Chuppan Chhupain is also known as Hide & Seek in English. It is a timeless game that has been played by children throughout the ages. It isn’t only children who enjoy it – a natural instinct for parents is to play a facial form of hide and seek with their children from the earliest age, as it teaches children about attachment and detachment in a safe and caring environment. Leaving aside the psychology, however, the outdoor game provides wonderful interaction amongst children is easy to play and never gets boring.
How to Play
- At least three players are needed to play Hide and Seek. Naturally, however, the more players you have, the better is the fun.
- Set down the rules to play. If you do not set down rules, you will have people running to places that have valuable things in house, or may run outside when everybody’s inside.
- Find a suitable location to play it may be outdoor or indoor. Outdoor location works best were you have more choices to hide, although indoors is fine for rainy days. It will be necessary to set boundaries for hiding or you will have players running off to too many far-off locations.
- Determine who will be “out”. Working out who is “out” can be done a variety of ways, for example use an elimination word game, such as “Inky Pinky Ponkey” or similar game.
- Now begin the game, the person who will be “out” has been chosen, he or she stays at a central place or a place behind a tree or pillar, closes his or her eyes and begins counting out loud to a number from about 1to 100. The number you choose should be based on how many people are playing the game and the distances to hiding spots. The more people, the higher the number should be.
- All of the players who are not “out” should run off and quietly hide from the player who is counting. The person who is “out” is not allowed to peek at the players hiding from him or her.
- Once the player who is “out” has finished counting, he or she yells “Ready or not, here I come!”. At this point, the player who is “out” must try to find all of the other players who have hidden. The players who are hiding cannot move or switch hiding places as the seeker may find him easily.
- The player who gets found first becomes “out” in the next round of the game.
- Find all the people who are hiding and start playing the second round with the person who was found first as seeker (“out”).
Tips
If you have younger children, you can play this right inside the house. When you hide and the little ones find you, they laugh in delight.
- Try to find different places to hide, but do not make it too hard to find you. Younger children can become frustrated when they cannot find you.
- If some of the hidden players do not return home before a predetermined period of time, the person who is “out” should give the universal “all clear” signal. Yell, “All, all outs in free.” The person who is “out” must take another turn as “our” or appoint a willing volunteer to take his or her place.
- There are lots of different strategies of hiding. One is to hide in plain sight. For example if there is a table near home base hid under it: it often will not be expected and make a really short run back to home base.
- Hide in places that look impossible to hide in (example: in a cabinet under a sink in the bathroom.) Just make sure you can get out pretty easily without hurting yourself A LOT or moving everything if you hide in a small space.
- Hide where your body won’t cast a human-shaped shadow.
Play in different places every time. If you do it in the same spot (different games, not rounds) then people will remember the good places and search there first.