What is MASH?
MASH is the fortune-telling game generations of children played on the back of a notebook. The name stands for Mansion, Apartment, Shack, House – where you will live. Under it go lists of jobs, cars, pets, cities and the number of children, and a spiral counting game crosses things out until one of each is left: your future.
This wheel does the counting for you. Press SPIN! and it draws one from every group – a home, a job, a car, a pet, a city and a number of kids:
Make it yours
Every group can be switched on or off. Want a honeymoon in your future? Tick Honeymoon. Do not want to know how many kids? Untick Kids:
How the paper MASH works
- Write MASH at the top of a page.
- Under it, write four or five options in each category: jobs, cars, pets, cities – the best, the worst and the funniest.
- Draw a spiral until somebody says stop, and count its lines: that is the magic number.
- Count through all the options with the magic number and cross out every one you land on.
- Keep going round until one option is left in each category. Read your future out loud.
The spiral is the slow part; the wheel is the fast one. The fun is the same: the mansion with a goldfish, or the shack with a llama and twelve kids in Tokyo.
Play it with friends
- Everybody spins once and reads their future out loud.
- Spin for each other and make up the story of that life in one minute.
- At a sleepover: spin, then draw the house you are going to live in.