Up Jenkins: That Coin Game from The Office
Two teams will face off and try to deceive the other team about who has the hidden quarter. Then, at the signal, they must place their hands on the table, palms down, without revealing who has the quarter.
Up Jenkins is from the The Games Bible too, but this was actually demonstrated in the popular television show The Office, Season 3, Episode 17 “Cocktails”. I don’t remember this episode, but perhaps you do! I actually used this game when I was a Senior Patrol Leader coming up with games for my Scout Troop to play.
Can you trick the other team? Let’s find out…
Players: 8-120
Gear: Chairs for everyone, A long table, a Quarter
HOW TO PLAY
Divide players into groups of two and sit them each on one side of a table so one team is facing the other. Choose one person on each team to be the Captain. Let’s say Team A decides to go first.
The Captain of Team A takes the quarter and the rest of Team A puts their hands underneath the table. Then, the entire team begins to pretend passing the quarter back and forth between each other (under the table), in order to cover the actual quarter being moved from person to person.
After a little while, the Captain of Team B says “Up Jenkins!” and everyone on Team A immediately has to put their elbows on the table with their palms closed. Whoever has the quarter should hold it in such a way that no one on Team B is able to see who has the quarter. Then, the Captain of Team B says “Down Jenkins!” and everyone on Team A (who currently has their elbows on the table with their hands closed) then slams their OPEN palms on the table. The end result should be that the quarter is trapped between someone’s palm and the table. The trick is to do this movement in such a way that there is no metallic sound when the quarter hits the table, because Team A wants to prevent Team B from figuring out who has the quarter.
Then, the players on Team B, starting from the furthest from the Captain, take turns guessing which hand the quarter is under by pointing to it, and then that player from Team A must turn that hand over to prove whether or not the guesser was right (total # of guesses = # of players).
Play then switches so that Team B passes the quarter around and Team A becomes the guessers. This rotation continues.
WINNING
Now, in the real version of the game, there is no “winner” because the game doesn’t have a specific end (I’m not going to discuss the actual rules for if the guessers are right and they do find the quarter), but I will talk about an alternate scoring method for winning the game.
(In a game of 20 players, 10 on each team) If the first guesser is correct, then that Team is awarded 10 points, if the second guesser is correct, 9 points are awarded, and so on until the Captain, who if guesses correctly, earns the Team 1 point, and if not they get 0 points. After a predetermined number of rounds are played, the team with the highest score wins!
Author’s Note
It’s been about a few years since I played this game, but I remember that it was really fun! The best part about it was that it was very engaging for the team passing the quarter. It’s especially interesting because you can’t see who has the quarter or what is going on under the table, so you just end up randomly swinging your arms around back and forth under the table, waiting anxiously to see if maybe you’ll get the quarter. Also, if you’re the one with the quarter when the opposing team yells “Up Jenkins!” you immediately go into panic mode, because if you slip up; take too long to bring your hands up, be too cautious when placing your hands down, and it’ll be obvious that you have it. Overall, this game is a blast!
Also, check out this review of The Office episode that this is in!
Thanks for reading! Have a wonderful day!
Credits
I cannot stress enough the importance of Leigh Anderson’s fantastic book The Games Bible for inspiring these blog posts. Her book has hundreds of amazing ideas, from icebreakers, family games, and weekend getaways. This blog would not be possible without all the hard work she put into writing the book so my source for ideas and research are from her book.
Sources
- Anderson, Leigh. The Games Bible. Workman Publishing Company, 2010.
- Anderson, Leigh. “The Games BIBLE: The Ultimate Gamebook… Book by Leigh Anderson.” ThriftBooks, www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-games-bible-the-ultimate-gamebook-for-grown-ups-307-games-to-put-the-fun-back-in-parties_leigh-anderson/571781/#edition=5740103&idiq=12407424
- https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0967814/?ref_=ttep_ep17
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ba5rDFUuctg
Image Sources
- https://roost.nbcuni.com/bin/viewasset.html/content/dam/Peacock/Campaign/landingpages/library/theoffice/mainpage/office-social-min.png/_jcr_content/renditions/original
- https://www.pngitem.com/pimgs/m/670-6703647_transparent-people-sitting-at-a-table-png-group.png
- https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMWFiYjllZTQtMzE2ZC00MTViLWEzNTAtZTQwZGY4NDMwNjkzXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMDgyNjA5MA@@._V1_.jpg
- http://catanfusion.com/images/il_fullxfull.1266966205_69eg.jpg