A roundup of drinking games through time, from Kottabos to Flip Cup

GROWN-UPS DO NOT PLAY with their food. And they certainly should not play with their drinks, since alcohol is an intoxicant and should be consumed only in measured quantities with tasting notes and provenance in mind. Responsible adults and gastronomes therefore will quite rightly clutch their collars at the notion of drinking games, which are both irresponsible and a complete waste of perfectly good spirits.

The fact that many of history’s more notable drinking games were widely practiced among the intellectual elite is an uncomfortable conundrum, yes, but in our enlightened times, we surely have moved beyond such things (unless we are still in college, where, unfortunately, drinking games still are rumored to occur). But I’m sure that I don’t have to warn any of my readers not to attempt any of the games below under any circumstances, which I offer up only in the spirit (ahem) of curiosity and vicarious horror.

Kottabos
Where: Ancient Greece
Who might have played it: Plato, Socrates, Sophocles
How: Befitting the ponderous and cerebral individuals who brought us democracy and the Olympics, Kottabos is essentially played by throwing wine around the room. The dregs left in the bottoms of the drinking vessels from a wild Bacchanalian symposium would be flung by the probably already-intoxicated revelers at some precariously balanced target, like a dish floating in a bowl of water or a metal disc or coin propped on a stand. No matter how skilled a participant might be at this dignified activity, the result would necessarily be floors, walls and togas splattered with sticky purple stains.

Jiuling
Where/when: at least as far back as the Western Zhou Dynasty in China (11th c. B.C.)
Who might have played it: Sun Tzu, Confucius, Mencius
How: Jiuling is an appropriate drinking game for a bunch of philosophers in that it involves taking turns reciting memorized canonical poetry while drinking wine (probably a form of rice wine brewed with honey and fruit). A mistake in recitation required that the participants finish their drinks, which could only result in more mistakes and more finished drinks as the night went on, with the less assiduous scholars bearing most of the shame (and the bigger headaches), as is typical of academic get-togethers in general.

Passatella
Where/when: Italy, at least during the 18th century, but probably long before
Who might have played it: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Caravaggio (very likely) and any of the Borgias, including the popes
How: The rules for Passatella were a bit complicated, but essentially involved a group of drinkers pooling their money to purchase a round of drinks, one for each participant. Then two of the party were randomly chosen as “boss” and “underboss”; they then decided whether to allow people to drink their purchased beverages, depending on how much they liked them. And, if they refused someone permission to drink, they would have to insult them, also. This seems to me less a game and more a strange form of social bullying that led to frequent bloody knife fights, but who am I to argue with the minds that brought us the Renaissance?

Sconcing
Where/when: Oxford University, from the 1600s on, particularly among rowers
Who might have played it: Thomas Hobbes, Jonathan Swift, Stephen Hawking
How: Less a game than a form of social hazing, sconcing involves imposing a penalty of a requirement that an individual suck down a tankard of ale or wine as a penalty (or a sconce) for committing a social faux pas, such as talking about religion at dinner or mispronouncing one’s Latin.

Snapdragon
Where/when: the United Kingdom, probably from the 16th century until World War II
Who might have played it: a young Queen Victoria, Beatrix Potter, Charles Dickens or even Benjamin Disraeli
How: While Snapdragon is a family game and therefore not quite at home in this rarefied list of more academic contests, it was so popular among English children that it would be surprising if most of the bright minds of the Empire did not enjoy it in the nursery along with their ABCs. Snapdragon is particularly suited to children, as it is one of the only alcohol-related games that does not involve drinking. Instead, the alcohol is utilized for its much tamer property of extreme flammability. A bowl of heated booze (for example, brandy) is placed in the middle of a table, to which raisins are added. The lights are them dimmed and the brandy is set on fire, and the whole family gathers around to try to pluck the burning raisins out of the bowl with their bare fingers and then put out the flames by popping them in their mouths while chanting an elaborate poem with the repeated refrain of “Snip! Snap! Dragon!” This game, popular for Christmas and in some places on Halloween, also was featured in one of the few Agatha Christie novels that involves the murder of a child, which seems fitting.

Flip Cup
Where/when: college dorm rooms and fraternities all over the United States
Who might have played it: probably anyone who went to college on the East Coast since 1980, when it supposedly was invented in Baltimore at the Overlea school (which is, I must note with chagrin, a high school)
How: Divide into two teams. Place two lines of plastic cups on either side of a cheap plastic folding table or pingpong table, one for each participant. Fill with, preferably, cheap watered-down beer, such as Natural Lite, or similar. Going down the line, players first chug the beer and then place the cup upside-down on the lip of the table and attempt to flip it upright. The team that gets to the end of the row first wins.

Note: In my opinion, there are really two important factors for a successful game of Flip Cup: 1. The use of plastic red Solo-brand cups, as other cups do not flip as readily, and while Solo’s parent company, Dart, does make plastic cups in colors other than red, no one has ever written a song about them (youtu.be/BKZqGJONH68). 2. The use of cheap, light, watered-down beer. I have played this game with Guinness, microbrewed ale and cider, and can attest that it was a total waste of quality alcohol and also made everyone drunk faster, which is even more irresponsible than this game obviously already is.