In Haiku Chicken, players create haiku using randomly chosen beginning and ending lines.
What You Need
- Many sheets of note-paper.
- One pencil per player.
- A two-minute timer.
Setup
Each player writes down two five-syllable lines, one per piece of note-paper. Shuffle these pieces of paper into a face-down pile. Give each player a healthy supply of blank note-paper.
Generating the Prompt
At the beginning of each round, the current Judge draws two five-syllable lines, reads them aloud, and displays them for all to see.
Writing the Entries
You now have two minutes to write as many haiku as you’d like using the two lines. Write each haiku on a separate piece of paper. You must use the two lines that the Judge drew as the first and third lines of each haiku, but you may use them in either order. You may write anything you’d like as the second line of each haiku, as long as it contains exactly seven syllables. If you wish, you may give each haiku a title.
When the timer runs out, you’re allowed to finish the haiku you’re working on, but you aren’t allowed to start another one. Shuffle all of the entries into a face-down pile.
Judging the Entries
The Judge selects one player to read all the haiku aloud. After hearing them, the Judge picks two favorites, and the respective creators receive one point each. If the same player created both of the chosen entries, that player gets both points. Use the two five-syllable lines to track the points. After each player has been the Judge once, the game ends, and the player with the most points wins.
Acknowledgments
- Game Design—John Cooper
- Playtesting—Chris Welsh, Gina Mai Denn, Kory Heath