Squished in like it’s a clown car—

One of our little ones had some friends over on a rainy day, and the kids were all playing hide-and-seek in the house. They were having a blast, but hide-and-seek gets kind of old once you’ve been “found” and are waiting for others to get caught. Or it’s a lot of work if everyone hides, but the person who’s “it” only has to find one person.

To get all of the kids more involved, I suggested they give “Sardines” a try. They all looked at me like I was speaking Sanskrit or something. Turns out that none of the kids had ever heard of the game Sardines (including mine…I know, I know).

Every kid should experience the excitement of Sardines…you wait until found, then the person who finds you has to hide with you. After a while, the hardest thing was trying not to laugh (or keeping the person with you from laughing). But that was half the fun. And then more and more people try to squish into the hiding spot and stay quiet enough to keep from being found.

After their blank stares, I suddenly felt old or something. It was like I’d said I could buy a hamburger for a nickel back when I was young. Or that I remembered back when it was horses, and not cars that roamed main street. But, then it got me thinking of the wealth of great games that are out there.

So, we’ll be resurrecting fun, old game ideas from time to time and posting them here. Some of these may be related to Flibbix in some way, or maybe they won’t be. Almost anything can be rolled into Flibbix if you want (land on Custom Tile and you have to play one quick round of Sardines). But either way, it’s worth digging up some forgotten gems. And Sardines seems like a great place to start. So without further ado:

How to Play Sardines

Players: You’ll need at least 4 players. The more, the better.

How to Play:

1. Choose a person to be the “Sardine” (to hide). Everyone starts in one room.
2. The Sardine leaves to go find a hiding spot while everyone counts to a nice, high number (give it 50 or so).
3. Once the group is done counting, players split up and try to find the Sardine.
4. The first person who finds the Sardine hides in the same spot as the Sardine.
5. The next player who finds the first two players, hides with them as well.
6. Repeat this until the last player finds everyone else hiding together.
7. For the next round, the person who found the Sardine first gets to be the sardine.

Tips: It’s best to play in a place that has hiding spots large enough for a few people to hide together. And, you’ll want to search alone, if possible. Half the fun of the game is finding the other players without having others know you found them.

Have fun playing! If you have other forgotten game gems that we should highlight, drop a note in the comments.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 26th, 2008 at 3:10 pm and is filed under Classic Games, How To. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.