Toques
Let's head south of the border for a shocking drinking game that could potentially kill you. "Toques" - Spanish for "touch" - is wildly popular in Mexico City. Vendors go from bar to bar with a jerry-rigged machine that runs current from a set of batteries into two metal poles. Players hold the poles as the controller slowly increases the voltage, and the person who can take the heaviest shock wins. Everybody else has to drink, and then the game starts all over. Proponents claim that playing toques can help reduce your hangover, but doctors warn that exposure to electric current can also stop your heart.
Edward 40 Hands
This one has been popular in frat houses and other dens of iniquity for decades, and it never gets old. Using duct tape, strap a pair of 40 ounce bottles of malt liquor to the palms of your hands, have a friend open them, and then try to drink them without making an unholy mess of everything you hold dear. Typically you're not allowed to remove the tape until the bottles are both completely empty. In foreign lands, they play the variants "Edward Ciderhands" and "Amy Winehands," which doesn't seem in particularly good taste now that she's dead.
Quidditch Pong
Not all drinking games are designed for the frat crowd. Nerds get in on the action with games like Quidditch Pong, a ridiculous bastardization of the "sport" from the Harry Potter novels. Take the basic rules of beer pong - throw ping-pong balls across the table into your opponent's cup, they have to drink the ones you hit - and throw in bats to block shots, hoops to throw balls through and a special "snitch cup" that lets you win the game instantly and you've got an absurd, convoluted mess that only gets worse as you get drunk.
Stump
Severe intoxication and carpentry don't mix, but proponents of the drinking game Stump (popular on the East Coast) don't give a damn. To play, you need a carpenter's hammer, a box of nails and a tree stump. Each player hammers a nail into the top of the stump a small amount - just enough to keep it vertical. Then a player throws the hammer up in the air (it needs to make at least a 360 degree spin), catches it, and immediately tries to hammer an opponent's nail. If they get it, the opponent drinks. If they miss, they drink. And if sparks fly from the hit? Everybody drinks. Needless to say, the longer this game goes on the more thumbs get smashed.
Bear Paw
If there's a people known for their ability to consume massive amounts of alcohol, it's the Russians. The cold winters of Moscow have inspired several seriously intense drinking games, but the most purely Russian is something called Bear Paw. The rules are simple: a large stein is filled with the cheapest, lousiest beer you can find. It's passed around the table, with each person taking a sip. But here's the kicker: after you sip, you replace the beer you drank in the stein with vodka, so it's continually full. Continue until nobody at the table is conscious, which shouldn't take too long as the alcohol content rises.
Where's The Water
Some drinking games test physical skills, but Where's The Water is all about your ability to BS your fellow players. Line up as many shot glasses as you can and fill most of them with a variety of clear liquors: vodka, gin, tequila, rum, et cetera. Fill some of the shot glass with water. The player picks up one of the shot glasses at random, tosses it back and says "Mmmm, water." If the other players believe them that it was water, the turn moves to the next player. If they're not convincing enough, the player must do another shot. However, if the glass actually did contain water, all of the other players must take a shot.
Possum
The humble opossum: a great climber, an even better spreader of disease. The drinking game named after this hissing arboreal marsupial is popular in southern New Zealand, but it's pissing a lot of people off. The rules are simple: each player brings a case of 24 beers with them up into a tree. They all start to drink at the same time, and the last person to fall out of their tree is the winner. You are allowed to climb down under your own power if you finish everything you brought up, but that doesn't seem terribly likely to us.
Neknominate
The age of social media has transformed drinking games into something you can do all by your lonesome. Case in point, Neknominate, which swept Facebook and YouTube in 2014. The basic rule is to videotape yourself downing a pint of beer in one go and then challenging two other people to do the same like some demented version of the Ice Bucket Challenge, but players escalated to more potent alcohol in more ridiculous circumstances and at press time at least five people have died playing Neknominate, including one dude who got alcohol poisoning after chugging a pint of vodka.
Wisest Wizard
More than a few of these drinking games require duct tape, which is a little strange. Wisest Wizard is a game that uses cheap beer (Coors Light is good for the shiny silver cans) and a little imagination to turn drunks into legendary magicians. The rules are simple: drink a can of beer. Then tape a second can onto the top of the first, and drink that too. Continue drinking and taping until your beer cans form a wizard's staff. The longer the staff, the more powerful the wizard. Some regional variations involve taking shots to "battle dragons" as well as optional staff-to-staff combat.
True American
True American isn't just a drinking game; it's a way of life. Originally invented as a joke on the Zooey Deschanel sitcom "New Girl," inspired boozehounds found a way to translate it into the real world, with disastrous results. Here's how it's played: a castle of booze and hard liquor bottles is constructed in the middle of the floor. Cushions and pillows are scattered around the room to serve as spaces on a game board (the floor is lava) and players remove beers from the castle as they play, with the one who gets the bottle of hard stuff winning.
