If you’re looking for a fun drinking game for your next social-distance hang, look no further than the latest season of “The Crown.”
In Season 4, Episode 4, “The Balmoral Test,” the British royal family, joined by then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher, play a quirky parlor drinking game called “Ibble Dibble.” It involves tongue-twisters, dotting your face with the charred end of a wine cork, and getting very drunk.
What you need to play the game: Drinks for everyone involved, a wine cork, and a lighter or a match.
Start by giving a drink to each player. Then go around the room and give each player, i.e. an ibble-dibble, a number in the order that they’re sitting, such as one ibble-dibble, 2 ibble-dibble, 3 ibble-dibble, and so on.
Then take your cork, light the end of it, and blow it out so that it’s blackened with soot at the tip but no longer hot to the touch (the cork will be touching people’s faces). As the game goes on, players will receive a black dot on their face, i.e. a dibble-ibble, for every mistake they make while reciting tongue twisters.
To begin the game, the starting player will name themselves (“one ibble-dibble”), recite how many dots they have (“with no dibble-ibbles”) and then call on another player and say their number of dots (“calling 5 ibble-dibble with 4 dibble-ibbles”). If the player pauses, calls out the wrong player number or number of dots, or mixes up their ibbles and their dibbles, they have to take a drink — and someone puts a dot on their face. Once the first player has either successfully called another player or taken a drink and been dotted, the person who they just called takes a turn. Each player starts the game with a clean face and no dibble-ibbles.
Here’s an example of how it would go:
Player one: “This is one ibble-dibble with no dibble-ibbles calling 3
ibble-dibble with no dibble-ibbles.”
Player 3 responds: “This is 3 ibble-dibble with no dibble-ibbles calling 4
ibble-dibble with no dibble-ibbles”.
As the game goes on, players drink more and more, thus making it harder and harder to say the tongue twisters. The game basically goes on until everyone decides to stop, at which point the player with the least dibble-ibbles on their face wins.
Have fun — and drink responsibly!
“The Crown” Season 4 is now streaming on Netflix.
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