We had two teams of 6 people (so 12 total) do a tug o war, and found that one team seemed slightly stronger than the other, but not strong enough to win immediately, it looked like there was at least 5-10 seconds of stasis.
Then we had a 13th person stand in the middle and pull the rope so as to help the weaker team. We didn’t go long enough to actually conclude the game, but it was looking like this made the difference between victory and defeat—the previously-weaker side now seemed stronger thanks to the additional person.
Then we did one last game, and this time the 13th person pulled sideways. They were able to cause the rope to bend a little bit, but only a little bit, and after a while they gave up. They weren’t able to make the rope/lines-of-people shift sideways to any noticeable degree, much less make them all lose their balance and fall over as several people suspected would happen.
We had two teams of 6 people (so 12 total) do a tug o war, and found that one team seemed slightly stronger than the other, but not strong enough to win immediately, it looked like there was at least 5-10 seconds of stasis.
Then we had a 13th person stand in the middle and pull the rope so as to help the weaker team. We didn’t go long enough to actually conclude the game, but it was looking like this made the difference between victory and defeat—the previously-weaker side now seemed stronger thanks to the additional person.
Then we did one last game, and this time the 13th person pulled sideways. They were able to cause the rope to bend a little bit, but only a little bit, and after a while they gave up. They weren’t able to make the rope/lines-of-people shift sideways to any noticeable degree, much less make them all lose their balance and fall over as several people suspected would happen.