Games to play out loud with friends, no props

The board game has a missing piece, the cards are in the other bag, and four people are looking at each other across a table. Nobody wants to pass a phone around. What is left is the oldest equipment there is: your voices.

These are twelve games to play out loud with nothing else. All of them work at a table, on a porch or in the back seat of a car. For each one I have said where it tends to run out, because every game does.

Games where somebody guesses

1. Twenty Questions. One person thinks of a thing, and everyone else gets twenty yes-or-no questions to find it. It runs out when the thinker picks something nobody could reach, so keep it to things everyone has seen.
2. Botticelli. Someone picks a famous person and says only the first letter of their surname. The others ask questions to catch them out. It is slower than it sounds, and it suits a group that reads the news.
3. Contact. One player knows a word and gives its first letter. The others give clues to each other, and if two of them say the same word before the knower can block it, the next letter comes out. It needs one confident player to get going.
4. Two truths and a lie. Each person says three things about themselves, and one is invented. It works best with people who think they know each other.

Games that go around in turns

5. Word association. One word, then the first word that comes to the next person, around and around. Whoever hesitates is out. It is quick, and it stops being funny after ten minutes.
6. Categories. Pick a category, like rivers, cereals or famous dogs, and go around naming one each until somebody cannot. Easy to start, hard to finish.
7. The alphabet game. Same idea, in order: a fruit starting with A, then B, then C. Everyone remembers why they hate Q and X.
8. Hum it. One person hums a song, the others name it. It depends on the hummer more than anyone admits.

Games that make a story or an argument

9. One word at a time. The story is built one word per person. It goes somewhere strange within a minute, which is the point.
10. Fortunately, unfortunately. Each turn adds good news or bad news to the same story: fortunately the bus came, unfortunately it was full of goats. It runs out when someone tries to end it.
11. Would you rather. Two choices, both bad. It turns into a debate faster than it turns into a game.
12. Ghost. Players spell a word one letter at a time, and whoever completes a word loses the round. It suits a group that likes arguing about spelling.

When the games run out

Most of these last fifteen minutes. After that you are back where you started, and somebody suggests a quiz. A quiz is the one game that needs a referee: someone has to hold the questions, read them, decide whether "kind of right" counts, and keep the score. Whoever does that never gets to answer.

That is the job Quizy takes. It is an AI quiz host for iPhone: it reads each question out loud, listens for the answer and keeps score by name, so the person who would have read gets to play. It needs a signal and a room where talking is fine, and no account. .

Questions people ask

What games can you play with just your voice? Guessing games like Twenty Questions and Contact, word games like Categories and Ghost, and story games like one word at a time. A spoken quiz works too, once someone or something reads the questions.

What is a good game to play out loud with a big group? Categories and word association scale best, because a turn is a single word and nobody waits long.

Tonight

Pick one game from each section, and play them in that order. Save the quiz for last, when the stories have run out.