Travel Games You Can Play With Just Your Brain

The thing about traveling to faraway places is that it can take a while to get there. When you’re six hours into your journey and you’ve exhausted all possible topics of conversation, what can you and your bored companions do? These handy travel games can be played anytime, no boards or decks of cards required.

A Billion Questions

A lot like the game “20 Questions”, but this version can go on much, much longer.

How to Play: One person thinks of something. Your partners have unlimited guesses, so make it as difficult as you like (ideologies, states of being, emotions, things that change shape or color). Once, a friend of mine was thinking of his own reflection, and it kept us all guessing for hours!

Bed, Marry, or Kill

How to Play: Name three celebrities (like David Letterman, David Duchovny, and Snoop Dogg). Your friends have to choose which they would take to bed, which they would marry, and which they would kill. The game gets even better as you move beyond people to objects (sushi, stillettos, plastic bags), or more abstract stuff (politics, theft, nausea).

Would You Rather…?

The game of big decisions you hope you never have to make.

Example: “Would you rather have ears where your eyes should be or have your legs on backwards?” You can mix it up by placing bets on how your friends will answer.

The Picnic Game

A puzzling memory game that might make you hungry.

How to Play: Think of a category, such as ‘things that grow on trees’, and don’t tell the other players. To start off the game, say, “I’m going to a picnic and I’m bringing an apple”. (Or something else that starts with the letter A and grows on a tree.) The next player repeats the opening, plus the A item (apples), then adds an item that starts with B: “I’m bringing an apple and some bananas.” (Bananas are okay, since they grow on trees.) The third player repeats all that, then adds something that begins with C: “I’m bringing an apple, bananas and a cantaloupe.” (Uh-oh! Cantaloupes grow on vines, not trees.) The first player then says, “Sorry, but you can’t bring a cantaloupe.” The third player tries again, and the game continues until someone can guess the category (or no one can remember all the items). Of course, you don’t have to stick to picnic foods. Some fun category ideas are “things I don’t like”, “things that smell good”, and “hot actors/actresses”, but the possibilities are infinite!

City, Country, River

Use travel time to brush up on your geography! How appropriate.

How to play: Choose three or four categories of place names. For example: city, country, river. Take turns challenging other players to think of a city, country and river that all start with a certain letter. For example, if your friend challenges you with “D”, you can win by saying “Dubai, Denmark, Danube” in under sixty seconds (or whatever time limit you decide on).

Tipoter

“Tipoter” is a made-up word that looks like the infinitive form of a French verb. It stands for any verb. For the English version, you can invent your own verb like “to gleep”.

How to Play: One person thinks of a verb, which will be represented by “to gleep”. The other asks yes/no questions about the verb “to gleep” until they can guess what verb it stands for. You can make it harder by setting limits on time or guesses. Example: My “to gleep” means “to milk” (a cow). So the game might go like this: “Do you gleep? – No “Do I gleep? – No “Could I gleep something? – Yes “Could I gleep an object? – No, not an object “Could I gleep an animal? – Yes “Could I gleep a fish? – No

The Slug Bug Game

We used to play this in the car with Volkswagen Beetles, AKA “Bugs”, but you can invent a variation with pretty much anything around you: cows, llamas, Manchester United shirts. Basically, whenever you see one, you slug your friend in the arm before they can slug you.

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Tags: 20 questions, car games, The Picnic Game, travel, travel games, Volkswagen Beetle