Games For Bored Adults

January 3, 2011, 8:21 AM
Filed under: Uncategorized

Bored? On the bus without a book? Smartphone-less? Fear not. These are a few of my favourite things to think about when I am forced to sit and wait anywhere for an extended period of time.

Pictured: fun.

1. How Would I Navigate This Terrain If I Suddenly Became Very Tiny?

Indoors or outdoors, Tiny You would certainly have adventures! For bonus points, ask yourself if there’s anywhere Tiny You could perhaps build a little house.

2. What Would The People Around Me Be Wearing If It Was 100 Years Ago?

I like this one a lot. The 100 years thing is but a suggestion. Any era works.

3. Fun With Programs

If you’re stuck somewhere with a program or similar (I don’t know – a boring concert, or a ceremony, or church, if that’s your bag) and it’s getting a little much, pretend to study that program like your life depends on it. It may.

(a) I like to make up wee tales using each letter in a word as the first letter in the word of a sentence. This concept is harder to get across than I anticipated, so what I mean is this:

this is an example

Of course, this excellent source material could become:

To his intimates, Sergio’s issues seemed all-encompassing. Naturally, events (DAMN! Why did I use a word with ‘X’ in it? Anyway, you get the general idea.)

(b) This one’s good for when your eyes have started to glaze over and you don’t feel quite up to making up little tales. I like to imagine how a tiny little 2D person might clamber over all the letters on the page, one at a time. You could land quite comfortably on the middle of an ‘o’, for example, and probably use an ‘l’ or a capital ‘i’ to pole vault over the next few (hopefully you’d be able to soar over, say, an ‘x’, as they look spiky and dangerous). Numbers are good, too. 3s and 8s would be quite bouncy, but you could take your eye out on a 7.

4. Repopulating the World

I thought for many years that I’d come up with this one, but I was sadly mistaken. Quite a few people seem to play a variation of it. It’s pretty basic. If you and all the strangers in the lift/train carriage/plane/waiting room you’re stuck in survived, by a twist of fate, mysterious events that meant the rest of the human race disappeared (I never really worry particularly about how), how would you band together with the new members of your tribe? Who would be the boss? Who could build a house or find water? Who would really, really annoy you after a few days? And, if you had to, for reasons of saving humanity…is there any talent in the room?

Well, there you go. I’m trying to blog more about…well, anything really – so brace yourself for more odd little brain spasms of this nature.