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How do you play Ibble Dibble? The deeply posh game in The Crown and Chalet Girl

It radiates Tory energy and yet here I am wanting to play it

3 years ago

If you’ve been watching The Crown recently and you also happen to have a near-impeccable taste in romcoms, something may have occurred to you: that weird ass game with the black spots on people’s faces turns up in both The Crown and Chalet Girl! And it’s none other than the posh af drinking game classic… Ibble Dibble.

And then, shortly after, a deep need may have possessed you. No, not the need for speed. The need to play Ibble Dibble. I felt it, you felt it, we all felt it. Well luckily I’m here to tell you the rules to Ibble Dibble and unlock hours of lockdown fun for us all. Plus, you don’t even have to worry about wiping the soot off your face because we literally cannot go anywhere! Bliss.

What equipment do I need to play Ibble Dibble?

The apparatus needed for Ibble Dibble are minimal. You simply need a cork, a lighter or matches and a lot of alcohol to imbibe. Each of you should have a drink from which to sip when you wobble your Ibble Dibbles (it will make sense soon I swear) and you pass the burnt cork around as you go. Ibble Dibble is also alternatively called “The Spot Game” but that’s way less fun, so I’m calling it it’s real name throughout because I’m not lame.

Now, to the Ibble Dibble rules…

What are the Ibble Dibble rules?

Right, it’s not as difficult or as lame as it looks. If you’ve every played the drinking game “Zimmy Zimmy” aka the non Tory version of Ibble Dibble, it’s a similar concept. If you haven’t, no worries, Ibble Dibble goes a bit like this.

You gather around in a rough circle and burn the cork. The marks of the burnt cork on your faces are called “dibble ibbles” and the players are called “ibble dibbles”. You number yourselves randomly i.e one ibble dibble, two ibble dibble, three ibble dibble and so on, so forth. Someone starts the game, maybe whoever’s number one ibble dibble, and calls the next player.

To begin with, you’ll all have no dibble ibbles aka clear faces, so it would go like this. I, ibble dibble one, would say: “One ibble dibble with zero ibble dibbles calls three dibble ibble with zero dibble ibbles.” Then it would move to player three ibble dibble, let’s assume it’s Ed Westwick for this case, and he would say “three ibble dibble with zero dibble ibbles calls six ibble dibble with zero dibble ibbles” and this would move onto player six… who for arguments sake we will assume is Olivia Colman.

It goes on like this until you make a mistake. Mistakes include: stuttering, pausing or getting the number of dibble ibbles or ibble dibbles wrong. This is why that Thatcher scene was so awkward – she took so long to say it, it defeated the very core of the Ibble Dibble game.

Then, if you make a mistake, you have to apply a dibble ibble to yourself. Olivia Colman (pictured) has two ibble dibbles and so would say: “Number six ibble dibble with two dibble ibbles calls…” etc. You get the picture.