generation!

We used to play a game called 'A good fat hen and this' it was a long rhyme and you had to repeat each line in turn whilst passing a small pair of nail scissors to the next person. Only the very observant would see that the trick was to cross one foot over the other whilst passing on the scissors. (The scissors would be opened and then closed before being passed on)
The full rhyme is:
9 nimble noblemen nobly nibbling nombreals,
8 elegant elephants elegantly elevated,
7 Severn salmon swallowing shrimps,
6 Arabian mares all shaven and shorn with tales and manes cut uniform,
5 brown bears,
4 running hares,
3 plump partridges baked in a dish,
2 turtle doves,
A good fat hen
and this....

We haven`t had a large family gathering for several years now, but we used to love Chinese whispers, amazing how the message could change betwee the start and the finish!

Our favourite is musical hat. all present sit in a circle , an old trilby makes a perfect musical hat. You put the hat on the head of the person sitting next to you and so on round the circle while the music plays. Whoever is wearing the hat when the music stops is out,resulting in the last few having to race across the circle to put the hat on those who are left. This Christmas even the dog joined in!

Looking after the grandchildren next Tuesday will get them to play this.
I am now off to the shops to buy some cotton wool to put in my ears
When I previewed this message I had put gangchildren, and thinking about it the first spelling would have fitted just right !