EmmettRedd's recent post about the word game he played as a grad student triggered a memory of a game my friends and I played back in high school. If I can talk about this anywhere, I can talk about it in this forum without (hopefully) coming across as too "word geeky."
What we'd do is take turns paging through a dictionary (this was before online dictionaries) and find a page that had, as its header, the two words that were first and last on the page. Not all pages "worked," as the idea was to provide a two-word clue that was evocative of the pair in the header.
Example ... I just pulled out my old Webster's Collegiate (for the first time in ages), flipped a few pages until I found a likely header, and here provide the clue: "sharpen plants." Now the other players know ahead of time the words will likely have spellings that are close, and must be reasonably synonymous with the clue. Since I don't really want to play this game here, I'll provide the answer as "focus foliage." You get the idea.
My question is this ... any of you ever get into dictionary games like that? Or even (gasp!) read the dictionary for pure recreation. I did, but maybe I was a word geek before the word "geek" even existed.
Dullard: Someone who looks a thing up in the encyclopedia, turns directly to the entry, reads it, and then closes the book. -definition ascribed to Philip José Farmer
The parlor game we played with a dictionary we called "fictionary". I think they've tried to make the game into something they could sell in a store, since then, which is kind of silly because all you need is a dictionary and slips of paper. Each person takes a turn as the word poser (call it what you will): He finds an obscure word in the dictionary, then spells and pronounces it to the rest. If you already know the true definition of the word, so much the better; nevertheless, every player invents and writes down a definition for the word, except the poser who writes down a real definition (though it needn't be worded so as to be very convincing). All the slips of paper are placed in the center and the poser reads them one by one, after which everyone but the poser votes on which definition he thinks is the real one. Each player who votes for the right one gets a point; each vote for a false definition also earns its inventor a point.
My wife and I used to play this with some friends across the street. Ray and I were both word people, our wives were not. What I found interesting was that after we'd played four rounds or so, everyone got warmed up; after that I could no longer tell Alice's and Cindy's definitions from Ray's and mine, and the women started spotting the fake definitions as well as Ray and I. Makes me wonder what it means to be a word person, if the distinction that is so clear most of the time can disappear after only ten or fifteen minutes of play.
Also, my wife beat me consistently at Scrabble. What does that mean? She had her father's tragic instinct for spelling—I really meant it when I said I'm a word person and she isn't—and yet...
Bob Bridges said:
The parlor game we played with a dictionary we called "fictionary". I think they've tried to make the game into something they could sell in a store, since then, which is kind of silly because all you need is a dictionary and slips of paper. Each person takes a turn as the word poser (call it what you will): He finds an obscure word in the dictionary, then spells and pronounces it to the rest. If you already know the true definition of the word, so much the better; nevertheless, every player invents and writes down a definition for the word, except the poser who writes down a real definition (though it needn't be worded so as to be very convincing). All the slips of paper are placed in the center and the poser reads them one by one, after which everyone but the poser votes on which definition he thinks is the real one. Each player who votes for the right one gets a point; each vote for a false definition also earns its inventor a point.
Isn't this game already being sold under the name "Balderdash"?
Ron Draney said:
Isn't this game already being sold under the name "Balderdash"?
Indeed it is. I've played it. Also Pictionary, which gets old fast.
Re: Bridges's comment about Scrabble … there are games that are 100% skill and zero luck, like chess. There are games that are 100% luck and zero skill, like dice. Scrabble's somewhere in the middle. I win often at Scrabble, but get screwed by bad tiles on occasion. I'm not sure that Scrabble is a good measure of language skills. So don't feel bad about losing to a "non-word person." But if she really beats you consistently, perhaps you underestimate her level of word geekiness.
I consider myself a word geek, and I stink at Scrabble. I've even been beaten by someone who was a novice at English. I know of one reason for my Scrabble challenge. I would gladly refrain from adding -es to jinx to form jinxes, triple word score, if I could make an uncommon word like estuates.
So Scrabble play is a particular skill within word geekdom. The English novice above was a skilled Scrabble player in his own language. That's my take, and I'm sticking to it.