by Tarot.com

These party games are not only fun and Irish-themed, they also offer the chance for personal expression and self-discovery. Acting out zany charades reveals your secret performer and inner child, singing old favorite songs is a chance to reminisce and solving odd mysteries brings out the detective in you. Try these games to see how your creative mind works -- it's self-discovery of a different kind!

Pot O' Gold
A combination of charades and Taboo, this game lends itself to crazy antics and good-natured competition between teams.

Setup: Everyone gets a few scraps of paper, and writes a word or the name of a famous person on each scrap. For St. Patty's Day, we recommend using Irish-themed words and famous Irish people. An even amount of scraps are put into a pot, and everyone is divided into teams.

Round 1: The pot is passed back and forth from team to team. When your team receives the pot, one person will be the reader and the rest will be the guesser. The reader pulls out a slip of paper and, through words and gestures, tries to get teammates to guess what is written. The word itself can't be spoken or spelled out by the reader, but impersonations, "sounds like" and plain old descriptions are fair game. When the right word is guessed, grab another. Each team has a minute to guess as many words as possible before it's the next team's turn. Each word is worth a point, and when the pot is empty the round is over.

Round 2: Refill the pot with the original words. Play alternates between teams, but this round, teams guess the words based solely on gestures and a single. Those who were paying attention during the first round should have good guesses.

Round 3: The pot is refilled a final time, but for this round only gestures can be used. The slips of paper should have become associated with some ridiculous gestures, making this a lightning-fast and hilarious round.

Conclusion: Once all three rounds are completed, add up the scores … the team with the most points become the champions of Pot O' Gold!

Songs & Storytelling
What's more Irish than singing songs and telling stories? This get-to-know-you game is great for small groups and helping people get to know one another. A Karma Coins© gift certificate is a great prize to give the person that everyone agrees had the best story.

To get started, just give everyone a piece of paper and something to write with. Have everyone number their paper one through six, listing the topics below:

1: Your First Kiss
2: Your Best Friend
3: Your True Love
4: Your Favorite Place to Be
5: The Best Day of Your Life
6: Yourself

The players then write down the song they associate with each topic. There's no such thing as a wrong answer!

Once everyone's done, go around the group and have everyone take a turn revealing which song they chose for number one. Once everyone has given their answers, told their stories, and gotten the song stuck in everyone's heads, move on to number two through six. Repeat with all of the subjects. Of course, with such juicy topics, everyone will be begging for more details!

Emerald Enigmas
These riddles, sometimes called "Minute Mysteries," can be good filler throughout the night or just to pass the time as you walk from pub to pub. The basic rules are simple: the riddle-asker knows the answer, but can only answer questions with the words "Yes," "No," or "Irrelevant." Don't forget to think outside the box!

Enigma 1: In an Irish village, there lived a man who married twenty women. He didn't divorce any of them, and none of them died before he married the others -- but none of the other villagers had a problem with it. Why not?

Enigma 2: Two wee Irish lads were born in the same hospital, in the same hour, day and year. They had the same mother and father. Yet they weren't twins. How is that possible?

Enigma 3: One fine day in spring, a shepherd on the heath found a pipe, a carrot and a pile of pebbles in the middle of his field. There were no footprints leading up to them, and he knew for certain that no one had been in that field all year. How did they get there?

Enigma 4: The rocky Irish coast is renowned for its seals, and the myth of Ireland even includes Selkies, mermaid-like people who could turn into seals and swim in the sea. In this enigma, a pack of seals suns throughout the winter on a beautiful, rocky beach. People come from miles around to see them, and the seals don't seem to be bothered one bit. Then one day, a group of women pull up in a bus, and as soon as they step off, the seals bolt off of the beach and into the water, terrified. What scared the seals?

Enigma 5: The Irish love their tea. One day a gentleman at a fancy pub called out to his server, "There's a fly in my tea!" The server apologized profusely, telling the man that he would bring him another cup of tea. When the gentleman got the tea back, however, he cursed the server soundly and said "This is the same cup of tea!" How did the gentleman know that the server was being lazy?

Enigma 6: It's the year 930 A.D., and two priests are sitting in the castle chapel in Cork, Ireland. The queen attacks the king. The two priests rise, shake hands and leave the room. What's going on?

Answer 1: The man was the parish priest. He wasn't married to the women, he married them -- to their fiancés!
Answer 2: The lads were two babies from a set of triplets.
Answer 3: They are the remains of a melted snowman that had been made by children the previous winter.
Answer 4: The women were nuns, and their black-and-white clothes reminded the seals of killer whales, one of their most feared predators.
Answer 5: The server took the easy way out and simply removed the fly. What he couldn't see, though, was that the gentleman had already sugared his tea … and as soon as the gentleman sipped it, he knew that it must be the same cup of tea.
Answer 6: The two priests are playing chess. One uses his queen to put the other's king in checkmate, so the game ends.