A human knot is a common

icebreaker An icebreaker is a special-purpose ship or boat designed to move and navigate through ice-covered waters, and provide safe waterways for other boats and ships. Although the term usually refers to ice-breaking ships, it may also refer to smaller ...

game or team building activity for new people to learn to work together in physical proximity. The knot is a

disentanglement puzzle Disentanglement puzzles (also called entanglement puzzles, tanglement puzzles, tavern puzzles or topological puzzles) are a type or group of mechanical puzzle that involves disentangling one piece or set of pieces from another piece or set of piec ...

in which a group of people in a circle each hold hands with two people who are not next to them, and the goal is to disentangle the limbs to get the group into a circle, without letting go of grasped hands. Instead, group members should step over or under arms to try to untangle the knot. Not all human

knot A knot is an intentional complication in cordage which may be practical or decorative, or both. Practical knots are classified by function, including hitches, bends, loop knots, and splices: a ''hitch'' fastens a rope to another object; a ' ...

s are solvable (see

unknotting problem In mathematics, the unknotting problem is the problem of algorithmically recognizing the unknot, given some representation of a knot, e.g., a knot diagram. There are several types of unknotting algorithms. A major unresolved challenge is to d ...

) and can remain knots or may end up as two or more circles. An easy way to ensure that the game will end up with a single circle with no nodes is to start from a circle of people holding each other hand, looking all towards the center of the circle, and ask some of them to cross his/her arms and swap his left hand with his right hand grasping again the same neighbors. When the game is successfully completed a certain number of people will appear to be outside of the circle. This number equals the number of people having crossed arms. The challenge is to solve the game several times starting each time with an increasing number of crossed people. To increase the difficulty level, players can be blindfolded or required that the game be played silently (no talking). The game is recommended for children from 12 years and up, and is best suited to a group of ten or so players, although it can be played with as few as five and with much larger groups as well. No materials are required. The purpose of the human knot puzzle is to gain

team building Team building is a collective term for various types of activities used to enhance social relations and define roles within teams, often involving collaborative tasks. It is distinct from team training, which is designed by a combine of business ...

skills, problem solving skills, and

communication Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inquir ...

skills among a group of people and onto the individuals participating.

References

Mechanical puzzles {{game-stub