Take a plane

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Take a plane (or The train to Umbridge) is a party game that resembles Scissors in that some players know the "secret" of how the game actually works and the objective is for those who do not know this to work it out.

One person will be, effectively, the referee. Another person, who knows the secret, will say "I'm going to take a plane to Paris." The referee responds either, "You got there," or "You didn't get there," depending on whether they have followed the secret rule or not. Any guest who wants to can then call out "I'm going to take a plane to..." in order to experiment and try to find the secret.

[edit] The secret

The secret can vary from game to game. For example, an often-used rule is that a player may "get there" only if they hesitate, or insert an "um" or "ah", between "to" and the destination. "I'm going to take a plane to Tokyo" won't get there, but "I'm going to take a plane to, um, Tokyo" will.

As a result of this, the game is also often known as "The Train to Umbridge", using the sentence format, "I was on the train to Umbridge and I got off at, um, Govan," or some variant thereof. This name is, of course, a pun on the use of the hesitatory word "um" and also the "umbrage" that players take, should they not be able to guess the rule. Another variation is "The Umbrella Game", in which three random items from the room are selected, and the items are "a match" if an "um" is thrown into the declaration.

[edit] See also