A Human Knot

Human knot is a icebreaker game and team building activity for new people to learn to work together in physical proximity. The knot is a disentanglement puzzle in which a group of people in a circle each hold hands with two people who are not next to them, and the goal is to disentangle the limbs to get the group into a circle, without letting go of grasped hands.

Get the group to form a circle. Tell them to put their right hand up in the air, and then grab the hand of someone across the circle from them.

Then repeat this with the left hand, ensuring they grab a different persons hand. Check to make sure that everyone is holding the hands of two different people and they are not holding hands with someone either side of them.

They must now try to untangle themselves to form a circle without breaking the chain of hands. Allocate a specific time to complete this challenge (generally ten to twenty minutes). Get participants to take their time in order to limit injuries. Ask the group not to tug or pull on each other and spot participants as they pass over other participants.

Monitor throughout the challenge and stop them if you need to. If the chain of hands is broken at any point, they must then start over again.

The teams work to think of creative ways to complete the activity within a fixed period. This enables them to organize their work in a way that teaches them to get the work done on time.

Not all human knots are solvable and can remain knots or may end up as two or more circles.

The topics of this publication: interactions, cooperation, leadership, collaboration, teamwork