HALLOWEEN DRINKING GAMES

Apple bobbing stops being the highlight of a Halloween party somewhere around your twentieth birthday. Wrapping a friend in toilet paper to win a bag of candy loses its shine at about the same time. If your party needs something with more bite this year, here are eight Halloween drinking games we actually play.

All of them run on what is already in your kitchen. None need special equipment, and most get funnier the more effort everyone put into their costume.

One thing before we start. These are for guests who are 21 and over, and every one of them is better when nobody is treating it as a competition. Keep the measures small and the night lasts longer.

1. Trick or Drink

Trick-or-treating, rebuilt for people who can no longer knock on strangers' doors without it being a police matter.

Line up six shot glasses and cover them so nobody can see inside. Three get a trick: something strong and genuinely unpleasant. Three get a treat: something sweet with no alcohol in it at all. Guests roll a die and drink whichever glass comes up.

House rule: you have to be in costume to play. Somebody losing a staring contest with a shot glass is significantly funnier in a full-body suit.

2. What's in the Box?

The gross-out guessing game, with a grown-up forfeit.

Fill several containers with foods that feel like body parts. Peeled grapes for eyeballs, cooked spaghetti for intestines, dried apricots for ears. Players reach in blind and guess what they are holding. Wrong answer, small drink.

Two things we learned the hard way: use containers deep enough that nobody can see in, and write down which is which, because you will forget. Only put the food out to eat afterwards if you trust everybody's hands.

3. Bobbing for Shots

Apple bobbing, upgraded.

Number each apple with a waterproof marker and float them in a bowl of water. Players grab one with their teeth, then drink the matching number of measures. Keep the numbers between one and four and use a light punch rather than spirits, or the game finishes the party rather than starting it.

Fair warning: this ruins face paint. Play it before anyone does their makeup, or accept what happens.

4. Scary Movie Rules

Pick a horror film and agree the rules before you press play.

The reliable ones: drink when a character splits off from the group, when a door opens on its own, when somebody investigates a noise instead of leaving the house. Add one twist rule to keep people paying attention, like swapping drinks with the person on your left every time somebody screams.

The skill is picking triggers that happen often enough to be funny and rarely enough that you all see the end of the film.

5. Speak No Evil

Set a strict costume dress code, then ban the word "Halloween" and everything near it. No spooky, no pumpkin, no costume, no scary. Every slip is a small drink.

Everybody breaks this inside ten minutes, which is the entire point. It works best in a room full of obviously themed outfits that nobody is allowed to mention.

6. Halloween Drinking Bingo

Write bingo cards from things that will definitely happen at your party. Someone's wig comes off. Two people arrive as the same character. Someone explains their costume for the third time. A guest asks to change the music.

Cross them off as they happen. First to a full line stops drinking; everybody else takes one. It runs quietly in the background all night and costs you a sheet of paper.

7. Drink If

For the point in the evening when the party has slowed down and nobody wants to stand up.

Take turns reading out "drink if" statements, and anyone it applies to takes a small drink. The Halloween versions land best. Drink if you have worn this costume before. Drink if you bought yours in the last 48 hours. Drink if you cannot name a single character anyone else is dressed as.

No setup, no equipment, and it gets a quiet room talking again.

8. Guess My Costume

Everybody writes down who or what they are supposed to be and drops it in a bowl. Read them out one at a time and let the room guess who wrote each.

Guess wrong and you drink. If nobody can identify your costume at all, you drink, then explain it, then probably drink again. Unkind to anyone who went obscure this year, excellent for everybody else.

What to Wear

Half of these games are funnier in a room that has made an effort, and three of them need a costume to work at all. Good places to start:

• Halloween Costumes for everything in one place
• Funny Costumes for the games that reward looking ridiculous
• Group and Family Costumes if the whole party is coordinating
• Adult Inflatable Costumes for maximum comedy and minimum dignity
• Halloween Morphsuits which you can see and drink through
• Masks to finish an outfit off quickly
• Scary Halloween Costumes for the Speak No Evil dress code

Everything we make passes more than 30 fit checks before it ships, so nothing splits open halfway through the second game.

A Few House Rules

Worth sorting before anyone arrives, and it takes ten minutes.

• Use small measures. Every game above works exactly as well on a splash as on a full shot, and the night runs hours longer.
• Put out proper food, not just chips. Bobbing for Shots on an empty stomach is how a party ends at nine.
• Have a real alcohol-free option so anyone not drinking can play everything without explaining themselves.
• Sort out how everyone is getting home while people are still capable of arranging it.
• Keep water where people will trip over it rather than in the kitchen nobody walks into.

Get those right and the games look after themselves. Happy Halloween.