| Telephone |
| | Players | 3 or more | | Age range | 5 and up | | Setup time | < 5 minutes | | Playing time | 5–15 minutes | | Rules complexity | Low | | Strategy depth | Low | | Random chance | Low | | Skills required | listening, whispering | | The telephone game, also known as Broken Telephone, Chinese whispers and whisper down the lane, is a game often played by children at parties or in the playground in which a phrase or sentence is passed on from one player to another, but is subtly altered in transit. Trivial Pursuit is a popular party game. ...
Combination playground structure for small children; slides, climbers (stairs in this case), playhouse A playground is an area designed for children to play freely. ...
How to play
As many players as possible line up such that they can whisper to their immediate neighbours but not hear any players further away. The player at the 'beginning' of the line thinks of a phrase (or, in the case of young children, is supplied one by an adult), and whispers it as quietly as possible to her/his neighbour. The neighbour then passes on the message to the next player to the best of his/her ability. The passing continues in this fashion until it reaches the player at the 'end' of the line, who calls out the message s/he received.
If the game has been 'successful', the final message will bear little or no resemblance to the original, due to the cumulative effect of mistakes along the line. Often, however, the message does not reach the end of the line, due to someone accidentally speaking too loudly. Deliberately changing the phrase is often considered cheating, but if the starting phrase is badly picked, there may be disappointingly little natural change.
Purpose The game has no objective, and no winner - the entertainment comes from comparing the original and final messages. Even if the line is not completed, the last few people to receive the message can compare this with the original, and some messages will be unrecognisable after only a few steps.
Besides being a fun game, the meaning created by this activity is the important truth about how easily information can become corrupted by indirect communication. The game has been used in schools to simulate the spread of gossip and its harmful effects, and has implications in many adult topics like bureaucracy, politics and Academia. Bureaucracy is a concept in sociology and political science. ...
Politics is the process by which decisions are made within groups. ...
Plato is credited with the inception of academia: the body of knowledge, its development and transmission across generations. ...
Examples A possible sentence that will help people get started with this game could be, "Johnny can you please pick up the pencil that you dropped, and please remember to take your homework with you to school tomorrow."
A common (likely apocryphal) story in the UK is of a general who sent the message "Send reinforcements, we are going to advance" back to HQ. After passing through many intermediaries it finally arrived as "Send three and fourpence, we are going to a dance".
In the Media In The PTA Disbands, an episode of The Simpsons, Bart attempts to spread "Skinner said the teachers will crack any minute" throughout the crowd of Springfield Elementary School teachers. By the time it reaches Mrs. Krabappel, it has turned into "Skinner said the teachers will crack any minute, purple monkey dishwasher." Another Simpsons Clip Show is an episode from the sixth season of The Simpsons. ...
The Simpsons is the longest-running American animated television series and overall sitcom, with 17 seasons and 366 episodes since it debuted on December 17, 1989 on FOX. The TV series, created by Matt Groening, is a spinoff of a series of animated shorts originally aired on The Tracey Ullman...
Bartholomew Jo-Jo (Bart) Simpson (voiced by Nancy Cartwright) is a fictional character featured in the animated television series The Simpsons. ...
...
The following is excerpted from the movie Johnny Dangerously: Johnny Dangerously is 1984 comedy spoof of 1930s crime/gangster movies. ...
Lil: Get this to Johnny on the grapevine. Vermin is going to kill Johnny's brother at the savoy theater tomorrow night. Got it.
Polly: Got it.
Polly: Vermon is going to kill Johnny's brother at the savoy theater pass it on.
Prisoner: Vermon is going to kill Johnny's brother at the savoy theater tonight pass it on.
Prisoner: Vermon is going to kill Johnny's mother at the savoy theater tonight pass it on.
Prisoner: Vermon's mother is going to kill Johnny tonight at the savoy theater pass it on.
Prisoner: (Gibberish)
Prisoner: There's a message on the grapevine Johnny.
Johnny: Yeh. What is it?
Prisoner: Johnny and the mothers are playin' Stompin At the Savoy in Vermont tonight.
Johnny: Vermin's going to kill my brother at the savoy theater tonight.
Prisoner: I didn't say that.
Johnny: No, but I know this grapevine.
From the 1/8/06 comic strip Zits: Zits is a comic strip about a teenager named Jeremy Duncan and his relationship with family and friends. ...
{Frame 1} Mom: (on phone) Sara? It's Connie, Jeremy's mom.
Sara: Oh, hi!
{Frame 2} Mom: (on phone) Jeremy must have turned his cell phone off. Can you give him a message?
Sara: Sure!
{Frame 3} Sara: (on phone) D'ijon? Sara. Tell Jeremy that his mom locked her keys in the car, so he should get a ride home with Hector.
D'ijon: Got it.
{Frame 4} D'ijon: (on phone) Zuma? D'ijon. Give Jeremy this message.
Zuma: 'K.
{Frame 5} Zuma: (on phone) Thanks Brittany.
Brittany: No problem. I'll pass it on.
{Frame 6} Brittany: (on phone) Pierce, I have a message for Jeremy.
Pierce: Go.
{Frame 7} Pierce: Give Hector a ride home. Your mom locked her cheese in a jar.
{Frame 8} Pierce: ...Or something like that.
Jeremy: (thinking) And she wonders why I screen her calls...
Other names This game is also known in various parts of the world as broken telephone, whisper down the lane, gossip - развален телефон (Bulgarian for "broken telephone").
- El telèfon (Catalan for "the telephone")
- 以訛傳訛 (Chinese for "pass wrong with wrong")
- tichá pošta (Czech for "silent mail")
- téléphone arabe (French for "Arabian telephone").
- stille Post (German for "silent mail")
- χαλασμένο τηλέφωνο (Greek for "broken telephone")
- telefono senza fili (Italian for "telephone without wires")
- głuchy telefon (Polish for "the deaf telephone").
- telefone-sem-fio (Portuguese for "wireless telephone").
- telefonul fără fir (Romanian for "telephone without wire")
- глухой телефон (Russian for "deaf telephone")
- el teléfono estropeado/dañado (Spanish for "broken telephone").
- viskleken (Swedish for "the whispering game")
- Gluvi Telefoni (Serbian Just like the Polish version.)
- Chinese Whispers (UK and Australia)
´´´Catalan´´´ (´´Català ´´) is a Romance language, the national language of Andorra and co-official in two regions of Spain. ...
The Arabian Peninsula The Arabian Peninsula is a peninsula in Southwest Asia at the junction of Africa and Asia consisting mainly of desert. ...
The Serbian language is one of the standard versions of the Å tokavian dialect (former standard was known as Serbo-Croatian language). ...
See also Eat Poop You Cat (also known as Ipupiukat, EPYC, Fax Machine, Pictophone, The Picture Sentence Game, Paper Telephone, or Telephone Pictionary) is a party game that has been likened to a cross between the telephone game and Pictionary. ...
A translation relay is a version of the well-known telephone game. ...
Epistemology, from the Greek words episteme (knowledge) and logos (word/speech) is the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature, origin and scope of knowledge. ...
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