Challenge yourself to no screens

DO YOU think you could entertain yourself without an electrical device?

If you find yourself twiddling your thumbs, instead of typing with them, swiping with them or pushing buttons with them, grab a pen and some paper and play some good old fashioned games, like the example shown above – the dots and boxes game.

Almost all pen-and-paper games have an online equivalent but see if you can play them without using technology.

DID YOU KNOW? If someone is said to be twiddling their thumbs, it means they do not have

anything to do and are waiting for something to happen. Pen and paper games Noughts and crosses

This game was first played in ancient Egypt around 1300 BC. Instead of paper and pen, each player had three game pieces they would move around the game board for an attempt at three in a row.

The pencil and paper version is a grid drawn on paper of two vertical lines dissecting two horizontal lines. Player one puts an X in a box; player two proceeds to put Os. The point of the game is to try to get three of

your marks in a row or to block your opponent from doing so. Battleships

The object of this pen-and-paper game for two is to hit your opponent's ships on their grid by making strategic guesses as to where they are.

Both players have paper with two grids each that are sectioned out 11 by 11; the top row marked 1-10, the side reading A-J.

Each player gets:

1 carrier (5 squares); 2 battleships (4 squares each); 3 destroyers (2 squares each); 2 cruisers (3 squares each); 1 submarine (3 squares)

The players shade or mark their own ships on one grid and then guess the other's coordinates (marking down their guesses on the other grid). Miss=XHit=O

When one player hits all the squares of the ship, it's been sunk. Hangman

One player thinks of a word or phrase and writes blanks for every letter below an ominous-looking gallows with a rope.

The other player guesses letters until the word or phrase can be worked out.

For each wrong guess, a body part is added to the swinging rope. Six body

parts are standard: head, torso, two arms and two legs.

You have to fill in the blanks before the person is drawn or you’re hung. Draw it

You play this game by taking turns with one or more people where one person draws a head, folds over the paper so nobody knows how the picture is shaping up, then passes it to the next person to add more of the body and so on until you have a completed the monster or fantasy creature. ✰Another version is for players to choose a word or phrase to complete the story.