The informant learned this game from peers at her school.

Kids stand around in a circle and chant “Gigolo, Gig-Gigolo, G-I-G-O-L-O .“ It would begin with one kid doing a complex, original clap that the next kid would have to repeat and add to, etc.

It was performed on the playground.

The informant remembers that the claps could get extremely complicated but that the game was never heavily competitive and was always performed with an intention for fun.

Many clapping games were popular with children but this one is very interesting as it doesn’t rely on a known and consistent clapping formula. Instead, this game relies on creativity and skill of the children. This could be because the children who participated enhjoyed showing off or used it as a means of impressing other children.

Collector: Did Gigolo mean anything different to you in the clapping game? Did you know it meant a male escort?

Informant: Nope, I didn’t. But I don’t think it had a meaning.

The use of the word gigolo, which typically refers to a male escort, seems strange for kids to use. It could be an attempt by children to take what they don’t fully understand or are told is inappropriate and lay claim to it. It could also be ignorance of its true meaning. Another reason for the word choice could be a purely that it was easy and worked well in the song form.

M and I are a part of an art’s collective that puts on monthly open mic nights for dancers, musicians, writers and the like to perform. One of our good mutual friends, J, likes to end the night with a game he brought from Baltimore. Unfortunately, J was unavailable to be interviewed for this project, but M has played enough times over the past year to know how the game operates. We met earlier in the afternoon to go over the particular rules.

M: Three rounds? Yeah, that’s almost like our token game post open mic or sometimes we even have played it before a night out and we add drinks. That one’s a rarer variation in the house as we really get into the charades portion and one of the housemates, S, injured himself drunk.

L: I’ve played both ways, but I understand how heated this competition can get.

M: It’s essentially charades on crack, but more difficult and fun. There are obviously three rounds of play, but first every player is given an equal amount of blank scraps of paper to write down whatever they want to go into the pot of words. They can be words or a combination of phrases. Afterwards, we break people into relatively even teams. Some nights its guys against girls; others its couples against single people. It just happens to depend on who’s there that night, but you break up into two teams. One person from each team is designated as the timer. Each team is given thirty seconds to go through as many pieces of paper as possible given the parameters of that round. Then it switches to the other team. One person performs/ acts the words at a time and it goes in an order that repeats until the are no more piece of paper left.

Round one starts: you can say any word but the word on the piece of the paper. No actions can be involved. This is probably the easiest one and its similar to the game Taboo or Catchphrase. Round two is charades: no words, only actions. As you get familiar with the words from before the charades for phrases are difficult, but not impossible. Round three is you only say one word. You cannot change the word, you can only repeat it over with different tones. This is funniest one since you have heard all the words twice, it’s curious to see what people say to indicate what the word could possibly be.

L: I remember one time when we played at my easter brunch, D kept writing down the longest phrases.

M: See that’s sometimes annoying, but if you can remember the whole thing those ones aren’t too terrible. Especially if you have the writer on your team.

L: Do you know how J found out about it?

M: He either plays it a lot with his family, or his friend V from Baltimore. It’s funny because we actually adapted a different version for another group of friends of mine. We play that you have to have two words for the pieces of paper–it’s much more uniform, although I miss some of the flair with the longer phrases.

M and I had gotten together to talk about another game one of our good friends had introduced us to, but as we continued speaking about other games that we all played at a friend’s dinner party a few months ago. Most people know about the card game, Cards Against Humanity, but after seeing an episode of Jenna Marbles our friend N decided she wanted to recreate the game she played on her vlog. Jenna’s authored source video is shown below. However, N’s version differs slight in that she uses all the cards involved in the deck.

M: Cards Against Humanity decks come with two kinds of cards: white and black. It’s essentially an adult version of Apples to Apples with either really graphic or dark words written. So N saw the video below and wanted to step up the charades version, by using the black cards as well. Same charades rules apply, you act out the phrases for a minute before it switches to the other team or pair. Now with the black cards and the blanks, at the end of the game, you use the white cards you’ve won from the charades game to put fill in the blanks.

L: Does that make it a fusion of Charades and Cards Against Humanity?

M: Yeah, you pretty much play charades to get the cards for Cards Against Humanity.

L: Interesting, I know that I’ve been spreading it amongst some of my other friend groups and each person tends to set different parameters for timing and ruling.

M: We decided on one minute because anything less and it’s hard to get through the 8 word long cards, but you still also feel the pressure for the time.