Play Up, and Play the Game Trivia Quiz

Answer: Pencil and paper game

Tic-tac-toe is a two player game. A three by three square grid is drawn on a piece of paper. The players take it in turns to draw 'X' or '0' in one of the spaces, and the first player to complete a straight line with three of their symbols is declared the winner. Although the game is known as tic-tac-toe in the USA, in other parts of the world it takes its name from the symbols and is called Noughts and Crosses or Xs and Os.

Based on Tic-tac-toe, "Connect Four" is a game which has been created, where the object is to drop coloured discs into a vertical 7 x 6 board and achieve a straight line of four discs of your colour. There is also a three-dimensional version, which is even more challenging.

Answer: Pencil and paper game

Hangman is a game where one person chooses a word and the other, or others, have to try and guess what that word is by choosing a possible letter one at a time. They are given a set of blank spaces to show how many letters are in the word at the start. If they guess a correct letter all the places it appears are filled in. If an incorrect letter is chosen, the gallows are drawn, a section at a time, and then the body is drawn, also a section at a time, starting with its head. The object of the game is to succeed in guessing the word before the entire body is hanging from the gallows. It is quite a good game to play with children to help them learn to spell.

Another educational game involving letters with pencil and paper is variously known as 'Stop the Bus' or 'Stadt, Land, Fluss'. It involves finding words to fit various categories which begin with a given letter of the alphabet. It is usually played over several rounds, with a different letter each time. Sometimes everybody has to stop when the first person has an answer for each category. Players may only score for a word which nobody else has chosen, or they might get extra points for it. There can be bonus points for finishing first. The categories stay the same throughout the game, and might be a standard set (e.g. the town, country and river of 'Stadt, Land, Fluss'), or can be different every time. It can make it more interesting if each player chooses a different category for everyone to use.

Answer: Pencil and paper game

Consequences is a game which can be played by a fairly large group of people sitting in a ring. Each player has a strip of paper on which they write the first word or phrase. The top of the paper is folded over to hide what they have written, and it is passed to the next player, who writes the next word or phrase. There is a format for the story to be created, and when it is finished each player reads out one of the stories to the assembled company.

A common scheme is an adjective, then a man's name, then 'met', followed by an adjective and a woman's name. It carries on to specify a place, and a purpose for the meeting. More lines can be added to include what each of them was wearing, and what each did or said. The story usually finishes with the consequence of the meeting, and what the world said about it.

For younger children a version of the game can be played by drawing parts of a person, or something else, in turn.

Answer: Board game

The game of Scrabble was invented in New York in 1931, but it wasn't until the 1950s that the version known by many people around the world was successfully manufactured and marketed. It is a game played by two, three or four players on a 15 x 15 square board. The players take turns to place up to seven individual letter tiles on to the board to make words in a crossword fashion. After the first word, each succeeding word must be attached to one that is already on the board. Players score for each word they make, and the object is to achieve the highest score. The skill lies in placing the letters in a good place, since some letters score more highly than others, and some of the squares double or treble the value of the letter or word covering that square.

The number of different lettered tiles is based on the letter frequency in English, and the scores are assigned according to the perceived difficulty of using letters such as Z, Q, X, J and K, which score 10, 8 or 5. Other letters score 4, 3 or 2; most score just 1 point. So different versions of the game are available in non-English speaking countries. There are many variations of Scrabble, including online games. There is also a version played with cards, when some of the cards are removed after each turn if they are not needed for the new word.

Answer: Board game

Chess is thought to have its origins in Asia in the first millennium CE. It spread to Europe in the middle of the second millennium. It is a game played by two players using an 8 x 8 chequered board and sixteen playing pieces, or chessmen, each. The pieces are a king, a queen, two bishops, two knights, two rooks (or castles) and eight pawns; each can move in different ways. The players take turns to move one piece at a time. Any of the pieces, apart from the two kings, can be captured by one of the opposing pieces if it moves to the same square. The object of the game is to force your opponent's king into a position where he could not escape capture, while protecting your own king from a similar fate. If the king is threatened with capture he must be moved to safe square. If that is not possible, he has been checkmated and the game is lost.

Chess is generally regarded as an indoor tabletop game. However in many places throughout the world chess boards are available in public parks and other outdoor spaces. There are also large outdoor sets where the chessmen can be nearly a metre tall, and the 'board' is painted on the ground. Chess has been played by post, where two opponents in different towns, countries or even continents take turns to send the details of their next move by means of a letter to each other. Such games can take weeks or even months to complete. With more modern technology, opponents can play over similar distances, but finish the game in no longer than it would take if they were in the same room, by using a computer.

Answer: Board game

Monopoly is a board game which involves buying, selling and building on property, and charging rent for visiting those properties. It was first seen in its present form in the 1930s. It is based on 'The Landlord's Game' from about thirty years earlier, which was invented by Lizzie Magie. Parker Brothers patented and marketed the game in the USA, and Waddington produced it in the UK. The American version used place names from in and around Atlantic City, NJ. Waddington decided to use London place names for the British version. More modern versions have been developed, using many different places, but the game remains essentially the same.

A standard monopoly board has the properties arranged in groups around the sides, with the corners being occupied by squares labelled 'Go', 'Jail' or 'Just Visiting', 'Free Parking' and 'Go to Jail'. Players throw dice and move their tokens around the board according to that throw. They may be able to buy a property if they are the first to land on it. If another player owns it, they have to pay rent. Building houses or hotels on a property increases the rent due. Utilities (electricity and water) and railway/railroad stations have different rules for the rent. There are a few other squares which direct players to pick a card off a pile, and follow the instructions written on it. The object of the exercise is to collect as much money as possible, and bankrupt your opponents.

Monopoly could be described as a 'marmite game' - you either love it or hate it. Many people prefer games which require more skill than chance, not so much time waiting for your turn to play, and dislike the desire to see your opponents suffer. However it has led to sayings in the English language such as 'Do not pass Go. Do not collect £200.' being used to indicate that someone should get straight to the point and not deviate along the route.

Answer: Game must be played by a team

Cricket is a bat and ball game played by teams of eleven players. The object of the game is to score more runs than the opposing team. Runs are scored by a batter hitting a ball which has been bowled at them outside the field of play, or far enough within it to allow them time to run between the the two wickets one or more times before the ball is retrieved. If the ball is caught before it touches the ground, or the bails on top of the wicket are knocked off, then the batter is out and is replaced by another member of the team. There are many other rules about what can and cannot be done on the field, and how to score or get the batter out, which are specified in "The Laws of Cricket", and contains more detail than we need here.

There is a humorous summary of cricket as explained to a foreigner. One version is as follows. "You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that's in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out comes in, and the next man goes in until he's out. When they are all out, the side that's out comes in, and the side that's been in goes out, and tries to get out those coming in. Sometimes you get men still in and not out. When both sides have been in and out including the not outs, the winner is declared.... if there is one!"

Cricket is very popular in many parts of the world, and is played at all levels. Children can be seen playing the game in the streets in India, or on the beach in England, or in the back yard in Australia. Many English village greens are the site of a cricket match on a summer weekend. International sides and some professional domestic teams play matches at stadiums which seat thousands of people.

Answer: Game must be played by a team

There are many variants of hockey, but all are team sports. Players use a curved stick to hit a ball (or another object) into a goal to score more times than their opponents. Probably the two most common forms are known more specifically as field hockey and ice hockey.

Field hockey, often just called hockey, can be played on grass or an artificial surface. There are eleven players in each team. Generations of British schoolgirls have been taught to play the game. However, it is played by both men and women, and is regarded as the national sport of Pakistan. It has been an Olympic sport for men since 1908, and for women since 1980.

Ice hockey is usually played by skaters on an indoor ice rink, although games are occasionally played for fun on frozen ponds. There are only six players in each team and they use their sticks to hit a rubber disc, which is known as a puck, not a ball. It is very popular in Canada, the USA, and Russia, as well as in a number of European countries. In the USA and Canada 'hockey' without any prefix will mean ice hockey and not field hockey. It has been an Olympic sport for men since 1924, and for women since 1998.

Answer: Game must be played by a team

Netball is played by teams of seven players who are trying to throw the ball through a horizontal ring on a post at one end of the court while preventing their opponents doing the same at the other end. It can be played either indoors or outside. Netball is unusual in having been originally designed for women and girls to play, although men were also participating by the end of the twentieth century.

It was developed from basketball at the beginning of the twentieth century. However it differs from basketball in three main ways. One is that there is no backboard behind the hoop to bounce the ball off. Another is that players are not allowed to move while they have possession of the ball. Players are also not allowed to move all over the court; they are confined to certain areas.

Answer: Game may be played by a single person

Croquet is a game which traditionally involved using a wooden mallet to hit a wooden ball through a succession of hoops on a grass playing surface. More modern materials are sometimes used for the mallets and balls in the twenty-first century, but the game remains unchanged. Although it is usually played informally, it can be very competitive, and it was seen at the 1900 Olympic Games in Paris, where it was the first sport played by women.

Croquet is depicted in late nineteenth century paintings by Eduard Manet and Louise Abbéma. It also features in Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" (1878) and John Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath" (1939). Perhaps one of the most amusing descriptions of croquet is the game described by Lewis Carroll in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (1865), when hedgehogs are used as balls, the mallets are reluctant and unwieldy flamingos, and the long-suffering playing cards are required to bend over to make the hoops.

Answer: Game may be played by a single person

The object of the game of golf is to use a club to hit a small ball into a hole some distance away using as few strokes as possible. Most courses have nine or eighteen different holes to play. Apart from natural hazards like rough ground and trees, artificial hazards such as sand bunkers and water may be added to the course to make the game more challenging or interesting. A round of golf involves playing eighteen holes, with the winner being the player who has the lowest score overall. Some of the international competitions take several days and require the golfers to play more than one round to determine the winner.

Golf is sometimes said to be an acronym for 'Gentlemen only, ladies forbidden'. While this may be apocryphal, it was not until 2014 that the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews (regarded by some as the home of the sport) accepted women as members, after two hundred and sixty years of being a male bastion.

Most golf courses are on one site, and involve walking no more than a few miles to get around the whole course. However, the Nullarbor Links near the south coast of Australia along the Eyre Highway spans more than 1300km. Each of the eighteen holes is at a different destination along the route. The searing temperatures and native wildlife provide additional hazards to the players.

Answer: Game may be played by a single person

Tennis is a racquet sport which is be played by both women and men. It was developed in Birmingham, UK at the end of the nineteenth century. The object of the game is to hit a ball over a net strung across the middle of the playing area in such away that your opponent is either unable to hit it back, or the ball lands outside the designated area if they do.

Originally the sport was played on grass, which is why it is sometimes called lawn tennis. Clay courts were developed by William and Ernest Renshaw at the end of the nineteenth century when the grass on the court at their summer villa on the French Riviera was affected by the sun and the heat. Hard courts, which require less maintenance, are also commonly used. Of the four 'Grand Slam' tournaments, the US Open and the Australian Open are played on hard courts, the French Open is played on clay courts, and Wimbledon is played on grass courts.

Other sports which are similar to tennis include squash, badminton and ping pong. Squash is played with a racquet and ball on an indoor court, but there is no net, and the ball is bounced off the walls. Badminton uses racquets and a feathered shuttlecock, with a similar court to a tennis court, although the net is a bit taller, and, unlike a tennis ball, the shuttlecock does not bounce. Ping pong, also called table tennis, has a small net placed across a table top, and the small light balls are hit with a rubber covered bat or paddle, instead of a strung racquet.

Answer: Party game

Hunt the Thimble is a party game which 'does what it says on the tin'. A thimble is hidden somewhere in the room, and it has to be found. The hidden object doesn't have to be a thimble, it can be anything else appropriate for the occasion. The rules may stipulate that it should be hidden in plain sight, or it may be concealed inside or behind something else.

The object may be hidden by one person, and the rest have to look for it, the first person to do so being declared the winner. Alternatively, the game could carry on until each has found the thimble, with each searcher sitting down as soon as they find it. Another version has just one person searching; the other players can help by calling out 'cold' or 'hot', or other related words to indicate whether the searcher is close to finding the thimble. In this case, 'freezing' would mean that seeker is a long way from the thimble, and 'getting warm' would mean that they are moving towards it.

Answer: Party game

Musical Statues is a party game which is enjoyed by young children. They all dance around while some music is played. When it is stopped suddenly, they have to stay completely still. Anyone who moves is 'out'. The game carries on until one person is left, and they are declared the winner, and may be awarded a small prize.

There are variations called Musical Bumps and Musical Chairs. In the former, the participants have to sit on the floor when the music stops, and the last one to do so is 'out'. In Musical Chairs the players march round a line of chairs, the number of which is one fewer than the number of participants, and they have to sit on a chair when the music stops; in this case the player left standing is 'out'.

Answer: Party game

Pin the Tail on the Donkey is a party game which requires a large picture of a donkey, a blindfold, and a means of indicating the tail's position. Players take it in turns to guess the right place for the tail on the donkey, the problem being that they are blindfolded while doing so. They can either have a paper tail which they fix to drawing with a small pin or a piece of sticky stuff, or they can make a mark on the drawing with a pen or pencil to indicate their chosen spot. The person who chooses a spot closest to the correct place is the winner.

Of course, it doesn't have to be a donkey. I am reliably informed that my uncle drew an elephant for my seventh birthday party. Sadly, I don't remember the party or the elephant. It doesn't even have to be an animal. You could place a star on the top of a tree for a Christmas party, for instance. Further confusion and hilarity can be caused by turning the blindfolded participant around before they start their turn, because then they have to find the drawing first.