The paper fortune teller, also called a cootie catcher or a chatterbox, is one square of paper and eight folds. It takes about two minutes once you have made one, and it is still the most reliable way to occupy a table full of children.

What you need

A square sheet. Standard letter or A4 paper works once you trim it: fold one corner across to the opposite edge and cut off the strip that sticks out. Thin paper folds better than card. Pens or markers for the writing.

Folding it

  1. Start with the square face down. Fold corner to corner both ways, then unfold. You now have an X creased into the paper.
  2. Fold each of the four corners into the centre point. You have a smaller square.
  3. Turn the whole thing over and fold those four new corners into the centre again. Smaller square again.
  4. Fold it in half, unfold, then fold in half the other way. This loosens the creases so the finished thing opens easily.
  5. Slide your thumbs and index fingers under the four outer flaps and pinch. It should open and close in two directions.

What to write where

  • Outer flaps, four of them: colours, or four short words. These are what the player picks first, and you spell the word out while opening and closing.
  • Inner triangles, eight of them: numbers 1 to 8. The player picks one, and you open and close that many times, then they pick again.
  • Under the flaps, eight answers: written on the hidden side of each triangle. Lift the flap to read the one they landed on.

Answers that work

For a party: short, silly, and never mean about anyone present. "You will find something you lost this week", "Ask again after lunch", "Today is a good day to be bold". For a classroom, teachers often use the eight slots for practice questions instead: a times table, a vocabulary word, a country capital. The format survives being educational surprisingly well.

Keep the answers vague enough to fit anyone and specific enough to be fun. That balance is exactly what makes the toy work, and it is the same trick that makes a badly written horoscope feel personal.

Where it came from

The folding pattern is old and appears in origami collections in the twentieth century as the salt cellar. Children in Britain and the United States turned it into a fortune telling game by the 1950s, and the name cootie catcher came from an earlier playground game about catching imaginary bugs. It spread without anyone marketing it, which is unusual for a toy.

If the real thing interests you

A paper fortune teller is a game, and everyone playing knows it. If you have been curious about a proper reading, that is a different afternoon: our fortune telling listings show who works in your city, with contacts and reviews from other clients, and our guide to how readings work covers what to expect before you book.