Ice bucket express

Here’s a fun game I learnt from a boyfriend’s friends many, many years ago. Back when I was dating someone completely unlike me and his friends were even less like me. When I think of this time, the song “La Vie Boheme” from Rent goes around and around in my head.

“Alessi Ice Bucket” by Didriks is licensed under CC BY 2.0 .

They did have some cool games though. Some they made up, like Twister using body parts instead of coloured dots (“Right hand needs to go to left knee”), but others I believe had a legitimate origin. Ice bucket express is so-named for the main piece of equipment – an ice bucket. Which you will of course have on hand because this is an after-dinner game and it originated in my parents’ time when a dinner party always involved an ice bucket on the table. You are expected to empty the bucket of ice, and anything else, before playing. I usually use a hat instead, but “Hat express” doesn’t have the same ring to it. The rules are fairly simple:

1. Each person writes one word on a small piece of paper, folds it, and puts it in the hat/ice bucket.
2. People are split into two or more teams.
3. The first team pulls a word out of the ice bucket. They have one word to come up with a song that includes this word. They don’t need to know the name, the artist, or anything else about the song. The way they prove they have identified an appropriate song is that the whole team sings eight words of the song, one of which is the word on the paper.
4. If they are successful, the next team needs to do the same, with the same word. The point for that word goes to the last team to successfully sing that word in an eight-word phrase.
5. Once a team fails to come up with a song, that team pulls the next word out of the hat and play continues.

I love this game, and have used it in many large-group settings. My favourite has been when a youth group has an invite-the-family night. It’s a great ice-breaker and is a lot of fun when you’re getting songs from multiple generations. Fun times.