This is (and will be) my all time favourite game. It is fun to play. There is no limit to the number of players for this game. Minimum number of players is two. All that is required is paper and pen for every player.

The game is: Name Place Animal Thing.

Every player is required to make five columns on their paper, one each for name, place, animal, thing and Total.

One player tells another to “start”. That designated person starts to recite the alphabet in their mind. Then the first player says “stop” at any point. The player saying the alphabet tells the alphabet at which he/she was stopped. That letter becomes the chosen one for that round. Now, every player must write down a name, a place, an animal and a thing that starts from that letter. Once every one completes, then each one read out what they have written column wise. If no other player has written the same thing they have written, then they mark 10 points for themselves. If the same thing is written by another player, then they both have only 5 points. After all the columns are read out, each player counts the points he/she has scored and write that down in the Total column. Now proceed to find the next letter  using the “start-stop” technique.

There are some basic rules to this game.

  1. “Place” has to be a name of a city or town, not continents or countries or areas inside a city.
  2. “Animal” can include birds, insects and aquatic animals.
  3. “Thing” has to be something that can be touched
  4. You can have a time limit for each round

This game is very good for people of all ages. It is very educative for kids and improves GK.

We (me and my sister) used to play this game a lot. We modified this game to include a total of 26 columns. The “Name” would start with the letter selected, then the “Place” would be the next alphabet, “Animal” would be the one after that and so on. So all the letters in the English alphabet would be used in one round.

We used to have columns like, movie, actor, actress, book, a male character from any book, a female character from any book, author, sport, sport personality, rivers, monuments, TV shows, Fruits, Vegetables, Brands, Famous person, song and so on. We would make up 26 columns by thinking up so many categories.

Next time you want to play a game, try this one.It is a really entertaining and educative.