It was a joy to be able to make a trip to Fort Worth last month for my sweet Grandma's 90th birthday. Leading up to her big day, I had noticed all the "minute to win it" games trending on Pinterest. It looked like such a fun time, I just had to throw together some games and try them out on my aunt, uncle, and cousins. They were good sports and there were lots of laughs shared by all. If any of you are throwing together a party or a youth activity, this is a no fail guarantee for a good time. You could also just make one game and play it during a family night if you don't want to make a whole party of it.
My family wasn't familiar with Minute to Win It, but the idea is you have a random task to complete in 60 seconds or less. For some games, if you have enough supplies, it makes sense for it to be a race against another person to see who gets the point. Other games make more sense for just one person to race against the clock. I made a scoreboard and kept track of the points everyone earned. There are countless games I could have chosen to bring to the party and the best place to research games is right on the website: http://www.nbc.com/minute-to-win-it/ There are even videos explaining the games. I was busy running the games but I did manage to snap a few pictures:
Play It By Ear
I took empty coke cans and put pennies in each of them in increments of 5 (5 in one, 10 in the next, etc) and then cut out cardboard circles and glued them to the top of the cans to 'close' them again. The player had to shake and/or feel the weight of the cans and try to put them in order from least amount of pennies to most pennies. Six people played this game and only one of them did it 100% correctly. The others mixed up the middle 2 cans. In order to tell if they did it correctly, quickly, I put a code letter on the bottom of each can. Okay fine, I'll tell you, if the cans were in the right order, it spelled Madelyn* on the bottom.
Movin' On Up
This game required 2 packages of plastic cups (that you aren't going to drink out of later) in differing colors. Put 1 cup from each stack onto the other stack. For example the tall red stack had one blue cup at the bottom of the stack. Then you set the clock for 60 seconds and when the time keeper says GO, your object is to move that blue cup to the top and then all the way back down, one cup at a time, as quickly as possible. This was great because everyone felt they could do well at it and the race to the finish was always close.
Nutstacker
In this game, the contestant had a dowel rod with 10 hexagonal nuts on it and their object was to shake the nuts off slowly so that the nut would land on one of its sides, standing vertically, and then do the same for the next nut, trying to get it to balance on the one standing. This game proved so impossible that the goal became stacking a tower of 5 nuts in one minute.
Elephant March
A picture similar to this, of some other poor sap, was flooding pinterest in January and was what really got me interested in putting together these party games in the first place. All you need are 2 pairs of pantyhose, 2 of the same size baseballs/tennis balls/soft balls, and water bottles for the 'elephant' to knock over with his/her 'trunk'. Something important that I didn't realize is that it's ideal to have either tights or panty hose, but not one of each, for the competitors. They swing differently!
Candelier
This game was kind of a bust. You need paper plates and lots of (full) coke cans. You put 1 can down, then 1 plate, then 2 cans, then 1 plate, and so on until there are 4 (or 5? I can't remember) cans and it can stand, looking like a chandelier, unassisted for 5 seconds. It was impossible. I think if I had brought styrofoam or thick cardboard plates, it might have worked. All the crashing sounds as candeliers toppled was jarring to the 89 and above club.
Face the Cookie
For the last laugh, my relatives were good sports to put an oreo on their forehead and try to get it in their mouth without using their hands. It is quite entertaining to watch all the twitching and shaking and eyebrow manuevering, but alas the task proved impossible. There were some close calls, but no one successfully slid the cookie into their mouth in 60 seconds.
TIE BREAKER! It was a very good thing I had a tie breaker but sadly, I have no pictures of the proceedings. It was called Chinese Dragon, or something like that and required four rolls of crepe paper. Each person held one roll in each hand and their sole objective was to completely unravel each roll faster than the other person. The tactic that proved successful was holding the end, letting the roll fall to the floor and then wailing your arms around in a circle as the crepe paper went flying around, making you look like a fire breathing dragon, or at least like an anxious praying mantis.
It was a bonding experience as we laughed, played, got animated, and entertained Grandma as we acted so silly. To calm things down again, we played 2 rounds of Bingo. The first about the year 1923 and the next about Grandma. I mean, not everyone is cool enough to have a Grandma who worked for an advertising agency in Rockefeller Center!
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