by Bart King
Once you start thinking about mazes, you’ll see them everywhere. For example, I’m writing this as I walk in a downtown area, and this place is a TOTAL maze. All the intersecting streets, alleys, and dead ends—HEY!
I seem to have fallen down a manhole. (Are you impressed that I could keep writing even as I fell down the hole?)
And down here in the sewers is Another huge network of mazes. Stinky, stinky mazes. Every civilized city has a sewer maze beneath it, and some of these mazes are world famous. London’s sewer has miles of unexplored tunnels. And Paris has an insane combination of sewers, quarries, and tombs known as the Catacombs buried under its streets. Sacré p.u.!
To give you an idea of how impressive the maze beneath Paris is, there is no map to it because it’s so colossal. Experts guess that there are 124 miles of subway track, 185 miles of Catacombs, and 1,300 miles of sewer tunnels down there!
If you ever find yourself trapped in an underground maze, don’t feel sorry for yourself. Lots of cultures believe bad luck can’t follow a maze, and one traditional Chinese belief is that demons can only go in a straight line.
So you’ll have that going for you.
Ooh, I just thought of...
The most fun you could ever have in a maze!
Go to a hedge maze or a cornfield maze. Learn its route pretty well. Then put on a bull mask (so you look like the Minotaur) and run through it making bellowing sounds!
Don’t have a bull mask? Preferred substitutes include a gorilla mask, a hockey mask, and, of course, a Spiderman mask.
Playing Games
Did you know there’s a National Toy Hall of Fame? Well, there is, and I just learned that “the ball” has been inducted into it. Want to know how many toys got inducted before the ball? Forty! What an outrage! Can you believe that things like the cardboard box (class of 2005) and the stick (class of 2008) got in before the ball?
Man, I’m so mad right now! Luckily, this wonderful joke put me back in a good mood.
Q: What’s brown and sticky?
A: A stick.[27]
Anyway, many of the best games involve a lot of people. That way, everyone can share the fun! For example, if you’re at the pool with three or more people, have a Nose-Nudge Relay. It’s a swimming race from one side of the pool to the other, but don’t worry if you’re not a fast swimmer. This isn’t just any old race!
In the Nose-Nudge Relay, you have to use your nose to nudge a Ping-Pong ball across the pool! This is both very fun and surprisingly funny. If you don’t have enough Ping-Pong balls, you can just pour a little water into a balloon and then blow up the balloon and tie off the end.
If you don’t have a swimming pool in the next room, please turn to page 53 of your history book. There you will see that explorer and writer Richard Burton (1821–1890) wrote a list of all sorts of fun things to do, including “cards, dice, shovelboard, chess, the philosopher’s game, small trunks, shuttlecock, billiards, music, masks, singing, dancing, frolics, jests, riddles, catches, questions and commands, and merry tales of errant knights, queens, lovers, lords, ladies, giants, dwarfs, thieves, cheaters, witches, fairies, goblins, and friars.”
So go enjoy a rousing match of shovelboard, and then tell the story of an errant friar. It’ll be AWESOME!
What is a cannibal’s favorite game?[28]
Boo!
This awesome game is played after dark in a house you are familiar with. One person hides while all the others count loudly in one room. The person hiding has a good flashlight and hides somewhere where they can jump out and scare the pants off the group. The more searchers there are, the better. (They’ll all end up piled together, saying, “I’m not looking in there, you look in there!”)
It’s ridiculous just how scary this whole thing is: You are in a familiar house, searching for someone you know, and knowing he or she will try to scare you. But somehow everyone will still jump out of their skin when the hider finally yells “Boo!” and turns the flashlight on their face.
Hide It and They Seek!
Little kids like to play hide-and-seek, but if you hide, they might just grab some car keys and take off. To prevent this from happening, wind up a kitchen timer and hide it. Then watch the kids try to find the ticking sound!
Coin Hoops
This is a two-player event. You need at least one coin to play.
Flip a coin to see who goes first.
Sit facing each other across the table. The winner of the toss spins a coin on the table in front of her and then traps the spinning coin between her two thumbs.
The opposing player now sets the bottom edge of his palms on the table, pushes the tips of his fingers together, and then touches his thumbs so that he makes a “basket.”
The player with the coin also sets her palms on the table (so that the fingertips touch). She still has the coin between her thumbs. She then swivels her thumbs upward so that the coin flicks forward and (hopefully) makes a basket!
Players alternate taking shots until a certain score is reached. The winner can be awarded all, some, or none of the coins depending on what the players agree on. (If no agreement is reached, both players keep their coins.)
Bouncy-Bouncy!
If you have a variety of bouncing balls, try this: Take the larger of two balls (like a basketball) and perch another ball (like a Ping-Pong ball) on top of it. Then drop the stacked balls and stand back in amazement! You’ll be surprised at how high the top ball bounces, while the bottom ball hardly goes anywhere! Try other ball duos, like a Super Ball on a volleyball or a tennis ball on a soccer ball, to discover the highest-bouncing combination.
Super-Insane Bouncy-Bouncy! If you do this trick, but substitute an egg for the small ball, the egg will fly far away. (So don’t do it indoors!)
BFF Carrying
Have you ever heard of the Wife-Carrying World Championship? It’s held every year in Finland. Men try to set speed records as they run through obstacle courses while carrying their wives. At least that’s how I thought it worked! After training for hours, my wife and I flew to Finland and discovered this in the rule book: “The wife to be carried may be your own, the neighbor’s, or you may have found her farther afield.”
Did you see that? Contestants don’t even have to carry their own wives! Sheesh. But one thing I like about the competition is that it encourages teamwork and sportsmanship. This is something that the famous Italian painter Caravaggio (1571–1610) never learned. He was playing tennis when an argument about the score led him to murder his opponent. (I’m guessing the score did not include the word “Love.”)
To honor the Wife-Carrying World Championship, come up with your own variation: BFF Carrying! All you need to do is this:
Set up an obstacle course
Get some competitors who have best friends they can carry.
Start running the BFFs through the course!
Obstacle Courses!
Have you ever wondered who invented the first obstacle course? Well, I’m a historian, and I believe it was an unnamed girl in the Middle Ages who wanted a Popsicle. But to get to the Popsicle shop, this girl had to jump over a puddle, run from a mean dog, climb a castle wall, and then swing from a vine into the shop window. (That’s how hard it was to get a Popsicle back then!)
And as this medieval girl enjoyed her hard-won ’sicle, she thought, “That was fun!”
She told her village friends about the adventure. It sounded like something they should all try! Soon, the shop was invaded by kids swinging through the windows. And after that, these kids invented new obstacle courses that involved hopping on one leg, crawling, swimming, horseback riding, skateboarding, scooting, scootering, and running from enraged knights.
Try setting up an obstacle course in your backyard or at the park with boxes, lawn chairs, and cones. For variety, try to have objects that you go over, through, under, and around. For example, you could tie off a rope for players to jump over, then have an open cardboard box or old tire to go through. Next, have
a rug for people to go under, and then plant a tree for them to go around!
Remember, variety is everything. Where the racers want to sprint around the tree, you could make that the crabwalk portion of the course! (Or the “walking backward” portion, or any other goofy thing you want!)
To slow things down, try having a balance beam somewhere on the course that contestants have to walk across. If they fall off the beam, they have to go back to the beginning and try again! And laying a ladder down on the ground makes a good obstacle to scamper through. (But don’t use this with little kids, because they might trip.)
Lastly, have a good final obstacle. The coolest one would pay tribute to the original inventor of the obstacle course by having a rope swing that ends with a splash into a kiddie pool!
The only obstacle course I don’t like is an ice-skating obstacle course. This is probably because I almost broke my neck doing one. (Why did I think I could jump over that barrel?)
More Creative Ideas!
Have contestants...
roll their bodies along the top of big exercise balls for ten yards.
step on a balloon and pop it before continuing through the course.
answer a Game Show Host who asks odd questions like, “What’s your brother’s favorite color?” or “Have you ever stuck gum in your hair to see what would happen?”
swing from monkey bars for part of the course. (If no monkey bars are available, ape handles or lemur beams may be used instead.)
shoot a ball (give them three tries) to make a basket on a hoop that another kid is holding. If they make the shot, they can continue. (Or if they miss all three attempts, they still get to continue!)
eat a bowl of cereal or Jell-O quickly (or something else that they probably won’t choke on).
ride a zip-line from a tree and into a giant bowl of cereal or Jell-O (or something else they won’t drown in).
climb inside a giant hamster ball and roll it from the INSIDE.
Obstacle Course of Imagination!
Man, there are so many good obstacle course ideas, my head is spinning. But the one thing all courses have in common is that contestants are timed to see who gets through fastest, right? Wrong!
In an Imaginary Obstacle Course, competitors probably won’t make it through at all. That’s because they will have to overcome obstacles like the Whirling Ninja, the Kiddie Pool of Death, and the Bottomless Pit, which are all pretty dangerous.
But luckily, they’re also imaginary!
First, decide what imaginary obstacles you want your course to have. You may want to use a rock or branch or some other marker to show where you imagine an obstacle to be. As you walk through the course, draw a basic map showing where and what each obstacle is. (Example: “Here’s where you have to walk a tightrope over burning coals. Then you have to crawl like a soldier. And then you have to pull the tail of the Snapping Turtle of Destruction. It may try to twirl around and bite you, so be careful!”)
The key to running an Imaginary Obstacle Course is to do it where other people can see you. This might be in a park on a sunny day or near a field where a soccer game is underway. As your contestants go through your course, they may appear a little eccentric to any onlookers. This is good! Half the fun of this obstacle course is how kooky it looks to outsiders.
Onlooker: “Why is that boy yelling and acting like he’s being hacked by swords?”
You: “He tried to crawl between the legs of the Whirling Ninja ...and failed.”
Onlooker (confused): “Oh.”
If you run into imaginary trouble doing this obstacle course (and you will!), don’t worry. You don’t have to finish! Plus, it might give you a chance to use lines like this:
“Go ahead...keep going...without me.”
“I tried my best—*cough weakly*—but now I feel the Snapping Turtle’s breath upon my brow.”
“Tell Mom I love her. But don’t tell my brother anything, because I can see him over there sticking his tongue out at me.”
Choosing a winner isn’t absolutely necessary with this course. But if you insist, the winner could be whoever does the most incredible acting job or whoever attracts the most onlookers while running the course. Or you could just say everyone is a winner, except anyone who actually finishes the course!
Tug of Peace?
Here’s my theory: If you were stuck on a desert island, the best thing to have with you (besides food and water) might be a piece of rope! A rope is a good tool, plus you can practice your knots and even have games of tug-of-war with...yourself.
As you know, in a tug-of-war, the strongest, heaviest competitor usually wins. But this isn’t necessarily the case with the game I want to describe: the tug-of-peace! It’s played like tug-of-war, in that the contestants need a rope and a soft setting in case they fall down. (A lawn or even a thick carpet can work.) Where tug-of-peace is different is in the fact that competitors will be standing on something! Upside-down milk crates that are a foot tall or shorter are perfect for this. These should be set up no more than fifteen feet apart. Then the contestants stand on the crates and take hold of the rope. If the rope is rough, it’s a good idea for the contestants to wear gloves so that they don’t get rope burn.
On a signal, both tug-of-peace pullers try to pull the other person off the crate. But here’s where a tricky person can beat a big one! Instead of pulling, one person might let the rope go slack. So when the other person pulls, suddenly there’s no resistance and he falls off the crate!
Keep That Rally Going!
The game of badminton has been around for a LONG time. In ancient Babylonia, there was a fortune-telling version of the game that used a ball. People believed that the amount of time the ball was kept in play was a way to tell how long the players would live.
But nobody called badminton “badminton” until there was a big tournament of the game held at a duke’s country house in 1873. The place was known as “Badminton House,” and the rest was history![29]
Toilet Tag
No game has ever combined the wonder of tag with the charms of plumbing—until now! (I think.)
To get started, select a player to be the Plumber. (If you have a large group, you may choose to have more than one Plumber.) While the other players scatter, the Plumber closes his eyes and counts to an arbitrary number. Upon reaching said number, the Plumber begins trying to tag other players.
When a player is tagged, he impersonates a toilet by kneeling on one knee and holding one arm out to the side. This player must stay frozen as a toilet until another player comes and sits on the his knee and pushes down on his arm while making a flushing sound. (“Whoosh” is a sensible choice.) This flushing unfreezes the toilet player, and both players are now free to escape the clutches of the Plumber. If a player is tagged twice by the Plumber, he or she also becomes a Plumber.
Play can continue until all players are frozen, or until a certain time limit is reached. The last player to be frozen or the last player left can be the Plumber for the next round.
The Name of the Game!
If you’ve played bingo, it’s possible you’ve used dry beans to cover your card. That’s good, since the game was originally called Beano! A toy salesman named Edwin Lowe played this version with his family in the 1930s, but his young daughter would yell “Bean-go!” when she won. And as Lowe helped make the game more popular, he honored his daughter by changing the name of the game.
“Save a Life” Relay
You don’t have to do this as a relay race, but it’s one possibility. Okay, first you need some Life Savers candy. Then get some plastic drinking straws. Now, for every two players, cut one straw in half. Give one of the cut straws to each person.
“But how many players do we need?” you ask. Good question! Keep reading this, and then you can decide for yourself.
Now the contestants line up. The person who will start the relay race puts her straw in her mouth. She then perches the Life Saver at the end of the straw. She turns to the nex
t person in line behind her. This person also has a straw in his mouth! Working together, but without using their hands, the two contestants slide the Life Saver from the first straw to the second!
And so the relay race continues until the last person in line gets the Life Saver.
Note: If the Life Saver falls to the ground, try to save it before it gets all dirty. Put it back on the very first straw on the relay race. Alternatively, the person who drops the Life Saver has to eat it.
Buttocks-Popping Relay