Packing My Suitcase
The list of things grows with every turn: first repeat everything already packed, in order, then add your own.
The first player says: "I am going on a journey and packing my suitcase with a toothbrush." The second repeats the toothbrush and adds a torch. The third repeats both in order and adds a third thing — and so on, until somebody slips.
The game rests on the growing quickly while having to be recalled in the same order every time. The first five things stay by themselves; by the tenth the middles start dropping out, and by the fifteenth the list is held not by memory for words but by who said them and what came before what.
It is a good game for a journey: nothing is needed but voices, and it stops exactly when it has stopped being fun.
Rules of Packing My Suitcase
The first turn
The first player says the phrase "I am going on a journey and packing my suitcase with" and names one thing.
The turns after it
Each player round repeats the whole chain from the beginning, in order, and then adds their own thing to it.
Anything may be added that has not been named already.
Mistakes
A thing left out, a thing added and an order rearranged all count as mistakes.
Whoever makes one is out; the rest carry on from where the chain stopped.
End of the game
The game ends when one player is left — and that player has won.
The group may agree otherwise: to play not for elimination but to the first mistake, and to begin again after it with a new thing.
Worth knowing
How the game ends is described differently: in some accounts whoever makes a mistake is out and play goes on to the last player, in others the first mistake ends the round and everything starts again. Whether a right set of words in the wrong order counts as a mistake, and whether prompting is allowed, is a matter of agreement too.
Glossary of terms
- The chain
- Every object named so far, in the order it was packed. It has to be repeated whole and unshuffled.