Exquisite Corpse Makes You Unbored To Death

Courtesy of Draw and Fold Over

Have your cheap nights-in gotten a little stale? Perhaps you have resigned yourself to playing half-hearted games of Scrabble, secretly (or not so secretly) seething that your tiles are always so goddamn awful, or flipping through the channels terrifying yourselves with Discovery channel fare, such as “The Terrible Thing That Crawled Up The Toilet and Ate a Whole Family.” A while back, Danielle wrote about parlour games and I suggest going back to revisit. But a tried and true game changer for me is Exquisite Corpse. It will put the life back into your night. Or at least entertain you for a few minutes.

I’m familiar with three variations:

First one: all words. Write three cohesive sentences about whatever your heart desires, fold the paper over so you can only read the last sentence and pass it to the left. The next person writes three more sentences using the last sentence visible as a guide and then folds again, and passes again, until you get tired or run out of room on the paper. Read aloud and cackle at your cleverness.

Second one: all drawing. Draw something, anything. Fold the paper so the image is hidden except for the bottom lines of the drawing. The next person continues the drawing and folds the paper when finished and passes it on. When the paper is full, you will have a beautiful masterpiece or, you know, intricate drawings
of connected penises. Depends on your friend circle, but, hey, I’m not judging. (There’s also an online version, called simply Draw and Fold Over, that you can start and send to friends).

The third one: drawing and words! I recently encountered this one and I think it might be my favorite. The first person writes a sentence. Then he passes it to the next person. The second person reads that sentence and draws the sentence. When finished, the paper is folded so only the drawing is visible. The next person writes a sentence based on the drawing, folds everything so only the sentence is showing and so on. At the end, the result will most likely be like a game of telephone, everything completely misinterpreted and hilarious. And you can make fun of your friends for their dumb ass drawings for hours.

Don’t thank me: thank the Surrealists!