Playing Tag With Friends

This is a simple tutorial on how to play my favorite childhood game of tag. This involves one player being labeled "it" or "infected". This person then needs to infect others. If everyone is infected then the original "it" wins.

Yourself, and a group of friends!

You must also define a "Zone" which is the play area, no one can leave this zone or they are automatically infected.

A stopwatch

One person is randomly selected from the group. They are selected as "it". This person will freeze for 20 seconds, while everyone else runs to make some distance. After the 20 seconds is complete, the infected person is released and the stopwatch is started. The stopwatch is calibrated as such => 1 minute per person who is not "it". So if the population size is n, the game lasts for n-1 minutes. This is what you calibrate the stopwatch to.

Now the infected person has exactly n-1 minutes to capture everyone. If he/she succeeds, they win. If they do not succeed and someone lasts the entire time without being infected, the non-infected people remaining are the winners.