When you're sitting in the exam hall, attempting to pass the exam they told you would decide your whole future and hating yourself for not having done the work and leaving the revision till the last minute, have you ever wondered, just how are the invigilators around you going to pass the time?

Worry not, for invigilators are a creative bunch, and they make up their own games to play. Some of these games were revealed by teachers in an internet chatroom run by The Times Educational Supplement, and the comments to the BBC article on the story.

There are many games for the less sociable invigilator to play on their own. Linguists can spend their time translating exam regulations into other languages. For fun. Creative types can make figures out of Blu-tack. Those who like mathematics can calculate the length of floorboards used to floor the exam room. Or count the number of bricks in a wall, and the height of a column that could be made from the bricks making the room. Or, count the shuttlecocks caught in the steel rafters of the gym in which the examinations are held. Then calculate the distance they travelled to become trapped.

Now, these may seem to the average person to be a little...dull. And we all know more people = more fun. So:

• One invigilator stands at one end of the hall. The others have to copy his movements from the other end.
  
• It is said that if you count the students wearing specs, divide this by the number of redheads in the hall and add the number of coughs in a 10-minute period, then subtract the number of students with visible nits, the answer is always four. (Another one for the mathematicians?) (Also, something just occurred to me: what happens if there are no redheads in the hall? Division by zero?)
  
• The "Good Kid/Bad Kid" game - in which one teacher uses the exam attendance grid to pick a pupil that their fellow invigilator does not know. The other teacher has to guess which category they fall into just by looking at them. It is said that they get the right answer 8 times out of 10.
  
• The fiercely contested "Who Can Hand Out The Extra Paper" game - won by the invigilator who gives out the most during the exam.
• Competitions to spot the smelliest student. The best spelling mistake. Students wearing odd socks.
  
• The invigilator's version of the Battleships game, in which invigilators put crosses on a piece of paper to mark out the positions of students with "bad hair".
  
• The "Ugly" game - in which a teacher stands next to the pupil they think is the ugliest in the room, until he or she makes eye contact.
  
• Exam room "Chicken" - in which one invigilator walks toward another in the same aisle between desks, with the loser being the first to take evasive action to avoid a collision.
  
• Races to be the first to get to a student who has his or her hand up.
  
• Races to see who can walk the fastest lap of the hall. And, games of tag with each other as they make their rounds of the room. It is "just like the real game," explained one contributor to the chatroom, "but obviously no running."
  

So now you know - you can relax, enjoy your exam, knowing that the invigilators around you are having fun too.