MASH game — how to play the classic paper fortune game
MASH (Mansion, Apartment, Shack, House) is the pen-and-paper fortune game every kid has played in the back of a notebook. One sheet, one pen, five minutes — and you walk away knowing your future spouse, job, car, and how many kids you'll have. Here's exactly how it works.
What does MASH stand for?
MASH is an acronym for four kinds of homes: Mansion, Apartment, Shack, House. The point of the game is to use a counting trick to eliminate three of them so that only one — your "future home" — survives. You do the same for every other category on the sheet (spouse, job, kids, car, city) and read the result out loud at the end.
How to play MASH — step by step
- Write MASH across the top of the page. One letter per column, big enough to circle later.
- Add four category columns below. Classic categories are Spouse, Job, Number of Kids, and Car. Swap or add any you like — city, pet, salary, vacation home.
- Fill each column with four options. Write three options you'd actually want, then hand the pen to the other player and let them add one terrible option. That single bad entry is what makes the elimination tense.
- Pick a counting number. The traditional way: the other player draws a tight spiral on the back of the page and you yell "stop". Count the loops — that's your number. Shortcut: just pick any number from 3 to 10.
- Count and cross out. Starting at the M in MASH, count items in order around the page. Every time you hit your magic number, cross that item out and keep counting from the next live item.
- Circle the survivor in each column. When a column has one item left, circle it — it's locked in. Keep counting through the remaining columns until every one has a survivor. Read your fortune out loud. Argue about whether a 1986 Volvo really counts as a Mansion-life car.
MASH categories — ideas
The four classic columns are spouse, job, kids, and car, but the game stretches as far as your imagination. A few prompts that always land:
- • Future spouse (name three crushes + one nightmare)
- • Dream job vs. nightmare job
- • Number of kids (0, 2, 7, 19)
- • Car make & model
- • City you'll live in
- • Pet (golden retriever / iguana / 47 cats)
- • Annual salary
- • Honeymoon destination
- • Favorite cereal you'll eat every day forever
- • Wedding venue
Example round
Counting number: 5.
MASH Spouse Job Kids Car --------------------------------------------- Taylor Astronaut 1 Tesla Jordan Vet 3 Vintage Beetle Alex Pro skater 7 Pickup truck Toad (👎) Sewer inspector 19 1986 Volvo (👎)
Start at M, count five (M-A-S-H-Taylor), cross out Taylor. Continue: Jordan-Alex-Toad-Astronaut-Vet — cross out Vet. Keep going. After a few minutes you're left with one item per column — maybe Apartment, Jordan, Astronaut, 3 kids, Vintage Beetle. Read it out and congratulate yourself on a respectable future.
A short history of MASH
MASH started spreading in American schools in the late 1970s and exploded through the 1980s and 1990s — sleepovers, school buses, the back of math notebooks. It's a cousin of older fortune-telling rituals like cootie catchers (paper fortune tellers) and "he loves me, he loves me not" daisy plucking: rule-light social games where the answer feels meaningful even though everyone knows it's random. The internet brought a brief wave of MASH web apps in the 2000s, but the paper version never went away — because the part that matters is two people laughing at the bad options they wrote for each other.
MASH variants worth trying
- MASHO / MASHER — add extra letters at the top for more housing options (Mansion, Apartment, Shack, House, Outhouse / River).
- Travel MASH — categories become destinations, airlines, hotels, and the souvenir you bring home.
- Career-day MASH — replace fortune categories with college, major, first job, salary, and city. Surprisingly fun for older players.
- Doomsday MASH — every category has four awful options. Whoever's fortune is least bleak wins.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the MASH game?
- MASH is a pen-and-paper fortune-telling game popular with kids and teens since the 1980s. The name is an acronym for the four homes you might live in: Mansion, Apartment, Shack, House. Two or more players take turns filling in categories (future spouse, job, number of kids, car, city), then use a counting number to eliminate options until one answer is left in each category — that's your 'future'.
- What does MASH stand for?
- M = Mansion, A = Apartment, S = Shack, H = House. The four letters are the housing options you can roll into — one of them survives the elimination round and becomes your future home.
- How many players do you need for MASH?
- MASH works with two or more players. One person is the 'reader' who runs the elimination for the other player's sheet. You can also play solo by picking your own counting number before you start.
- What number do you use to count in MASH?
- Traditionally, the other player draws a spiral and you say 'stop' — the number of loops in the spiral is your counting number. A faster variant: pick any number between 3 and 10 before you start.
- Can you play MASH on paper without an app?
- Yes — MASH was designed as a paper game. All you need is a sheet of paper and a pen. Write 'MASH' across the top, then four columns for spouse, job, kids, and car. Fill each column with three good options and one bad one chosen by your opponent.
Play these paper classics in your browser
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