h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

THINGS YOU WILL NEED

1. A blob of blu-tak (the bigger the better).
2. At least 3 people who sit close-ish to each other (the more the merrier), preferably movie fans.

INSTRUCTIONS

One person (the "Maker") goes first and fashions a prop from any film using the blu-tak. Good examples include things such as;

That little blob that Luke Skywalker first practices his lightsaber on.
The face-hugger eggs from Alien.
The wierd cube thingy-bob from Hellraiser.

You can use "tools" to help you make the prop as accurately as possible, such as pens for lines (Blu-tak takes ink quite well we've found) or the edges of coins to roll grooves into your creation. Paper clips to punch holes.... you get the idea.....

It helps if the prop if specific to a film (its no good crafting a gun, for example, as that could come from any number of films). The Sci-fi genre is good for this. It also helps if the film is popular, but the prop is obscure.

Upon completion of the prop, the maker then states the year in which the filmm was made, or estimates it as best as possible.

The other players can then examine the prop and ask questions of the maker. These questions must be answerable only with yes or no.

The aim of the game is to guess the film from which the prop comes. The player who correctly guesses the film title gets to create the prop for the next round. You can keep scores if you want, but we never do.

The good thing about this game is that it distracts the mind, but not so much so that work can't be done. (The maker has the distraction of thinking of a prop, and then creating it, the other players have the distraction of thinking what the film could be). You can also limit the amount of questions to 20, but again, we never do.

Its possible to play with people who aren't sat in your immediate vicinity by making a prop, dropping off at their desk(s) and asking/answering questions via e-mail. Its more fun if you're all sat together though, like in a team. I once stumped my fellow players for about two hours by recreating a meatball from the film The Lady And The Tramp.

Fun, in a mellow kinda way.