Actor’s reaction game: Ping-Pong-Pow

This is a fun game you can play to pass the time – suitable for all ages, even kids can play.

Rules:

• You can never Pong a Pong – and as sure as night becomes day, you will
• It’s a bit like the card game Uno but played with gestures
• Someone starts by saying “Ping” and gesturing, usually a point, to the person their right – we start by going anti-clockwise. You use some simple gesture with the Ping and other people have to mimic it. To start, just use a pointing gesture.
• The person Ping’ed must then Ping as well
• After that, the next player can Pong. Use a gesture like putting your left hand up in the “Talk to the Hand!” kind of way. Then the direction is reversed, so the person who was Pong’ed will now point to the left with their left hand.
• So the turn passes along like this Pinging and Ponging, until someone says Pow
• A Pow is to point at a person opposite who must then Ping in the direction you were Pinging. So if you were left hand going left, they must use their left hand and go left.
• You can’t Pong a Pow either

After a while everyone gets good at the basic game, so you can add weird features. The gestures can get more extreme and eventually, you get the weird variant where you change the consonant. Instead of playing Ping-Pong-Pow, you play Sing-Song-Sow and you change consonant on the Pow. So you play Ping-Pong-?ow and you change to Sow, so the next gesture is Sing.

Do you get it? Good. It’s a non-language game, so you can play with everyone from everywhere.