Youth Alpha

Another sizzler from Youth Alpha

You will need:

A group of people
A piece of paper per person
A pen each

How it works:

Everyone starts by writing the alphabet down the middle of their piece of paper.

Then someone is selected at random to choose a letter of the alphabet.

Everyone writes this letter down the far left hand side of the paper on each line that a letter of the alphabet appears.

So if the letter chosen was B, for example, then you would have a list that goes like this:

B___________ A______________
B___________ B______________
B___________ C______________
B___________ D______________
B___________ E______________ etc etc

When everyone has written down the full list of letters then the game can begin.

Set a length of time for play – we suggest 5 minutes.

The object of the game is for everyone to write down a well known two word saying, or name of a famous person, that starts with the letter chosen and whose second word/surname starts with the letter of the alphabet that it is next to.

So for our example that could be:

Big Apple
Bread & Butter
Before Christ
Blind Date
Bacon & Eggs ___________ etc etc

The rules allow a phrase where ‘and’, ‘a’, ‘at’, ‘of’ or ‘in’ exists in between them – hence bacon & eggs.

However, the phrase must be well known – for example ‘red carpet’ would be acceptable but ‘yellow carpet’ wouldn’t.

A word may only be used a maximum of two times in each persons entire list.

When the time is up, then you go round the room in turn for each letter – so start with BA and each person reads out in turn what they have written.

If someone else has the same phrase, then they must declare it and both lose the chance of a point in that round. If no one else has the same phrase and it is agreed it is a famous phrase or person then that person gets one point.

If there is any question over someone’s phrase, then it must be put to the vote – and even if the phrase exists, if not everyone in the room agrees it is well known or has heard of it, and the vote goes against the phrase, the point is not awarded.

For example for PH, someone might suggest ‘Prancing Horse’ as the ‘well known’ phrase referring to the Ferrari logo – but honestly, who has really heard of that? So unless the other players happen to be Italian car enthusiasts or Top Gear then the vote may go against that person and they won't get the point.

Only a majority vote is needed to award a point.

If you manage to achieve the incredibly rare, but not impossible, round where everyone gets a point, then you could go crazy and introduce an anthem, action or winning dance – it’s been said that this is where the Mexican wave first originated from.

We hope you enjoy the selection of youth games on Youth Alpha. For lots more games to play with youth groups then log on to www.youthalpha.org