How to Play: Squiggles!

Squiggles is one of the greatest free games for upwards of two people. All you need is a stack of scrap paper and a few different coloured pens or pencils.

It is great for boys and girls, young and old alike.

You don't need to be good at art, all you need is a keen imagination.

Lets assume there are two players. Both players need a pen and a piece of paper. Ideally the pens should be different colours and I'll explain why later...

Both players (or all players if in a group of more than 2) draw a completely random squiggle. Literally anything will do, small, large, curvy, pointy, any shape will do. When complete you swap your squiggle with your playing partner. If more than two players, all pass your squiggle to the person on your left.

Everyone then looks at the squiggle and then comes up with a doodle to make the squiggle into a beautiful piece of artwork. The beauty of using a different coloured pen is that you can see the original squiggle and see how the player has interpreted it and used it to make their drawing.

The beauty of playing is when everyone has finished their doodle, you all gather round and laugh at everyone's efforts. Being good at art is no barrier to this game whatsoever.

as you get into it you will find this is a very difficult game to give up on.

A good variation I developed while at work one day was to draw a squiggle on a bunch of papers and then photocopy them and dished them out to all the members of my team.

The great thing about this game is that everyone is starting from the same squiggle and seeing how people view the squiggle and go about turning it into a different image is very quite interesting. Every now and again you end up with two people who literally have an identical image.