Games for a dinner party: ideas to play at the table

What makes a game right for the dinner table

A dinner-party game has to work within a few clear limits. Hands are often busy, plates come and go, and whoever is cooking keeps getting up. Before you suggest anything, check that it ticks these boxes:

• It’s played sitting down, using your voice, with no need to stand up or clear a space.
• It can be paused when the next course arrives and picked up again without explaining everything from scratch.
• It needs very little kit: a phone at most, a few scraps of paper and a pen.
• It feeds the conversation rather than replacing it. The best dinner game is the one that, once the round is over, leaves ten minutes of chatter in its wake.

That is why question, deduction and word games work better than physical ones or anything with a timer constantly ticking. If the meal is only the prelude to an evening devoted entirely to games, the structure changes: we cover that in how to host a games night.

With drinks and starters: breaking the ice

In the first twenty minutes the goal is to get everyone talking at least once, without putting anyone on the spot. Questions with two options are ideal: answering costs nothing and every answer opens up a conversation.

In an online room, Would You Rather has everyone choose in secret on their own phone, then the percentages and avatars appear on either side: nobody has to commit first, and the debate starts by itself when the table splits six against one. If you would rather keep phones in pockets, the spoken version works too: someone makes up a question (“Would you rather always eat dinner at six or always at midnight?”) and everyone else raises a hand.

Two Truths and a Lie

A classic that needs nothing at all. Each person in turn tells the table three facts about themselves, one of them false, and everyone votes on which is the lie. It is perfect when there is a newcomer: Hannah, who only knows the host, says she once lived in Iceland for a year, plays the accordion and has never seen the sea. Three minutes later everyone knows something about her and has an excuse to ask more questions.

A tip: the best lies are small and the best truths are odd. If everyone’s false fact is “I’ve climbed Everest”, the game is over in seconds.

Between courses: games that take a few minutes

The gap between the main course and pudding is when conversation risks fizzling out or splintering into three separate chats. What you need here are short games that wrap up in a single round.

The Spy, played quietly from your seat

The Spy could have been designed for the table. Everyone knows a secret word except the spy, who only sees the category; then questions go round the table in a chain: one person asks, the other answers and then questions someone else. Nobody moves, nobody raises their voice, and you choose a discussion length of 3, 5 or 8 minutes: short enough to fit between two courses. If the word is “chip shop” and Dan asks Lucy “Would you go there with the kids?”, the spy has to give a convincing answer without knowing what anyone is talking about.

Word association

No phone needed: the first person says a word, the next says a related one, and so on round the table. Anyone who hesitates too long or repeats a word that has already been said is out of that round. “Oven, bread, toast, butter, Christmas, snow, skiing…”: after a couple of laps the associations say a great deal about the people making them, and they often become the topic of the next conversation.

Twenty Questions

One person thinks of a character, and the others have twenty yes-or-no questions to guess who it is. If you want the phone version, Who Am I? flips the idea round: whoever holds the screen to their forehead can’t see the word and asks the others questions, and they can only answer yes, no or maybe.

After pudding: the game that keeps everyone at the table

Once the coffee arrives, the meal reaches its best phase: nobody is in a hurry, the table has been cleared and there is room for a slightly longer game.

• Name, Place, Thing is the after-dinner classic, the game many people know as “Name, Place, Animal, Thing”: a sheet of paper and a pen each, the app draws the letter and sets out the categories, and when someone taps to say they have finished, a countdown starts for everyone. The arguments over answers (“Does Champagne count as a place, or is it just a drink?”) are part of the fun.
• Most Likely To is at its best at the end of a meal, when the mood is relaxed: with a single phone, someone reads the question, on the count of three everyone points at someone, and whoever gets the most votes takes home a jokey title. A question like “who is most likely to get lost even with the satnav on?” is enough to set off half an hour of stories.
• If there are six of you, Trio Sync splits the table into two teams of three: two teammates build the clue by taking turns to add one word each, and the third tries to guess. It is played sitting down, and how well neighbours read each other becomes the talking point of the evening.

When not everyone at the table knows each other

Dinners where different worlds meet (your partner’s colleagues, friends of friends, the neighbours) are the trickiest and often the most successful. A little care makes all the difference:

• Avoid games that reward knowing each other for years. Among people who have only just been introduced, Most Likely To risks turning into an exercise in stereotypes: save it for when the table has bonded, or pick questions about tastes and habits rather than the past.
• Mix up the pairs. In games for pairs or threes, put together people who don’t know each other: building a clue together brings people closer than half an hour of polite small talk.
• No in-jokes. If a clue only works for those who were on that holiday in Cornwall, everyone else feels like an audience.
• Leave a way out. Anyone who doesn’t want to play can be the judge, keep time or read the questions: they stay part of the conversation without feeling forced to perform.

A good sign to watch for is who is talking to whom during the games. If, by the second round, Ben (who came along with his cousin) is gently teasing someone he had never met before, the game has done its job and you can happily let it fade out.

A little etiquette for games at the table

1. Whoever is cooking doesn’t run the games. If the host is up every two minutes, hand someone else the job of suggesting and explaining the games.
2. Food comes first. When the roast arrives, the game goes on pause: no round is worth a cold plate.
3. Keep the phone away from the gravy. If you are using just one, put it somewhere it won’t end up in a glass, and pass it on with clean hands.
4. Pub volume, not stadium volume. If you are eating out or have sensitive neighbours, choose deduction games over the ones where people shout out answers.
5. Stop one round early. The right moment to finish is when someone says “go on, one more”: leave them wanting more for the next dinner.

If there are children among the guests, you will need simpler word games and shorter turns: you will find ideas in word games for kids. And if it’s dinner for two, have a look at games for two.