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Scissors (game)

Scissors is a party game. Ideally it is played with a group of around 10 people of whom 2 or 3 have played before. Players need to be "reasonably" mature since the game becomes very frustrating and young children will neither understand nor enjoy it. Probably 12 is a sensible minimum age.

Warning: Wikipedia contains spoilers

Play

The players sit on chairs in a circle (without a table in the way) and have an object (say an empty plastic drinks bottle or even a genuine pair of scissors). In turn, each player passes the object to the player on their left stating whether they are passing the scissors open or passing the scissors closed. As each player does this the others say whether thay have got it right - obviously the players who already know the game are the arbiters of rightness. The objective of the game is to work out what is going on!

Players go through various stages:

The solution

If you do not know the scheme, it is a bad idea to cheat and look it up since it spoils all your fun in the satisfaction of solving the game. The key to this game is that scissors are passed closed if your legs (or even ankles) are crossed and open if uncrossed. At the beginning of the game positions and movements should be natural. Towards the end, they will need to be heavily exagerated.