Don’t Wake the Pirate

Type: Individual

Equipment: Pieces of paper, sanitiser so the leader has clean hands when putting down the paper.

Setup: The person leading the game should choose one person to be the pirate. They should sit in the middle of the space. Everyone else should sit in a circle around the pirate 2m apart.

Extra Measures: Make sure there’s enough space for everyone to stay distanced in the circle. You could laminate the pirate map to make it easy to clean between rounds or use a new map each time.

Description

The person leading the game should put a piece of paper behind the pirate. This is the pirates map. The pirate should close their eyes and pretend to go to sleep. The leader should then choose a player in the circle to get the map. They should point to a player without making any noise. The player who was chosen to get the map should silently get up, get the map, and sneak back to their place. Meanwhile, the pirate should listen out for any noise. If they think they hear the player moving to get their map, they should open their eyes.

If the player is there, they should run away back to their place in the circle. If the player gets the map without being caught, they’re the winner and become the pirate. Everyone should play again but use a new piece of paper to avoid two people handling the same paper.

Keep playing, but swap the pirate every two or three turns (or whenever someone gets caught). Ideally, everyone should have a turn at trying to get the map.

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