Timi Temple tells us his top games
To mark the release of his new single, Snakes & Ladders, we asked Sydney-based indie-rock artist Timi Temple to talk us though his favourite board/card games:
Being on the road a bunch and waiting at various different airport terminals for ungodly amount of layover hours means that occasionally your phone is going to run out of battery and the mindless swipe swipe will stop… what do you do? Games. With. Your. Friends. This list is my 5 fave board or card games to either cure boredom or get the cook up started…
1. RIDE THE BUS (f**k the bus)
This game was taught to me by none other than Kilter. I’m still not sure why he refers to it as f**k the bus but… I later found out after teaching this to someone else that it was called “ride the bus” haha. Pretty much there’s a pyramid of cards in the middle and you’ve been dealt 4 cards of your own. You only get to look at these cards once at the beginning and these need to be memorised. You flip a pyramid card and then you try and remember if you’ve got that card or not. It’s hard to explain but you can also lie about having the card and the game ‘bullshit’ is similar where someone can challenge you or trust you… all sounds easy so far… but if you fail the match or get called out for cheating you need to scull drinks. The bottom layer of the pyramid (flipped first) is worth one drink and the top point of the pyramid is worth 4… so yep, you don’t want to get caught lying on the last card.
2. TEXAS HOLD’EM
So my life can pretty wild at times and not all my high school friends are as wild as me… some have families and mortgages and so sometimes it can feel like I’m drifting from them which I 1000% totally don’t want to happen, so Texas Hold’em has a special place in my heart. Once or twice a year I get together with as many school friends as I can, and we play poker at usually ‘Julian’s house’ wherever his house may be (he moves a bit haha). It’s super wholesome we trade stories about life and generally only have one drink… which is usually a Japanese whisky of some variety. I’m yet to win money from these nights so it’s actually generally more costly than the other games haha!
3. SPOONS
Hotel rooms always have spoons. Sometimes it’s just the little tiny teaspoons, BUT this makes the game all the more exciting. I probably don’t need to explain the rules for this apart from the fact that once someone wins, they grab a spoon and then it’s a free for all for the remaining players to grab a spoon… like musical chairs, there’s always 1 less spoon than there is players. One of my favourite memories was my dear friend Doc Merlin winning a round and usually we try and be sneaky when you pull out a spoon to watch the other players continue playing without realising they’d already lost… however, Doc grabbed his winning spoon and then swiped his arm across the table sending the spoons flying all around the room and the ensuing brawl to grab a spoon was actually dead set hilarious.
4. BIG TWO
I went to a school where you were either two things… a geek or a sport jock… I was part of the geek club and was taught this card game in the school library as I was working on my “moon-tan” (fluorescent light tan). I became pretty good at this game but didn’t think too much of it until I started touring with Cosmo’s Midnight. As it so happens, they were school champions at Big Two at their school, we’ve spent plenty of airports/transfers playing it and although the loser is supposed to drink… we all just end up drinking in solidarity!
5. SNAKES & LADDERS
Alright seriously… I wrote a bloody song about this game… I couldn’t make a top 5 list without including it. You know why I love this game? Because I always roll 1 on a 6 dice… (insert snake eyes joke please) and there’s always a damn LADDER ON SQUARE ONE which gives me a mega boost. It’s also got snakes… which is my fave animal. Furthermore, you can spice this game up by including sculling your drink anytime you hit a snake and nominating someone else to drink anytime you hit a ladder. It’s fun for the kiddies and fun for the older kiddies haha.
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