Self Praise.
The hostess makes a remark to the effect that “This group is mighty good-looking,” accompanying the remark with a very prim, set smile, and then asks the one at her right to repeat it exactly as she gave it. The neighbor gives what she considers an exact duplication of the remark and the smile, but she is told that she isn’t even warm, so the next one tries it and so it goes around the circle, with some of them utter failures and others very successful. This continues until most of them have arrived.
Many of them put the greatest emphasis on the smile, thinking that that is the important factor, which of course is just exactly what you wanted them to think, for half the fun of the game is caused by the utterly hopeless smiles that are forthcoming. The successful ones however have noticed that each time before you made a remark you cleared your throat. Easy, isn’t it, when you know how?