Spin the Bottle

Find a spare bottle from your overflowing pile of recycling. Place it on the ground and spin it. When it stops, instead of kissing a human (not socially distant or, at the moment, physically possible), vigorously sanitize the object it’s pointing to.

Scattergories

List all the chores you still need to do even though you are home alone without distraction but somehow cannot focus. Don’t worry if the items shift abruptly between work, home, and vague goals that you once had for 2020—the more nonsensical the better!

Hungry Hungry Hippos

Take a trip to the grocery store for essentials (an approved activity so long as you maintain social distance) and fill your basket with as much food from the mostly barren shelves as you can carry. Do not share. You may be the only person in your household, but you too need to eat in this feeding frenzy. Person with the most non-perishable goods survives.

Candyland

Arrange wrapped candies from the “treat yourself” section of your now well-stocked pantry in a spiral on the floor. See how long you can resist the temptation to eat it all in one well-timed work break you’d normally spend gossiping at the water cooler.

Freeze Dance

You’ll need an unreliable internet connection for this game! Turn on some music, dance around your living room, and freeze in place every time the song drops, which could be minutes to hours depending on your current internet service provider.

Mouse Trap

Devise an ingenious contraption to finally catch that pesky real-life mouse that’s running around your apartment using Amazon boxes alone.

Settlers of Catan

Account for all the possessions you own that may be worth trading in the event that money becomes useless, and you need to bargain for brick, grain, lumber, ore, and wool to create a new post-apocalyptic world. Fantasize about what life would have been like had you heeded your parents’ warnings and fled the city for the country before disease set in.

Taboo

Make a list of coronavirus-themed words that you aren’t allowed to say for a day. Suggestions include social distancing, infection rate, cough, mortality, face mask, symptomatic, respirator, lockdown, sneeze, lung, quarantine.

Telephone

Set up your work and home laptops with screens facing each other and join the same Zoom call from both. Say something, then watch as an engulfing chaos of feedback ensues. Between the three of you, it’s almost like having company again.

Guess Who?

Who left the dirty dishes in the sink? Who forgot to buy milk? Who moved the small rickety table two inches too close to the couch such that you almost kicked it over? Guess who? It was you—obviously.

Twister

Contort your body into the optimal position to finally dust that corner of your apartment that is normally unreachable when you have a social life.

Musical Chairs

Pop on a Spotify playlist and switch seats every time the song changes. There may be more seating in your living space than people, but no matter—at least you got a little exercise in today.

Pandemic

Sit quietly in your apartment and gaze longingly at the outdoors as you self-quarantine because guess what—there’s no need to play this game—you’re living it.