The game's other names

Senior Assassin, Senior Water Wars, Senior Splashin', Senior Tag and Paranoia usually describe the same thing: a spring elimination game where graduating seniors are secretly assigned each other as targets and eliminate them with water. Which name your school uses is mostly regional. But the name is not purely cosmetic — it changes how administrators react, and in a couple of cases it signals a genuinely different ruleset.

Senior Assassin

The most common name nationally, and the one almost all the written rulebooks use. It is also the name that causes the most trouble with schools, for the obvious reason. Plenty of districts have no objection to the game and a strong objection to a school-wide email containing the word "assassin," which is why the alternatives below exist at all.

Senior Water Wars

The most common deliberate rename, and usually a straight substitution — same targets, same chain, same elimination rules. Where it differs, it tends to be toward the friendlier end: more team play, more scheduled group events, less lone-hunter stalking. If your administration has said no to "Senior Assassin," this is the name most likely to get a yes, and it describes the game just as accurately.

Senior Splashin'

Regional, and increasingly tangled with the app of a similar name, so expect confusion if you use it in a search. As a rules term it means the same game. If someone at your school says "we're doing Splashin," ask whether they mean the game or specifically that app, because the answer determines whether everyone is about to be asked to download something and share their location.

Senior Tag

Usually the same game with the weapon dialed down — sometimes literal tagging by hand, sometimes water, rarely anything else. Because "tag" implies physical contact, this is the variant most worth writing an explicit no-grabbing rule into. A game where elimination requires touching someone who does not want to be touched needs clearer boundaries than one where you spray them from ten feet away, not fewer.

Paranoia

The ambiguous one. In some schools Paranoia is exactly this game under a quieter name. Elsewhere, Paranoia is a completely different party game — one person whispers a question to another, who answers out loud, and the group only learns the question on a coin flip. Same word, unrelated activity. If someone invites you to play Paranoia, find out which one they mean before you buy a water gun.

Does the name change the rules?

Not structurally. Every version runs on the same three mechanics: a secret one-way target chain, an elimination that has to be witnessed or recorded, and the eliminated player's target passing to whoever got them. What varies between schools is not the name but the four things worth actually deciding:

• What counts as a weapon — water guns only, or balloons and buckets too.
• Where the safe zones are — nearly everyone protects school grounds; workplaces and homes are less consistent, and they should not be.
• Whether there is money in it — entry fees and a jackpot, or free. This one changes the game's character more than any rename does.
• How long you get — the elimination deadline before you are out for inactivity, usually somewhere between a few days and two weeks.

Our rules template makes each of those an editable blank, so you can publish it under whichever name your school will actually approve. Change the title and it reads as a Water Wars rulebook.

Which name should you use?

Whichever gets your game approved. There is no advantage to fighting your administration over the word "assassin" when "Senior Water Wars" describes the same game and reads as what it is, which is a water fight. Use the friendlier name in anything an adult will read, and let the group chat call it whatever it wants.

If you are picking a name and want your class to find the rules later, pick the one your school already says out loud. A game nobody can search for is a game with rules nobody reads. The safety page is the one worth sending to parents under any name.