The Pair Up Activity

Pair Up is a fun group activity that encourages people to ask questions to guess the name that’s written on their back. This game is a good way to build up energy at the beginning of your team building event and break the ice.

This activity is ideal for practicing effective communication, exercising problem solving and developing creative thinking. The facilitator will need sticky notes and a pen to write different words on the sticky notes.

To play Pair Up, start by writing down several ‘famous pairs’ on individual sticky notes. The pairs could be anything from key and lock to king and queen.

Once you’ve come up with your famous pairs, stick them to the backs of each player. Set a time limit, maybe 20 minutes, then ask the players to start asking questions to each other.

The players to identify the name of the person/thing that’s written on their back. They need to ask the right questions to achieve the goal.

Once they know who they are, it’s their task to find their ‘matching’ pair, for example, ‘key’ must pair up with ‘lock.’ The first pair to find their correct match is the winner.

The topics of this publication: integration, interactions, active listening