Theme

General

Age Range

14+

Type

Games

Number of Participants

4+

Timescale

10-15 minutes

Quick overview

A fast-pace card game were you must get a spoon before they are all gone!

Game type

Energiser/Focuser

Participants

3-13

Supplies you’ll need

Playing Cards, Spoons (one per person minus one e.g.: if 10 people playing you need 9 spoons).

Prep

Split the whole deck so that each pile has four cards and they are all the same number e.g.: All the cards with ‘2’ written on them are in a pile together alone, as are the ‘3’s, ‘4’s etc. These are your ‘Number Decks’.

Game run-through

Sit your group in a circle, preferably on the floor for safety reasons later on.

Place the spoons in the centre, either in a pile or laid out side by side. You can use either tea spoons or table spoons. As a personal preference, I find tea spoons work better.

Depending on how many people are playing, now pick up as many ‘number decks’ as there are players and shuffle those decks together. Any unused cards put to the side as they will not be needed.

Once the cards are well-shuffled, deal the cards out among those who are playing. You will end up with four cards each. You are allowed to look at them and you hold these cards in your hand.

The way you become allowed to take a spoon is by having four cards with the same number of them in your hand. Most likely you will not have this at the start of a round.

To get a set of four cards, you take a card you don’t want from your hand and place it face down to the left of you. Everyone does this at the same time as you must then pick up the card which the person to the right of you has put down. To ensure the game works best, you as leader may want to regulate when cards are put down.

For beginners, five seconds between putting each card down should be more than enough and gradually you should build up to a point where people are continually in a rhythm of putting down an unwanted card, picking up the card to the right of them and after a quick second deciding which card they don’t want, putting a new card down to the left of them.

Once someone has a set of four cards with the same number on them, they can as subtly or bluntly take a spoon from the middle. Once one person has taken a spoon, everyone else can take a spoon which will more likely than not result in a mad grab for the remaining spoons. It is for this reason it is best to play this game on the floor with nothing for people to fall or roll into around.

While you can only hold one spoon, you are free to scatter the other spoons making it harder for other players to claim them. To secure the spoon, you must be the sole person holding it for three seconds.

At the end of the mad grab for spoons, one person will not have a spoon and this person is now out. A new round will now start. However, at this point, because there is one less player, one spoon is removed and the winner of the last round has their set of matching number cards removed.

This process repeats and continues until you have one final person who is the winner.