Quick Shuffle
A good introductory, success-oriented exercise.
At A Glance
A group works together to re-shuffle seven people back to their original positions of a line in which they were standing prior to the group closing and then re-opening their eyes.
What You Need
- An open space.
- Minimum of 10 people.
- 10 – 15 minutes.
What To Do
Be careful not to reveal too much in this briefing, lest you give your group a clue as to what’s about to happen. It’s not critical, because you can always up the challenge, but it’s good to preserve the adventure for as long as possible.
Ask seven people from your group to stand in one line, side-by-side, in front of the rest of your group, and then ask the latter to simply look at the former for about 10 or so seconds. Now, instruct those who are doing the looking, to close their eyes for 15 to 20 seconds, during which time the chosen seven will totally shuffle their positions. No one leaves the line, each person simply moves to a new spot within it.
As you will have guessed, the group now opens their eyes and is charged with the responsibility of re-shuffling the group back to their original configuration. It is quite likely that not even the seven people will recall their original positions correctly – because they didn’t see what was coming either, and that’s OK.
The guts of this activity is about the looking group working together co-operatively to solve the problem. Like most initiatives, it’s not always about getting the right answer. To this end, and to prevent a “hero” from doing all of the shuffling, be sure to frame this simple exercise as a “group” problem, and suggest that every “looking” person takes a turn in making one shuffle at a time. The chosen seven should remain silent at all times during the shuffling process.
Of course, after the first round, everyone is attuned to memorising the formation of the line when the activity is repeated, but there’s still plenty of room for disagreement. Naturally, applaud the idea of using pen and paper, but disallow it!
Variations
- If you have a large group, create several sets of seven, with matching groups of three to five people to do the looking and re-shuffling.
- Experiment with larger look-at-me lines, of say 10 or more people.
- Moving only one person at a time, record how many moves it takes for a line to be correctly reshuffled.
Taken from ‘No Props: Great Games with No Equipment’
If you know of a cool variation to this activity, please add a comment…
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Who am I?
Hi, I'm Mark Collard.
This blog shares some of the most successful group games, team-building activities & programming tips I know.
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