Blind Potatoes
Another fabulous game, and one of our family favourites. The world seems a superb place when you get to race blindfolded across the floor, on hands and knees, picking up potatoes. Bring it on.
NUMBER OF PLAYERS 3 to 10
AGE 7 and up
YOU WILL NEED 20 to 30 potatoes (or onions, or oranges, or balls, or just about any other unbreakable object of similar size); a blindfold for each racer; and an hourglass, a stopwatch, or clock
PLAYING TIME 5 minutes
OBJECT OF THE GAME
To retrieve the most potatoes from the floor.
HOW TO PLAY
Depending on how many players you have, you can split into teams and play a couple of rounds, or just have two or three of you racing against one another. You need at least one sighted player to scatter potatoes. Whether working solo or representing a partnership or team, you don’t want more than three or four blindfolded players on the floor at any one time.
Once the racers’ sight has been disabled and they’ve been left at the starting line — for example, the edge of the rug — another player has to scatter potatoes all over the floor. At ‘Go!’, the racers crawl out, and they have exactly one minute to collect as many potatoes as they can, wedging them under arms, in the folds of a baggy top, in pockets, or anywhere else. Some of our kids have worked out that stuffing them down their pants works best. The sighted players looking on may need to referee and make the call on who got there first, if any blind potato-related squabbles start up.