The Name Game ~ A Fun Group Game! (& Our Bear Lake Vacation)

So, we recently spent the weekend with Dan’s family in Bear Lake, Utah/Idaho.  Have you been there??  It’s soooo beautiful.  A huge, amazingly turquoise lake, right in the middle of the desert.  Every year, we rent a cabin up there and spend the time boating, swimming, eating raspberry shakes (they’re famous!), wrestling (tons of cousins!), and relaxing.  After we got all the kids to bed, the adults stayed up late playing games …AND, I thought I would tell you about it.  It’s called The Name Game and it’s so much fun!

But, first …a handful of pictures from our trip…

Look at that water color!

Cousin wrestling was literally going on ALL day long.  We use to love watching the wwe news and rumors every day.

Sisters.

Strangling my child and loving it.

Joey fell asleep on the car window, waiting for the family to be done playing on the beach.  Did you see this pic on Instagram??

Trying out Uncle Dave’s kayak.

I love this pic of my little Benny and Shane.

Lovers, Leikos and Aspen …chillin on the deck.

Okay anyway, here’s the game.  The Name Game.

1. Split the large group into two teams.

2. Give everyone 3 little pieces of paper and have them secretly write down one person’s name on each piece of paper.  Names can be celebrities, people y’all know, historical figures, whatever.  Fold the papers in half and put them all in a bowl.

3. “Description,” The first round: A team member, from just one team, draws a name from the bowl and has one minute to describe the person to their team, without saying the name or ‘rhymes with’.  If they don’t know the person on the paper, they will have to describe based on the name, not what they know about the person.  Each player can have one ‘pass’ to put the name back in the bowl and choose another.  As soon as their team guesses, they save that paper and draw another one out of the bowl.  They try to get their team to guess as many names as they can in one minute.  When the timer is up, the team member keeps the papers in their team’s stack, to keep track of their points.  If the timer ended before the team guessed the last name, the other team has one chance to guess, based on what they heard.  If they get it right, they get the point for that name. Now, it’s the other team’s turn to have a player describe names for one minute.  When they’re done, it’s the other team’s turn, and so on.  Once all the names in the bowl have been used up, the round is over.  The scores/names are counted and written down for round one.  Put all the papers collected from both teams back in the bowl for round 2.

4. “Acting,” The second round: This round follows the same format as the first, but this time instead of describing the person, the name will have to be acted out, using no words.  As you can imagine, this gets pretty funny.  It can be pretty hard to act out a name!  BUT, if you’re team was paying  close attention to the names in the first round, they will be at an advantage because they’re all the same names being used again.  Of course, acting the name does not include using sign language or spelling letters in the air.  🙂  When the round is over, count the names earned by each team.  Add that score to the score from the first round.  Put all the papers from both teams back in the bowl for round 3.

5. “One Word,” The third round: This round follows the same format as the first two, but this time instead of describing or acting, a player can only tell their team ONE word to describe the name.  So, they have to be careful of which word they choose!  As before, the more closely your team is paying attention to the names and what they learned from the previous rounds, the faster they will be able to guess, and the more names will be scores for their team.  When the round is over, count the names earned by each team and add that score to the other two rounds.  Whichever team has the highest score, wins!

Want more group game ideas??  Check out these posts: Builders & Bulldozers, The Telephone Game, M&M Straw Game, My Favorite Group Games