Dublin to Galway. Two and a half hours on a good day. Three if there's a caravan doing fifty on the M6. And somewhere around Moate, the back seat erupts.

"Are we there yet?" "She's touching my side." "I need the toilet." "Are we there YET?"

You have two options. Hand them a screen and accept defeat. Or deploy one of the following games, which cost nothing, require no equipment, and have been saving parents' sanity on Irish roads since long before tablets existed.

The Name Game

Someone picks a category: countries, animals, cities, people's names. First player says a word. "Dublin." Next player has to say a word starting with the last letter. "N. Nairobi." Next: "Istanbul." And so on, round the car, until someone freezes, repeats a word, or makes one up. That person is out.

Simple rules. Surprisingly competitive. Works for ages five to fifty. The key is agreeing on the category before you start, or you'll spend more time arguing about whether "Tyrannosaurus" counts as an animal name than actually playing.

The Licence Plate Game

Spot number plates from different countries. Each new country you spot earns a point. Bonus challenge: name the capital city of that country, or the continent it's in. Whoever has the most points by the destination wins.

On Irish motorways you'll see plenty of UK, Polish, Lithuanian, and German plates. The odd French or Dutch one. Anything further afield is gold. The game rewards attention, patience, and the honesty system (because nobody can verify the Romanian plate you claim you saw near Athlone).

The Memory Chain

First player starts a sentence. "I went to the market to buy bananas." Second player picks up the last word and builds a new sentence. "Bananas are the favourite food of monkeys." Third player: "Monkeys live in the jungle." And on it goes. Break the chain and you're out.

It starts easy. It gets very hard, very fast, especially when someone introduces a word like "xylophone" and the next player has to build from there. Good for stretching the brain and generating some genuinely bizarre sentences.

I Spy

The classic. "I spy with my little eye, something beginning with... T." Everyone guesses. The spier drops hints if needed. Whoever gets it right picks the next one.

You already know this game. Your parents played it. Their parents probably played it. It works best when the car is moving slowly enough that the "something" stays in view for more than three seconds. Motorway I Spy is harder than it sounds, because everything disappears behind you at 120 kilometres an hour.

A tip: ban "sky," "road," and "car" from the first round, or the game is over in thirty seconds.

The Scramble

Pick a word with at least five letters. "TRAVEL," say. Everyone gets two minutes and a scrap of paper (passengers only, obviously) to write down as many smaller words as they can make from those letters. "RAVEL." "VALET." "LATER." "RATE."

Scoring: a word nobody else found earns two points. A word that two or more people share earns one point each. The longer words feel more satisfying, but the short sneaky ones win games.

This one is quieter than the others, which is either a benefit or a drawback depending on how much silence you need.

Spelling Bee

An adult calls out a word. Each player has to spell it. Get it right, earn a point. Get it wrong, nothing.

Start easy with younger kids. "House." "Table." Build up to the tricky ones. "Necessary." "Accommodation." "Manoeuvre." Adults can play too, and you'll be surprised how many grown people stumble over "rhythm" or "guarantee."

The game runs itself until someone suggests a better one or you arrive.

Tongue Twisters

Less a game, more a group activity in organised chaos. Someone starts with a tongue twister. "She sells seashells by the seashore." Everyone tries it. Speed increases. Pronunciation collapses. Laughter follows.

The Irish ones are good if you can find them. "Red lorry, yellow lorry" is a classic that nobody can say five times fast. The fun is in the failure.

Not everything on a long drive needs a screen. A bit of creativity, a bit of competition, and seven games that cost nothing. Dublin to Galway will fly by. Or at least, you won't hear "are we there yet" more than twice.