Hong Kong Parlour Games

Diversions, occupations and amusements for an empty evening. By Adam White, Sarah Fung and Sean Hebert.

5-MIN READ5-MIN

Published: 4:00pm, 25 Jul 2013Updated: 3:48pm, 19 Oct 2016

Picture the scene. A whole bunch of you have gathered for a dinner party, but a freak typhoon knocks out the power and simultaneously shorts out all your smartphones. You can’t go outside, and an entire night yawns before you with not even a game of Angry Birds to keep you entertained. What will you do with your evening now? Don’t panic: if you’ve been wise enough to squirrel away this copy of HK Magazine, we’ve collated an exhaustive list of games, fun and play that you can do, technology-free. Sit down, light a few candles, and wait out the storm with these Hong Kong parlor games...

Note from Online Manager: This makes a lot more sense when you're holding the print version of this issue.

Taikoo Taboo

Cut out these cards and deal them out to each of your players. Your challenge is to describe the Hong Kong word written on the card, without using any of the five words or phrases below the line. Note: these are all also excellent for Pictionary.

Riddles Round

A few old-fashioned Hong Kong brainteasers.

1. The Refunder’s Nightmare

On Tuesday night, three aging bankers go to Wan Chai to drink. They order a beer each, and the barman charges them $10 per beer: $30 in all. As the barman gives the owner the money, the owner points to a “3 Beers for $25” sign, handing him five $1 coins to return to the bankers. The barman knows he can’t divide this sum in three, and he hates bankers. So he pockets $2 for himself, returning only $1 to each man. However: each man paid $10 originally and got back $1, so in fact they each paid $9 for the beers. The three of them together thus paid $9 times 3, or $27 in total. If we add this to the $2 the barman pocketed, we get a total of $29. Yet the men paid out $30 originally! Where is the missing dollar?

2. Beery Brewhaha
Your buddies in LKF need beers, and it’s your round. You enter 7-Eleven but all of the fridges contain exclusively Smirnoff Ice. You turn to the clerk, who points to three huge bins holding identical, dark glass bottles. One bin reads “beers,” the second “sodas,” and the third is labeled “mixed beers and sodas.” The clerk says, “I had these delivered today but the driver said every bin has the wrong label. I can’t sell them this way but I can’t open them, or it’ll come out of my salary. I’m screwed!” You tell the clerk you can pull a single bottle out of one bin, sip it, and then give each bin its correct label. How do you do it?

3. The Bucket Brain Buster
A wet market stallholder has managed to get his hands on a super-rare Chinese Bahaba fish! He has read that they live optimally in 4 liters of water. However, he only has two buckets, one that holds 3 liters and one that holds 5 liters. What should he do?

4. Checkpoint Conundra
CY, Donald, Henry and Anson are trying to get from Shenzhen to Hong Kong. They come to a police checkpoint, which lets at most two people through at any one time. They have one single visa that admits up to two at any one time, so they have to share it between them. It must be used each time the border is crossed.
Because of their different levels of prestige and desirability to the PRC, they all cross the border in different times. CY can cross in one minute, Donald in two minutes, Henry in five minutes and Anson in 10 minutes. A pair crosses at the speed of its slowest member.
CY, the brains of the outfit, thinks for a moment and declares that the crossing can be completed in 17 minutes. There is no trick. How is this done?

CWB Charades

How well do you know your city? Form a team of four and leave the rest of the partygoers to guess the Hong-Kong-themed mimes.

Yet More Games

So the typhoon’s still raging? Try these games on for size.