Hurry Up Chicken Butt

Hot potato, except the potato is a chicken and it will not stop clucking.

Somebody shakes the chicken. The chicken clucks. That person then has a very short and entirely unknowable window in which to do something undignified — go round the whole group, do it five times, show off — before passing it on. Eventually it goes off in somebody's hands, that person is out, and the table finds this considerably funnier than it has any right to be.

The timer runs for a different length every single round, which is the whole design. You can't count it down, so you can't play it safe, so everybody plays fast and badly and that is precisely the intention. Cards come in three colours for three kinds of task, a die decides which one you're doing, and a pink card placed deliberately across the room means somebody is shortly going to have to run for it.

Perfect for: Small children with more energy than the room can absorb, birthday parties, and the twenty minutes before dinner when nobody can face a rulebook.

2–6 players | 2 minutes | Age 4+