Clowns Applaud Insanity

Draw a question card, like “With our planet doomed, our only chance for survival is ___________.” Then all other players submit their funniest answer card, like “Nothing” or “Nick Offerman chained to a power-generating exercycle.” Choose the most hilarious answer, and the player who submitted it gets an “Applause Point.” Play until you get bored, then whoever has the most points wins. Our jokes our funny, so you should play it. CAUTION: 18+ only. This game is mostly adult humor.

Clowns Applaud Insanity* is a 20 minute game that plays best when combined with any other raunchy black and white card game you own. (2-8 players ages 18 and up)

The game features:

• 62 Black fill-in-the-blank or question cards
• 176 White answer cards
• 2 Instruction cards

*Formerly known as Cops Arrest Manatees

1. Each player draws 10 White Cards.
2. Choose one player to be The Clown.
3. The Clown flips over the top Black Card of the deck and reads the question or fill-in-the-blank out loud.
4. Everyone else answers by passing one White Card secretly to the Clown.
5. The Clown shuffles all the answers and shares each with the group. The Clown chooses the funniest combo, and the person who played the winning combo keeps the Black Card as an “Applause Point!”.
6. The player to the Clown’s left becomes the new Clown. Everyone draws back to ten White Cards.

How to Stop

You can stop playing the game whenever you want, but generally, the first person to win 10 Black Cards is the winner.
All other players are losers to varying degrees based on how many “Applause Points!” they have won.

*Some Black Cards say Pick 2 or Pick 3. These are answered with 2/3 White Cards to make a whopping Big-Top-Combo.

For 2 or 3 Players:

If you don’t have enough players to ensure anonymity, add White Cards from the deck so that there are a total of 4 cards for the Clown to choose from.
If the deck won, place its “Applause Point!” Black Card in its own point pile. If the deck wins the game… Congratulations on losing to a deck of cards!

Despite claims to the contrary, our research suggests that Cards Against Humanity (a game that hinges on making inappropriate jokes) actually makes people feel so bad about their adult jokes that they are less prejudiced after playing. Could this effect be leveraged to change players’ actions in other aspects of their lives as well? Clowns Applaud Insanity lets players make fun of how bad climate change is. In our research we found that people who played Clowns Applaud Insanity were acted more sustainably after playing.