Bite the Bag

Bite the Bag is the beer game with the shortest shopping list on this site: one paper bag and a pair of scissors. You bend down, pick the bag up with your teeth, and stand back up without letting a hand, a knee, or your forehead touch the floor. Then someone cuts an inch off the top and the next person goes. It stays funny because the bag gets shorter at exactly the rate the players get worse at balancing.

What you need

• A brown paper bag, lunch-bag size (a grocery bag works for a tall group and lasts more rounds)
• Scissors, or a willingness to fold instead of cut
• A drink for every player, plus whatever the fail penalty is (a beer to finish, or a shot)
• A clear patch of floor, ideally carpet or grass rather than tile

Setup

1. Open the bag and stand it upright on the floor. Fold the top rim over once if it will not stay open on its own. A crumpled bag is harder to bite, which is fine later and unfair in round one.
2. Clear a circle about 2 m across. No coffee table, no glassware, no dog. People fall sideways in this game and they do not pick where.
3. Agree the fail penalty before anyone bends. The standard is a long drink or a shot. We suggest a long drink for the first rounds and saving shots for when the bag is a ring.
4. Pick a turn order. Tallest first is our house rule, because they have the furthest to travel and it sets the tone.

How to play Bite the Bag

1. Stand in front of the bag with both feet flat on the floor. Spread them as wide as you like, but once you start bending, they stay where they are. Shuffling closer mid-bend is a fail at most tables.
2. Bend down and pick the bag up with your teeth. Only your mouth may touch the bag. No hands, no chin, no nudging it toward you with a knee, no steadying it with a foot.
3. Stand back up with the bag still in your teeth. The turn is not complete until you are upright. Dropping the bag on the way up counts as a fail.
4. If anything other than your feet touches the floor, you fail. Hands, knees, elbows, a forehead, your backside. A fail costs the penalty drink you agreed in setup, and your turn is over.
5. Everyone takes one turn at the same bag height. Stand the bag back up between turns. If someone crushes it, reshape it before the next player goes.
6. After each full round, cut about an inch off the top of the bag. Then play another round. The bag ends up as a flat ring of paper an inch tall, and by then only one or two people can still reach it.
7. The last player who can still bite the bag wins. Everyone else has been drinking for a while, so the prize is mostly dignity and the right to cut the bag next time.

Variations and house rules

• Elimination. A fail knocks you out instead of, or as well as, costing a drink. Keep cutting until one person is left. This is the version that works at a sober party and the one to use if the group is big.
• One foot. Lift one foot off the floor before you bend and keep it up until you are standing again. This is the Minute to Win It version, played under the name Bite Me, and it is brutal from the first round.
• Hands behind your back. Clasp your hands behind you for the whole turn. It removes the arm windmill most people use for balance and shortens the game by about three rounds.
• Straight legs. No bending the knees. The game turns into a toe-touch contest and ends at roughly half the height of a normal game.
• Fail ladder. Scale the penalty to the bag. A fail at full height is a sip, at half height is a long drink, at ring height is a shot. Keeps the early rounds light and the late rounds serious.
• Team relay. Two teams, one bag each, cut at the same time. A team is out when every player on it has failed at the current height. The losing team finishes their drinks.
• Fold, do not cut. Roll the rim down an inch per round instead of cutting. You can reuse the bag, and nobody is holding scissors after round six.
• Bite the bag, not the lip. Our house rule: at ring height you have to lift the paper clear of the floor, not just nibble the folded rim while it stays where it is. It exists to stop arguments and it has never once stopped an argument.

Tips

• Play on carpet or grass and keep a drink-free zone around the bag. Falls in this game go sideways and fast, and a glass on the floor is the injury nobody saw coming.
• Play it early in the night. The bag does not care how many drinks anyone has had, and the whole group’s balance tends to go at once somewhere around round five.
• Stretch before the first turn and do not let the group skip it. A pulled hamstring is the most common way this game ends.
• If you have a bad knee or a bad back, call it at half height. The fold version lets you stop the bag at any height without it looking like you quit.