Plum plum plum and La-di-da

 In the spirit of The Floor is Lava (see last post), here are two party games that have been a staple of our Christmas parties for decades.

Plum plum plum

Plum plum plum is noisy and boisterous – how a party game should be. You need six to ten people for this, sitting in a circle with one person in the middle.

Starting with the youngest player, each player in the circle chooses a different fruit. (Plum, apple, grape, and so on.)

The object of the game is for the person in the middle to point at another player while saying the name of their fruit three times before that person says the name of their fruit just once. It doesn't matter whom the person in the middle looks at – it’s the player being pointed at who must answer with their fruit.

If the person in the middle wins, they and the person they beat swap places - but the name of the fruit stays attached to that position. (So, after a while, nobody will be in their original positions, and everyone must remember their new fruit.)

Notes

• I suggest banning long names – ones with three or more syllables. My father once chose ‘pomegranate’, and we never shifted him.
• It’s totally fair to look at one player and point to someone else. It’s the player you’re pointing at (and saying their fruit) that counts.
• While searching for this, I found an old article of mine here. It has a couple of other games on it.

La-di-da

This is chaotically fun. It has a weird, ritualistic flavour, which is also fun.

You need a few (five, six, ten?) people sitting in a circle, each with a walnut or similarly-sized object. I find it easiest to kneel. With the walnut in front of you:

Pick the walnut up and place it in front of the person to your left. As you do so, chant “La-di-da”. (Release the walnut on the “da”.) You should now have a new walnut in front of you.

Do it again: while chanting “la-di-da,” move the new walnut one space to the left.

(Now the tricky bit)

Now, pick up the walnut in front of you, move it one place left but do not let go of it yet, then bring it back to your space (again, not letting go), then finally move it one space to the left and let go of it. While you are doing this, you are chanting: La-di-da-di-da-di-da! (The “da”s show when the walnut should touch the ground – to the left, in front of you, to the left.)

And continue.

La-di-da. La-di-dah. La-di-da-di-da-di-da.

The game should speed up as you play – and at some point, someone will mess up, and it will collapse chaotically. They then drop out, and you play again. Eventually, you will end up with two players, furiously swapping walnuts and chanting crazily.

Notes

• I once met someone who played this using cans of fruit on a wooden floor. I gather it made quite a racket (and probably didn’t do the floor any favours).
• While I was searching for this online, I found the diagram below. So someone else knows the game – it’s not just me. (Although the longer chant has slightly different words.)

There – have some fun!