Another semester looms large (almost as large as my tuition bill – hey yo!) and we’re faced with the prospect of returning to campus or, if you’re a freshman, moving into the dorms and living with someone you’ve never met before.  Stressful times, right?  Might as well crack open a couple beers (or bottles of vodka) and start breaking the ice with your new floormates.

Drinking games have long been a superb way of breaking the ice with new people (seriously, nothing sets a casual, friendly atmosphere like chugging shots at 3pm), but how do you move beyond the old favorites?  Sure, everyone loves flip-cup, beer pong, power hour, quarters and Edward 40-Hands (oh my, I do love Edward…and his crazy brother, Edward Whiskey-Hands), but if you really want to impress your cute next door neighbor, then you better bust out something creative.

Luckily for you, CollegeCandy did all the work for you.  Here, for your fall semester enjoyment, are some original and interesting drinking games.  Play with caution (and gusto!):

Fake Sorority/Fraternity/Organization Recruitment – Make up a fake organization (or sorority/fraternity if you’re feeling particularly ballsy) and start recruitment.  Just go door to door in your dorm and explain that you’re doing some recruitment for your organization.  Your organization is obviously pretty bad ass, so alcohol is involved.  It’s best to start this game with a couple friends and a clipboard (so you’ll look legit).  Throw one back every time someone questions the legitimacy of your organization.  Take two shots every time you get someone to sign up for your (fake) mailing list.  Take three shots for every person who wants to walk around and recruit with you.

Freshman Drinking Game – This is mainly for upperclassmen living in the dorms, but if you’re a cynical freshman, then feel free to play along.  The rules are pretty simple and very flexible.  All you have to do is think of some freshman stereotypes and then drink whenever you see/hear them.  For example, you could take a drink whenever you hear someone talking about their class schedule.  Two drinks are in order if anyone has an ESL roommate.  Chug a beer every time you hear anyone talking about high school.  And so on…

Accents – For this one, you’ll need to recruit some buddies from your floor.  Write down a bunch of different accents on pieces of paper and jumble them up in a hat.  Each person chooses an accent and has to stick with it for the rest of the night.  If you break the accent, you do a shot.  If you don’t even know how to do the accent you chose, you chug a beer.  Take it from there – it’s fun, I promise.

Pick-Up Lines – Do a quick search for the worst pick-up lines ever.  Print these out and choose two victims to wear the lists.  The victims will have to parade through different dorms with an entourage (and alcohol) asking anyone of the opposite sex which is their favorite.  They will then have to say whatever line is chosen in a sexy voice.  They have to take a shot if they laugh while saying it and two shots if anyone asks  what the eff is going on.  Everyone drinks if the pick-up line works.  The entourage has complete power and can feel free to make up any on-the-spot rules.

Sure, you can play football, baseball, or basketball while under the influence, but you might find yourself missing the ball and falling over. The following are some tried and tested drinking games that will let you unleash your inner child… even though your ID reads 21+.

Jenga

Drinking Jenga, that is. Write some rules on each block, e.g. “Drink two,” “Pass out three,” or “Categories,” (feel free to hi-jack your favorite rules from Kings and its counterparts), and see how long it takes for your balance and your vision to be so blurred you can’t help but topple the tower. What makes this one so much fun? Place a yard cup in the center of the table, and invite everyone to pour their drinks in at their leisure, especially if everyone’s drinking something different. Whoever ends the game has to drink the alcohol soup in the cup.

Girl Talk

Dust off your seventh grade slumber party favorite and try playing it with booze. Instead of zit stickers, take a drink. You’ll be surprised how entertaining the “future cards” can be now that you’re all grown up…and half in the bag. If the GT dares aren’t thrilling enough, have everyone write down a few of their own dares and play. This one is great to play while leisurely sipping fruity cocktails.

Apples to Apples

This is my personal newest obsesh. Best game ever. This one doesn’t need to be a “drinking game,” per say, but if you play it while drinking, you’ll never want to put it down. Everyone gets five red cards with random adjectives on them. In turn, each player then takes a green card, which usually consists of a noun. Every player puts whichever red card they possess that best goes with the green card, and the player who drew the green card chooses the best red card and rewards the winner with the green card. With cards like “Viagra,” “rope burn,” and “Penn and Teller,” the possibilities are endless…and bizarre. To get your BAC up quicker, let the Green Card winners take a shot at the end of each round.

Twister

Do I really need to explain the pros (and/or cons) of drinking Twister?

Scrabble

See how creative (and potentially inappropriate) you can get when your inhibitions are lowered. Of course, just because your language is slurring doesn’t mean you can spell your words with a few extra R’s, and things might get a little bit raucous when people start making up words that make sense only in their drunken minds.

Sorry!

If you thought intoxicated beer pong players got competitive and aggressive, just see what happens when a group of inebriated college students bump little plastic pawns all over a board. Sorry! is one of the most fun games that I remember from childhood, and a few brews will only amplify its awesomeness. When your piece lands on a slide and you get to move ahead a few extra spaces, you may or may not lose control and jump up and down as if you’ve hit the jackpot. But hey, it’s only a game, right?

If you’re still on break, I encourage you to break into your parents’ attic and try to dust off some of your former favorite rainy day games. Make up your own rules to put a grown-up twist on board games, games of chance, or even Dream Phone! It’s a great way to beat the winter break blues, just before you get back to hard partying ways in the dorms. Anybody have any particular favorites?

[It doesn’t matter what school you go to, what state it is in, how big it is, whether it is public or private, all girls or coed…there are experiences that all college students share.

No matter how crazy you think your personal situation is, it is not just you. So, let’s bring it all out in the open. Right here. Because you are not alone - we’ve all been there before.]

Your friend from class invites you to a party. Looking for a change of social scenery (there are only so many days in a row that you can play Kings with the same 6 people), you go. It’s a whole new social circle and you are excited to see what else your campus has to offer.

While waiting in line for the keg, you start chatting it up with a rather handsome man (in a pair of hot jeans…yes, you looked). Turns out, he’s also funny, charming, and has this cute little dimple in his left cheek when he smiles. You spend a good chunk of the night talking, but then the keg runs out and your friend drags you out of the house in search of greener (or boozier) pastures.

So now you have left the party….without his number.

The night progresses in a blur of flip cup, party hopping, and a hazy memory of peeing in a sink. When you wake up, you feel like crap – and also have an empty Tupperware that once housed you roommate’s mom’s homemade cookies next to your bed. You lay in bed attempting to put the pieces of the night together when – BAM – the Keg Cutie comes flooding into your mind.

You have to figure out who he is. You slowly crawl out of bed, realize you are naked and put on some sweats, then settle in in front of your laptop. First stop: trusty ole’ FB, of course.

You look up your class friend and then scroll through all 787 of her friends until you find Keg Cutie’s tiny thumbnail pic. Lucky for you, he hasn’t hopped on the “total FB privacy” bandwagon yet and you have full access to his profile. You tell yourself you are just trying to get a last name so you can send a cute and witty email, but before you know it you are memorizing his favorite movies, class schedule and causes.

“I wonder if he’s as cute as I remember,” you think. “I’ll just look at a few pics.”

Thirty minutes and 453 pictures later, you are looking at the profile and albums of that hussy who was in at least 70 of his pics with him.   You convince yourself she is an ex (“the albums she was in were added in 2007, so they can’t still be together!”) and feel a little better.

You realize that you and Keg Cutie have a few other friends in common and work your way through FB to figure out the connections. Not that you want to show up wherever he may be…. No, you are just curious.

When you’ve exhausted all Facebook resources, you stop caring about how stalkerish you’ve become and look the boy up on your University’s database (to see where he’s living, perhaps?) and Google (to check out his past).

By 3pm, you know more about Keg Cutie than you know about your own family members. Like the fact that he lives in the dorm next to you. You decide maybe it’s time to start dining in a different cafeteria… and putting on makeup to do so. Maybe you’ll check out their study lounges too. And you’re sure you have a few friends in there you can start hanging out with again…

I mean, that’s not weird, is it?

Well, yes, it is. But we’ve all been there and it’s not our fault; Facebook makes it too easy!

So the time had come again at Syracuse for Alcohol Awareness Week. Basically this is a week where students, okay mainly Greeks, are supposed to be more “aware” of alcohol. This “awareness” is culminated in an event called “mocktails” on Friday night. Each sorority is paired up with a frat and then they have a sober party. Not like “let’s just take a little shot beforehand” kind of sober, not “just one joint” kind of sober, not “a bottle of wine with dinner” kind of sober, but actually sober (yeah, the frats were confused about it too and asked if the mocktail money could possibly go towards the purchase of a keg).

While I’m usually the first to hop on (and steer!) the Friday night drinking train, I coudn’t help but be a wee bit reluctant to get my ticket for the Friday night sober train. I mean, really, what could that possibly be like? Unfortunately (or fortunately if you like to look at your mocktail glass as being half full) the thing about the Friday night sober train was that it was mandatory and my ticket had been purchased for me.

So, you ask, what goes on at a completely sober party? And how do people party withut the aid of mind numbing alcohol? Below is a pro/con list of my sober Friday night experience. And let me tell you; getting ready for the party without playing 3 games of Kings was a very strange feeling…

Con: (Yes, I’m starting with a con, cause that’s how the night started.) Upon arrival, things look like a middle school dance: boys on one side, girls on the other. Socialization seems to be severely impaired by this new idea of sobriety.

Pro: The thing about drinking a mocktail is that they don’t make you want to vomit! Yay! Pro!

Con: Unfortunately, other thing about mocktails is that they turned out to be a pitcher of Kool-Aid…

Pro: As the night went on, my make-up stayed in place, my hair stayed where I put it, and I ended the night without looking like a clown!

Con: It turns out people are generally confused about what to do without alcohol. Without some sort of set activity or drinking game, people seem to not really know what to do with themselves, leading to much couch sitting.

Pro: Not spending money on alcohol led to some pretty sweet decorations: aka streamers

Con: Soberly, dancing consisted only of girls; I guess guys are not as interested in dancing if they don’t have alcohol to lend confidence to their moves

Pro: Alcohol-free parties apparently include snacks! Delicious snacks! Gotta replace those alcohol calories some way…

Con: Time seems to drag on when you were sober. You know how when you are drunk suddenly you look up and its 5 AM? That doesn’t happen when you are sober…It’s 9:15 and then what seems like an hour later…it is 9:18…

Pro: Okay I’m out of pros.

Call me an alcoholic if you will, but after a week of stressful classes I want a cocktail, not a mocktail. Sure, having to do this once didn’t ruin my life, but this Friday I’m gonna have to drink a few extra shots of Svedka to make up for it…

You’ve finally moved out of the dorms, and it just so happens that your new diggs are the perfect place to throw a party. No RA’s, no quiet hours, no cramming 50 people into your tiny dorm and trying to have a dance party. Sweet!

Throwing a party might seem like a no-brainer. Still, you have make sure all of your bases are covered, or you’ll find people trickling out before midnight, hoping to catch another bigger, better party before the sun comes up and the night is a complete bust.

If you want to throw the party of the year–the one people are still talking about at graduation, the one people are still talking about at the reunion–just take heed of these simple cardinal rules.

1. Spread the Word Like Wildfire.

Don’t just mention it to your lab partner. Don’t put up an away message saying “Party tonight! Come on over!” There’s plenty of parties to choose from on campus, so you want yours to be the one everyone’s talking about.

Create a Facebook event. Make fliers and wallpaper your apartment complex. Interrupt your Criminology lecture by screaming, “Let’s F–KING RAGE!” Okay, that one might be going to far, but figure out what methods of advertising will work best for you, and do ‘em twice.

2. Find a Gimmick.

Like I said, there’s probably a lot of options on campus on a Saturday night, whether it’s another party or a great bar special. A gimmick will not only attract partygoers, but it will help them remember your party. The “gimmick” can be anything from a crazy theme party to a simple keg party (seriously, throw the word “keg” in there, and people will flock, arms outstretched and tongues hanging out, like a scene from Night of the Living Dead). Toga parties, Pimps and Hoes parties, and Graffiti parties all sound more interesting than “Party in 5C – BYOB.” Am I right?

You can also think of random things to celebrate to get people talking. It’s also a good way to guilt trip guests into “stopping by,” at which point, they will see how much fun your party is and immediately blow off whatever party they were en route to in the first place. Twenty-first birthdays are a classic example. Everyone has to stop by to wish you well. My twenty-first was so successful that I’ve had one every year since, and the “2nd Annual 21st Birthday Bash” and “3rd Annual 21st Birthday Bash” were also smashing.

3. “Entertainment” Does Not Mean Your IPod on a Speaker.

Music is essential, but there’s more to a party than your Flo Rida megamix blaring for six hours straight. Setting up different “activities” will keep people interested, and make more people float through the party, and mingle, and… oh yeah, drink more. Set up beer pong in the backyard and flip cup in your kitchen. Spring for an ice luge so your guests don’t get bored waiting for their turn at beer pong. Announce a shotgun contest, a kegstand contest, or some other ridiculous competition just after you’ve hit full capacity and the buzz starts to creep in.

It’s also a good idea to have a low-key game going on when the party starts to alleviate any awkward “I’m-the-first-person-here-and-this-isn’t-really-a-party” vibes when the very first partiers trickle in to an empty house. I suggest a card game like Kings. Everyone can play, everyone drinks a lot, and by the time you’ve all done your second or third waterfall, you’ll slam your cups on the table and look up to see that somehow a few dozen bodies have appeared in your living room, and the party is officially ON.

4. Don’t Spend All of Your Efforts on Booze.

Yes, people will be coming to your party to drink. But just because you’ve stocked your liquor cabinet doesn’t mean your work is done. When people drink, they get hungry. So plan on supplying some food. If it’s an all-day party, have a barbecue or order some sandwich platters. If it’s a typical Saturday Night banger, stock up on carbs and starches in the form of potato chips, tortilla chips, and pretzels. Ordering a couple of sheet pizzas or a few dozen wings will never be unappreciated. If you are providing liquor, grab some mixers. Even if you aren’t providing liquor, it’s nice to have juice or soda on hand for your guests.

While you’re stocking up on munchies, run through the paper goods aisle of the grocery store, and buy a surplus of solo cups, paper towels, garbage bags, and toilet paper. Who knows how many people will run through your bathroom throughout the course of the evening, and you definitely don’t want drunk people using your bath towels when they can’t find toilet paper. Likewise, you want paper towels on hand for spilled beer, whether you soak it up during the party or the next morning.

If you are particularly meticulous, you might make sure that your medicine cabinet is stocked with bandages, in case of drunken injuries, or even rubber gloves, in case of vomit.

5. When You Think You Have Enough Booze, Buy More.

The cardinal rule of throwing a party is always overestimate when it comes to alcohol. When the well runs dry, the party’s over. If you are throwing a keg party, consider the beer measurements:

A “keg” is actually a half-barrel, and holds 15.5 gallons of beer. A quarter-barrel (usually referred to as a half-keg) is less than three 30-racks of beer. So, if you have one half-barrel at your party, you’ll get about 124 US pints, or 16 oz. beers, out of it. That will feed about 20 people 6 beers each.

While it’s not necessarily your responsibility to provide all of the alcohol for all of your guests, you may also want to consider picking up some liquor for the non-beer drinkers, or just to shake things up a bit once the party starts raging. Pizza is a win-win in the food category, and jungle juice will never do you wrong when it comes to stocking up on liquor.

Depending on how much alcohol you want to provide personally, you can always charge for cups, or ask for donations to help fund the shindig. But, even if you’re weary about splurging on a few kegs, or making your own mini-bar, just remember: if anything’s leftover, you can always drink it later.

Need a reason to drink? Need some motivation? Too young to get into the bars?

These three games are sure-fire ways to get drunk and have fun without ever having to leave the house/dorm. Or simply as a little fun before the main event. Whatever. They are fun. Play them.

Beer Pong: This is the ultimate drinking game. If you don’t like beer, replace it with cider or Smirnoff or Bacardi (not straight up, please…you may die) or anything else tasty. Side note: In my recent travels abroad, I discovered that we Americans take this game very, very seriously. Do not attempt to cheat during a beer pong game. You will be seriously heckled and possibly thrown out. Unless everyone’s too drunk to notice (which is entirely possible).

Flip Cup: The first time I played this, I didn’t realize that the entire team had to flip their cups over. I thought the contest was over after the first pair. And everyone was just looking, and looking, and looking at me…

Kings: I couldn’t find a satisfactory link to rules, so here they are as I play it. (Which is the best way.):

First, place a large cup or beer mug in the center of the table. Then shuffle the cards and spread them in a circle around the cup. Each player will take turns picking a card from anywhere in the circle and following the corresponding rule.

Ace: God. The person who drew the card makes up a rule. The harder it is to follow, the better. For example, the prohibition of all pronouns (no “he”, “she”, “it”, “I”, or “you”).

Two: You. The person who drew the card picks someone else to drink. This is a one-time thing.

Three: Me. The person who drew the card drinks.

Four: Whores. Sorry ladies, I didn’t pick the wording. All of the women at the table take a drink.

Five: Waterfall. The person who drew the card starts drinking and determines the direction in

which the waterfall goes. He or she is also the person who may stop drinking first. Every consecutive person must continue drinking until the person in front of them has stopped.

Six: Dicks. Yes men, go ahead and wave them around. Take a drink.

Seven: Heaven. The last person to point to the sky has to knock one back.

Eight: Pick a mate. The person who drew the card picks someone who will drink at the same time as them for the rest of the game.

Nine: Bust a rhyme. The person who drew starts with a word and every person after must say a rhyming word, with no repetitions and no hesitations. If your brain freezes, you’re stuck drinking.

Ten: Categories. The person who drew picks a category and starts naming an item from that category. Everyone else continues in that category with no repetitions or hesitations, and you guessed it, the first person to crack drinks. Example: Fruit- kiwi, apple, watermelon, etc.

Jack: Thumbmaster. The person who drew becomes the Thumbmaster until the next Jack is drawn, at which point the new person is the Thumbmaster. This means that whenever he or she puts their thumb on the table, everyone else must put their thumb on the table and the last person to notice takes a swig of their drink. The object is to do it as surreptitiously as possible.

Queens: Questionmaster. This person becomes the Questionmaster until the next Queen is drawn. He or she will attempt to trick people into having to drink by asking them questions, to which the reply should only be another question, otherwise you’re tippin’ back your glass.

Kings: For the first three Kings drawn, the person who picked the card pours as much of their drink as they want into the central cup. The person who draws the last King must drink the entire contents of the cup. You do not want to get stuck drinking the cup in the middle. Especially if everyone at the table has different drinks. You end up with some kind of vodka-beer-Jager combo to swallow….and keep down.

More Drinkin’ Fun: If you’re feeling just a little bit racy, Never Have I Ever and My Penis, My Vagina can take you for a walk on the wild side. And, because I am verging on alcoholism, I like to drink on the weekdays during Family Guy. And then get seasick on the way home.

Here are links so that you can play and drink to your heart’s content:

Your guide to any drinking game you ever imagined, and some you haven’t.

For those nights when you also feel like getting drunk while watching TV.

These kids have since grown up, but have still not grown out of their party pooping ways. Here are a few classic examples of people to keep off the guest list at your next soiree.

- The Drunk Dialer: Everyone makes drunk dials. They are often regrettable, foolish mistakes that we wish we could take back; but for some people, one or two are not enough. Some people seriously spend an entire party going through their phone book; calling exes, third cousins and coworkers. Not only are they loud and obnoxious on the phone, but they also seem to think everyone shares their enthusiasm for calling their kindergarten best friend and will shout, “OMG guys! You should totally talk to Ed too!” Parties are not the time for forty drunk dials, save it for the walk home.

- The Rule Snubber: Sure, some rules are meant to be broken, but who likes to play games with people that selfishly snub all of them? Ever played quarters with someone that grabs everyone else’s coins when they are losing? How about someone who keeps drawing cards in Kings until they get one they like? Nobody likes someone that cheats in beruit or flip-cup. Cheaters are only funny for about a minute- Play the game right or don’t play at all!

- The Out of Control Fool: We are all entitled to our ridiculous night, but some people are always the ones that break things. There are certain guests that just do not know their limits and, therefore, are prone to knocking over tables topped with drinks (drinks that end up on your carpet and new white dress and shoes and, umm, are they going to pay for your dry cleaning?). Some people are just constant spillers and vomiters and never seem to learn their lesson. These party-goers don’t realize that seizure-like-arm-flinging dancing leads to broken lamps. I even know some people that have put more than a few holes in various walls. Not a fun mess to clean up/ plaster in the morning.

- The Guests with the Entourage: Entourages are great if you are having a blow-out, but for any smaller party entourages are an unwanted burden. Some people are just not satisfied with the already present crowd. They then get on the phone and tell everyone they have ever met where you live, how to get there, and yes, of course, there is free booze! Not cool. Their freshman year roommate’s brother’s friend probably doesn’t need to join the festivities.

- The Debbie Downer: Umm why don’t people just mope in their own homes? Parties are for fun, not for Debbie Downers to bring others down to their miz level. Sorry if they’re having a bad day/week/are constantly unpleasant, but this isn’t the time or the place. It’s fine to be upset, but they probably shouldn’t be out in the first place and definitely don’t need to try to make all the awesome partiers have a bad night.

Did I leave anyone out?

So, this holiday weekend mix up a little Purple Rain and have at it! There’s no better way to get drunk than to make a game out of it, and nothing is more “college” than the traditional art of the drinking game. Fabulous!

And here at CC, we truly appreciate a decent buzz. Or getting a little tipsy-tips. Alright, we embrace full on intoxication. Hell, I have a beer in my hand right now and sometimes I pregame for my AA meetings.

So… we figured it oh-so important to include you in on one of our greatest secrets: the best drinking games of all time. Sometimes, we even try them out at our staff meetings. (Just kidding, but that’d be f*ckin’ awesome)

1. The Beloved Power Hour

Who’d turn it down? Not only do you get to blast a whopping 60 catchy songs (make sure your playlist creator has good taste in music, or this could completely backfire), but you still get to socialize and dance amidst the not-so-sober fun.

2. Kings

Can get really annoying if people forget the rules, so write them down, keep them straight, and hell, you’re college students shouldn’t you have them memorized by now? No? Well, here they are:

Ace: Waterfall, the card picker starts and everyone drinks til’ one by one people put their beers down in order. Chug a lug!

Two: You. Pick someone to drink. Preferably the cute guy across the circle, give him a wink. It’s almost as fun as spin the bottle!

Three: Me. Drink up chicky.

Four: Floor. Whoever’s the last to slam the ground must sip.

Five: Guys. Nothing’s better than a bunch of boys trying to desperately prove their drinking skillz.

Six: Chicks. Throw in a cheesy toast.

Seven: Heaven. Puh-raiiise the lode! Whoever’s the last to raise a hand gets to raise their BAC.

Eight: Make a Date. You and a chosen one chug.

Nine: Rhyme. Don’t be lame and say orange, you cheat.

Ten: Sentence. Throw a friend’s name in to make things more interesting.

Jack: Categories. Shoe brands, types of liquor, sexual positions anyone?

Queen: Questions. Whoever accidentally answers gets a little embarassed and a lotta booze.

King: Rule. Get creative or be dubbed the girl that makes the boring rules.

3. F*ck the Dealer

In this game, it’s fun to get fucked. (And no I’m not going to say anything risque, because I hate that word.) The dealer must have each player one by one guess the number of the card at the top of the deck, if they get it wrong, the dealer asks, “Higher or lower?”. If the answer’s wrong, the player drinks the difference of seconds from the last number they guessed and the actual number of the card. If they’re right, the dealer get’s f*cked, and gets to chug. Every four successful wrongs, the dealer can pass the deck.

We’d love to hear your personal favorites! Happy drinking, ladies!