A grainy video captures the “shooting”: Crouching in a bush, a blue water gun fills the frame. After several seconds of motionless silence, the assassin lurches forward suddenly, nailing his target at point-blank range.
All around Concord and many surrounding towns, similar squirt attacks— at Target, outside the State House, through garage doors — are taking place at an alarming rate this month.
Some victims surrender willingly. Others run. Disputes abound, arbitrated by anonymous panels of organizers, with rulings announced on Instagram pages.
The game, called Assassins, has quickly become a senior-year tradition at many schools as eagerly anticipated as prom or graduation.
For weeks each spring, students meticulously plan their movements to evade detection, enlist family members as lookouts, and don swim goggles in odd places to give themselves immunity.
In an era when teenagers’ lives increasingly play out behind screens, the month-long game provides a rare burst of in-person fun and bonding before high school ends. In videos posted on the Instagram page for Concord High School’s game, students laugh, yell and hug. In most cases, both the target and their assassin manage to smile in a joint post-kill shot photo.
The game, despite its merits, has also increasingly led to police department involvement when the uninitiated report seeing strange behavior.
“Last year, we got a call for a bunch of masked people in a van in downtown Contoocook,” Hopkinton Police Chief Thomas Hennessey said. “We didn’t know what it was at first, but then obviously later, once we investigated it further, we found out it had to do with this game.”
Early this month, Hennessey responded to another call from a residence for a report of individuals who were hiding in the woods and might have been stealing packages. The culprits weren’t after any Amazon boxes; they were participants in the Assassins game waiting for their target.
The residents confronted the students, who explained what they were doing. Hennessey worried the situation could have ended worse.
“The homeowner is ex-military, and if he didn’t have any inclination, and there was two individuals prowling around his home, he has cause for concern, and who knows what he would do,” he said in an interview.
Last week, shortly after that call, the student leaders of Hopkinton’s game elected to shut it down prematurely, due to what they described as “multiple incidents.” Loren Clement, a parent of a Hopkinton senior, said the organizers received “pressure from above.”
“There was a baseline of rules, and what escalated the shutdown of this was one of the students was not following the rules that had been set forth,” Clement said in an interview. “When you break the rules, things happen.”
Students, for their part, recognize potential misunderstandings can arise when they run around with water guns and have worked to develop guidelines to avoid them.
In bold letters, Hopkinton’s rules mandated that participants’ water guns “cannot resemble real guns.” Concord’s organizers directed students to keep their weapons as “toy-like” as possible.
“Please use good judgement. Read the room, be smart,” the Concord organizers write.
Concord Police Lt. Thomas Yerkes said his department has not received any calls due to the game this year.
The structure of the game varies among high schools, but always involves randomly assigned targets. When an individual or team is assassinated, they are out. The game continues until only one individual or team is left standing.
In most cases, participants must pay an entry fee, most of which goes to the winner. Sometimes the individual or team with the most assassinations also takes a cut.
In Concord, the game proceeds in week-long rounds. If a team has failed to assassinate their targets by the end of the week, they get eliminated.
Concord’s game started with 50 teams. Thirty of them survived the first week. The second week is happening now.
Elaborate rules dictate where assassinations can occur. School buildings are typically off limits during the day, along with sports practices and other extracurricular activities.
Concord’s game prohibits students from targeting each other at their place of work, but notes that “you may wait for them to arrive or get out.”
“Everyone needs to be off the clock to be assassinated or to assassinate,” the rules state.
Students are not allowed to enter each other’s houses without permission, but they can camp outside of them on public property.
Prior to the Hopkinton game getting canceled, Clement said his daughter leaned on her family for protection.
“Our household was asked to keep on the lookout for fellow classmates that might be kicking around the house,” he said.
He didn’t have to resort to any drastic measures though, he said. After all, the game only lasted a matter of days.
