Chinese whispers

Chinese Whispers may refer to:

• Chinese whispers, a game
• Chinese Whispers (novella), a 1987 novella by Maurice Leitch
• Chinese Whispers (Ashbery book), a 2002 poetry collection by John Ashbery
• Chinese Whispers: The True Story Behind Britain's Hidden Army of Labour, a book by Hsiao-Hung Pai
• Chinese Whispers (Waterhouse), a composition for string quartet by Graham Waterhouse

Chinese whispers (or telephone in the United States) is a game played around the world, in which one person whispers a message to another, which is passed through a line of people until the last player announces the message to the entire group. Errors typically accumulate in the retellings, so the statement announced by the last player differs significantly, and often amusingly, from the one uttered by the first. Reasons for changes include anxiousness or impatience, erroneous corrections, the difficult-to-understand mechanism of whispering, and that some players may deliberately alter what is being said to guarantee a changed message by the end of the line.