Pantomime Ladies

Question

Cinderella was returning home from taking Bruno on a Christmas Day walk. She passed by her lounge window on the way to her front door and decided to spy on what her ugly sisters were doing inside. Although she couldn’t hear anything the sisters seemed to be in the middle of a big argument which amused Cinderella greatly.

She saw:

Sister 1 finishing a yawn, tired from the arguing no doubt, then her gesturing the other sister to stop, and then her throwing her arms in the air like she had had enough.

She then clearly wanted a timeout, pointing an accusatory finger at Sister 2.



Cinderella chucked to herself at the sight of them having a terrible Christmas Day.



Sister 1 then made a crucifix with her fingers clearly suggesting Sister 2 was an evil witch!

Sister 1 then insisted on them having another break and finally she pointed at herself as though she was also to blame.

Thrilled that they were miserable, Cinderella let herself in and walked into the lounge. To her dismay they weren’t arguing at all and were now happily humming a Christmas carol!



Explain what had been going on. What were the sisters names?

Answer 1

They were

playing charades

The yawn

was signaling a song

As @caPNCApn pointed out, requesting the other sister stop

was holding up five fingers for five words in the song title

the "had enough"

gesture of hands in the air signified working on the whole thing

the timeout

was "the" from the t- sign with the hands

the crucifix

was the "and" symbol

the break again

was the time-out symbol again for "the"

and

their names were Holly (sister 2) and Ivy so the pointing was to get their names

to finally

guess the carol "The Holly and the Ivy", which they were then humming

The title

refers to the pantomime required to play charades