Sardines

Set up

Before anyone hides, walk the group through the house rules. Say which rooms are off limits, such as bedrooms of people who are not playing, the kitchen while food is cooking, the garage and anywhere with stairs that are hard to see. Close those doors and make sure everyone knows.

Then set three rules that never bend:

• No locked doors. A hiding place has to open easily from the inside.
• Nothing with a lid or door that latches. That means no chest freezers, old refrigerators, dryers, cedar chests, trunks or toy boxes. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission warns that children have climbed into storage chests to hide and suffocated when the lid latched, and that children playing hide-and-seek have been trapped in old chest freezers.
• Lights stay as they are unless you are playing the dark version below.

Pick the first hider. The youngest player or the birthday child is a fair choice.

How to play

1. Everyone except the hider closes their eyes in one room and counts slowly to sixty, or longer in a big house.
2. The hider finds a spot big enough to fit a few more people: behind a long curtain, inside a walk-in closet, behind the couch, under a bed with space around it.
3. When the count ends, the seekers split up and search on their own. The only pairs are a small child and the older player looking after them.
4. A seeker who finds the hider does not call out. They wait until nobody is watching, then squeeze in beside them and keep quiet.
5. The hiding place gets more crowded, and harder to keep quiet, with every finder.
6. The last seeker still looking loses the round and becomes the next hider.

Playing in a full house

Sardines works well at Christmas or a family reunion when a house is full of relatives. Relatives who do not want to crawl around can keep time, guard the off-limits rooms or point lost little ones back toward the play area. Mixing ages in the pile is half the fun: a teenager wedged in a closet next to a six-year-old trying not to laugh.

Ways to change it

• In the dark: for older kids and adults, turn off the lights in the play area and leave a hallway light on. Clear the floor of toys and cords first, and keep stairs off limits.
• Halloween: each seeker carries a flashlight, and the hider gets none. Play at dusk with the house lights low.
• Outdoors: set clear boundaries before the count, such as the fence line or the edge of the lawn, and agree on a call that ends the game for everyone. Keep streets, pools and sheds out of bounds.
• Time limit: if nobody finds the hider in ten minutes, the hider wins and picks the next one.

Who it suits, and who it doesn’t

Sardines suits mixed groups of about four to fifteen in a house or yard with good hiding spots, from age five up. It does not suit a small apartment with nowhere to hide, children who are scared of the dark or of tight spaces, or anyone uncomfortable being squeezed close to other people. Let those players count or referee instead.