The Name Game
Posted: December 16th, 2008 | Filed under: Other Sports | 86 Comments »
I don’t get to see many movies — you know, with family and work and 5,000-word blogs about Jim Rice — but the other day we watched “Dan in Real Life.†It was a minus-2 movie experience — planning for a 2.5 star movie, got a .5 star movie — but that’s not really the point of this. It was based on a ridiculous premise — Dan was a newspaper advice columnist, yeah, like THOSE exist anymore, hey, why not make it about a cobbler — and it basically descended from there, but that’s not really the point of this. It pulled the magic trick of turning two actors I really like — Steve Carrell and Juliette Binoche — into two of the more unlikeable people I’ve seen on film, at least since “The Story of Us,†but that’s not really the point of this either*.
*Honestly, I blame myself for the “Dan in the Real Life†movie experience. First of all, I set my expectations too high based on a review from a friend who, quite honestly, does not share my movie tastes at all. Baseball executives say all the time that the two keys to understanding a scouting report are: (1) Read the report throughly and (2) Understand the scout who wrote it. That’s just true about everything. There are certain friends who you can count on to give you a good movie review. And there are certain friends you can count on to give you a bizarro review — if they like it, you will hate it and vice versa. And then there are friends, most friends, who are sporadic and unpredictable, and you simply cannot count on their reviews. This was one of those cases.
More to the point, though, “Dan in the Real Life†was the worst possible movie for us to watch because it was dreadful but not so dreadful that we simply could turn it off. We get to see so few movies, and there were enough likable actors in it, and there was an occasional decent line, and we had no choice, we stuck with it until the bitter end. I could see why some people liked it, and I am willing to concede that in a different environment and with a different expectation level it might have been fine. As it was, I really didn’t like it.
No, the point of it is that in the middle of the movie, for no apparent reason, this extremely large, quirky Kennedy-type family — a family that, for fun, has the boys and girls race to finish a crossword puzzle (did I mention that I really did not like this movie?) — started playing a game. It is this game where everyone writes down names on scraps of paper, folds up those scraps, puts them in a bowl and then each person gets a certain amount of time (60 seconds or whatever) to give clues and try to get people to guess as many names as possible.
The reason this stood out for me is … I was fairly certain that my buddy, New York Post columnist Mike Vaccaro, had invented this game. He called it “The Name Game,†and introduced me to it more than 10 years ago. That is Vackie’s game.*
*It’s a GREAT game for breaking up friendships or marriages or whatever because inevitably you will find out that someone you are close to is, in fact, a complete moron.
You: “OK, easy one, first president of the United States.â€
Them: “Oh, sure, that’s, um …â€
You: “Come on, first president of the United States.â€
Them: “Man, wait, you said it too fast.â€
You: “What do you mean I said it too fast, there’s a timer going.â€
Them: “Right, I’m having a brain spasm here. Help me outâ€
You: “Brain spasm? What? Come on, man, first president of the United States.â€
Them: “I know, you said that, help me out with the name.â€
You: “It’s the capital of the United States.â€
Them: “Oh, right, wait, what’s the name of that city.â€
You: “OK, never mind, pass. OK, actor from Casablanca.â€
Them: “Which actor?â€
You: “The MAIN ACTOR. THE MAIN GUY. ‘Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the …â€
Them: “Oh yeah, wait, George Washington.â€
You: “I’m going to kill you.â€
So, this is Vackie’s game, and here it was, showing up in the middle of a bad movie. And it made me wonder: Is Mike the Elisha Gray of “The Name Game?†Did he really invent this game and he just missed out on his patent? Or is the Name Game something obvious, something that is wired in our brains, and people in different places all over the country simply come up with it and believe, wholeheartedly, that they invented it?
I ask this because my parents passed down a game that we have always called “Red King,†that I believe will someday make me millions of dollars. It is the greatest card game ever — not including poker, of course — and it’s not especially complicated, but it’s not especially easy either, and I just know that if I ever come up with a prototype then it will be huge and ESPN will broadcast Red King Tournaments with Norman Chad telling divorce jokes and then Milton Bradley will come after me*.
*You know, sort of the way Milton Bradley came after Royals radio television announcer Ryan Lefebvre. Only different. (Sorry, I always tend to think of Ryan on the radio).
But now I’m not so sure. Maybe other people are playing Red King all over the country, only they are playing it under some sort of different name. Maybe one day I will be watching a blah movie late at night and we’ll come to a nothing scene and, say, Kate Winslet and Jeremy Piven will be playing Red King. It’s depressing to think about.
All of this has made me think a little bit more about origins. Take baseball. People have spent a whole lot of time looking for a beautiful myth about how things began in baseball — a Civil War legend came up with it one day, or Alexander Cartwright scribbled down the rules, or Candy Cummings invented the curveball as he thought about sea shells or whatever. But I suspect, looking back, that it was a whole lot messier than that, and various people came up with baseball things at the same time in different places, and they borrowed from each other and copied each other and a game emerged from the confusion.
The only game I believe that was invented by one person is Basket Ball, invented by James Naismith at that Springfield YMCA in December of 1891. He nailed up the basket, came up with 13 basic rules, and not long after that, hired Larry Brown. He was quite a remarkable guy, Naismith, though I do feel certain that when basketball started to become popular, people all across the country thought had thoughts like: “No, wait, they’re playing Dribbly! They’re playing MY GAME. Only I wanted their to be a 24-second clock and a three-point line. Damn!â€
In the end, we have no control. I told Vac that his game made it to the big screen, only he did not get credited. He was depressed, of course. But not depressed enough to actually see the movie.
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We’d play that game in my 8th grade geometry class. We called it “Celebrity”.
I remember playing that game 15 years ago in Minneapolis.
Ha, this is so funny– I just came home from a party in which we played the exact same game (also called celebrity). Several other people at the party had heard of it, although I never had.
I do love that we don’t know exactly when and how baseball began, that it’s origins are shrouded in mystery… it seems right, somehow.
Yeah, lots of people play that game and call it Celebrity. I encountered it in a more expansive form called “Bowl of Nouns” – the idea being that you can write any noun, not just people.
It has three phases. First, the Taboo-esque thing that you described. You can say anything you want to try and get them to guess it. Then you put all the nouns back in the bowl and do round two. This time you only get to say one single word – but since they know what all the words are they should be able to guess it. Then you put them all back in and do round three. This time it’s basically Charades. No words at all, but whatever gestures or jumping around or whatever you want.
It’s a pretty great variation. It’s a lot more expansive than just being limited to people. And you actually learn a lot because invariably people will pick nouns that you only sort of know, meaning you have to pay attention to everyone’s turns because you might be forced to act it out in a few minutes.
Another possible game — Guess how many times in the next month Posnanski writes a column or blog post that doesn’t include a reference to one of the following:
A. Bill James
B. Buck O’Neil
C. Vackie
D. His good friend (fill in the name of a sportswriter from somewhere in the country)
E. How much he likes somebody or the job they’re doing or the trade they made or whatever.
F. Cleveland
G. The upcoming Big Red Machine book
H. And so on
Let’s be honest, it’s not especially original. I mean you’re basically playing Password specifically with names instead of any noun that can be described. Password was a game show from 1961 – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password_(game_show). You think your buddy invented it before that? I mean the people behind Password probably didn’t invent it. It’s just a variation of 20 questions, where you give clues instead of ask questions. I’m not trying to be mean, but great ideas usually pop up around the same time, or people tweak other ideas they’ve heard. Rarely does inspiration come from out of nowhere. History has a way of making one person the inventor when what was invented is usually built on the shoulders of those who came before. For example, the Pythagorean Theorem is attributed to Pythagoras, but wasn’t attributed to him until at least 5 centuries after he died, and the first documented use was in China and India.
Great inspiration takes what we know and turns it on its head. Such as Albert Einstein and his theory of relativity. Basketball/Baseball/Football/Soccer/Hockey/etc., they are all just variations of games with balls we’ve been playing since we were cavemen.
Am I one of a few who just can’t take anymore of Steve Carrell? I have never been much of a fan of his but I tried to like The Office and just couldn’t get past his stupid character. Same thing with many of his movies. Maybe in Little Miss Sunshine he was bearable only because he was one of 6 (?) main characters. Anyway, if I see that Carrell is going to be in something then I tend to now avoid it. Maybe if he played a different type of character once in a while…??? His big thing seems to be odd timing and unhappy people – It just gets way too old way too fast for me as a viewer. Actually, Steve Carrell makes me uncomfortable, and not in a good acting sort of way….Opinions?
[...] details: The Name Game [...]
The Name Game was also played on an episode of ‘Sports Night’ (possibly the best 30-minute sitcom ever), although it might’ve been called ‘Celebrity’ when they played it on the show. I really liked Sports Night. That Sorkin kid can write.
Of course, one could also presume the Name Game is really just a board from the $10/25/100,000 Pyramid.
joe, as much as i love your writing and your blog posts and your baseball knowledge, you seem to be incredibly arrogant on matters like these. do you really think this idea is new? something this obvious and easy to think of has been around for decades. the same goes with pozterisks. really? footnotes have been the huge postmodern literature trend for the past couple of decades. klosterman? eggers? etc etc.
this probably sounds more mean than i mean it to, because i honestly do love you writing and read your blog as soon as any new post shows up in my rss reader, but i don’t like it when people claim obvious ideas as their own.
I believe volleyball was also pretty much invented by one guy.
There is a funny bit in Four Christmases* where they are playing a similar game. Vince Vaughn is fantastic here as the guesser having a go at Reese Witherspoon giving him “useless” clues. Also Jon Favreau playing the same game with his wife earlier in the scene is hilarious.
*This was a +0 experience for me, expected a 2.5 star film, got one. You could maybe go to 3/3.5 for it (my brother really liked it) but there just aren’t consistently enough good jokes for me.
A few of my friends and I used to play a game we called the Dictionary Game. It was very simple and moderately entertaining. Rules: open a dictionary to a random spot and pick a word from the two open pages that you think at least one person in the game will be able to define and at least one person will not be able to define. That’s it.
The most memorable round of the Dictionary Game for me was the time someone used the word “sitzmark” and one player suggested it was the mark you made in the snow when you fell backward on skis… and they were right.
I have this idea for a trivia game . . . you have six categories and pie-shaped tokens and every time you make it to the centre of the board, you get a token . . .
Oh. Crap.
It was called “celebrity” in that Sports Night episode. Great episode, great show.
Maybe it’s just something about this game that makes people think they’ve done something inventive. I played it at a party a few years ago where the host seemed convinced it was something he had thought up.
Love the blog, Joe. The line about Naismith and Larry Brown made me laugh out loud.
I always thought the name game went something like this:
I start with, say, “Joe Posnanski.”
The next person has to think of name that starts with the last letter of the name previously mentioned. In this case, the next person would have to think of a name that began with an “I.”
So the next person says “Izzy Alcantara.”
Next person has to think of a name that starts with an “A.”
And so on.
Okay, so Elisha Gray really invented the telephone, but didn’t get his patent filed as fast as he should because his financier discouraged him from working on that particular invention.
The financier was named Samuel White.
One of the more famous Samuel Whites ever was Sammy White, catcher for the Red Sox during the 1950s.
One of the better-known current Red Sox fans is Steve Carell, from Concord, Massachusetts.
Carell starred in a really bad movie that included a scene that inspired Joe Posnanski to write a blog post that included a mention of….
Elisha Gray.
See? I can invent stupid games, too. Now if I can just come up with a catchy name for it….maybe Six Degrees of…. no, that doesn’t work.
One wrinkle about “our” game: we include ANY name that anyone at the table can reasonably know. So, for instance, if you’re filling out 15 slips of paper with names like “Abe Lincoln” and “John Lennon” you can also fill out names like “Irving Vaccaro” and “Double Down Posnanski” if you know everyone at the table will know them …
I shoulda got that patent …
Forget the “30 minute sitcom” thing — Sports Night is very likely the best SHOW ever. Not a big Sorkin fan otherwise, but Sports Night was perfect television. And I have absolutely no memory of them playing Celebrity, which tells me it’s about time to watch the whole series yet again.
@ Mark W.
Get Smart, buddy. No little miss sunshine there. More Brick Tamland, without the handicap. Pretty funny as pointless movies go.
Mark W, you are not alone. The squirm in your chair humor that is Steve Carell’s shtick on The Office is painful to watch. I guess its supposed to be, but I don’t get why people enjoy watching that sort of thing. Probably says something about me that I don’t. Too bad, because the rest of the characters on the show are pretty consistently funny.
Speaking of conversations that irrevocably harm relationships…
Yesterday, I was having a conversation with a coworker and at one point, more rhetorically, I asked her how many feet there are in a yard. She did not know. I was flabbergasted. And before you ask, this woman is:
1. American
2. Well educated – currently seeking a phd in economics
I attempted to not act amazed to learn that she has somehow gone through 30+ years in this country without ever learning how many feet there are in a yard. I don’t think I hid it well.
The best part of it though is after I settled down and we were back at our desks a couple of minutes pass and she says to me, “I looked it up online – you’re right, there are 3 feet in a yard.” As if this was some piece of obscure trivia that I happened to guess correctly on.
I’m pretty certain our relationship will never be the same.
Get Smart was a +2 movie experience. I went in expecting maybe a 1 and thought it was a 3. I would have given it 4, but there was too much slapstick. The references to the original TV series and the appearance of so many actors from the sseries in cameos was an added bonus.
Quick, how many actors from the series did you spot in the movie?
Celebrity is a fun game! I always toss E. Gary Gygax into the mix. Just to freak out the norms. But trust me, Joaldo, your name is generally in there, too. We usually play the three-round version discussed by a poster above. Everyone knows what names are in play, but getting your team to associate that name with one word or a gesture is really hard. It ends up being very auto-referential, as what you’re appealing to at that point is not outside knowledge but memory of how the game has gone up to that point. Fun!
Also, most of my friends are nerds and girls. Almost no one knows who Mel Ott is. Which is why we have a rule that at least one other person in the game has to have heard of the people you put in the mix.
Sure are a lot of kibbitzing commentors since this blog got so popular.
I actually liked that movie (at least a +0.5 experience), but that might have been because… wait for it… I am a big Sondre Lerche fan, the guy that did the soundtrack for that movie (and was the singer at the wedding scene at the end). Anyway, he’s a Norwegian guy with some great pop albums, I highly recommend everyone check it out. Don’t worry, all the albums are in english (that I’m aware of).
A dozen years ago, when I was in graduate school in LA, a friend of mine introduced a version of this to our group of friends. It was sort of a combination of Vackie’s — any name that the people there should know and Charles’s “Bowl of Nouns” — we played the three rounds as described. We called it “3 Way Charades” but same game.
On a related note, I’ve worked in a fairly diverse group of industries before age 40, either through luck, wanderlust, ADD or something — commercial printing, retail, radio, participatory sports, and now casinos among them. It seems to me there are very very few new ideas – mostly it’s the same ideas recycled, repackaged, and imported from other industries — truly new ideas are extraordinarily rare. With that in mind, a former boss of mine used to say “Steal Shamelessly” — not things of course, but ideas and ways of doing business. Don’t reinvent the wheel just for the sake of doing it. I still use that saying with my teams today….
Hey, my game is like Vackie’s! I win!
Great post as usual Joe, while I’ve never played this game, I have played Pictionary where there’s the drawing and the 60 seconds of wildly pointing at something while your idiot partner makes the same guess over and over. Good times.
Anyway, this reminds me of a short story I once read, Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote. The story is about a guy who basically rewrote Don Quixote, line for line, about a 100 years later. At least that was my whole view of the story. My take away from that way from that is to ask whether works of art are really at all related to their creator, or were they always just going to be and who created it is wholly irrelevant. I’m pretty sure I missed some other point, but it was fascinating and made this post reminded me of that.
I often use the phrase, “Pierre Menardedâ€, when I find out that one of my great inventions has already been in existence for quite a while. E.G., man I had a great idea for a sandwich, but I just went to the Deli and was upset to find out that I was Pierre Menarded.
@ Dominic:
That’s by Jorge Luis Borges. Great story.
You know those little gray bugs that roll up into a ball when you touch them? When I was four or so, I decided that they would henceforth be called “Ballbugs.” As I got older and traveled around, I was astounded at how my idea had taken off. At one point I regretted not getting a patent for my idea, but really, where does a four year old find a patent lawyer? I eventually accepted the fact that I would just have to settle for the Ballbug name to be my contribution to society.
So I got that going for me. Hey, you take your karma where you can get it.
The board game Time’s Up! is a great version of The Name Game/Celebrity/etc… you don’t have to come up with the names yourself, and the gameplay has a couple of neat twists.
I always thought the name game went something like this:
‘I start with, say, “Joe Posnanski.â€
The next person has to think of name that starts with the last letter of the name previously mentioned. In this case, the next person would have to think of a name that began with an “I.â€
So the next person says “Izzy Alcantara.â€
Next person has to think of a name that starts with an “A.†‘
We always play this game with place names, and I always win when someone comes up with a place name ending with H. I say the name of my home town: Halifax.
Game over.
I didn’t like “Dan” either. I was expecting a lot more with the cast. I liked Steve in Get Smart, but he isn’t very good in a lot of his movies.
I don’t want to nitpick, but Lefebvre is on TV now.
No need to consider the origins of the modern game of baseball messy. Just say it evolved (which is true) rather than was invented. If you haven’t read Peter Morris’ excellent book “A Game of Inches”, which traces the origin of every feature of the modern game that you can think of, you should have. Curveballs, for instance: Morris concluded that pitchers could always throw curves and always put spin on the ball, but that until the 1870s the required pitching motion restricted them from throwing in actual games a pitch that would now be considered a curve.
By the way, there are TWO biographies of Alexander Cartwright coming out in the near future, one from Columbia Press by a journalist (I think) named Martin (I’m told he has no previous baseball publications but I know nothing else about him), and the other from the University of Nebraska Press by veteran baseball researcher, Monica Nucciarrone, a fellow SABR member.
Dan In Real Life was a bitter disappointment, particularly because I had high hopes for it given the cast. Frighteningly enough, the only person in the cast who didn’t irritate me in that movie was Dane Cook. So I really felt like I was sucked into Bizarro World given that Dane cook is one of the most annoying people on the planet. I saw the movie with my girlfriend and we broke up two weeks later. I blame the movie. It’s that bad.
The Name Game reference also made me think of Sports Night. I just finished watching the 10th Anniversary Edition DVD so that Celebrities episode is fresh in my mind. It’s the one where Jeremy meets the porn star at the bar. Yes, this is just an excuse to get Poz’s hits up through the use of the words “porn starâ€. Still, a great show. It’s neck and neck with Freaks and Geeks for the unofficial title of “best show that was cancelled way before its timeâ€
Instead of Halifax, I used to say St. Croix to stump people in the game. Of course, there are answers to that. In the Yucatan there are a few places that start with X (Xel ha) and there is a town in Ohio called Xenia.
The game we used to play called dictionary was a little different. One person would find a word in the dictionary that no one knew. Everyone would provide a definition. The person who chose the word would then read all the definitions including the real one. Everyone voted what they thought was the real one. You got points if people voted for your fake definition. Fun game.
Dan was a awful movie, thank god I only saw it on cable.
Paul O–none of your friends have ever seen a map of China?
As for the Name Game, I’ve played it (and called it the Name Game) since 1987, at which time it was considered an Old Parlor Game. And yes, it’s exactly the sort of game that people all over the country invent, because it is obvious. And an excellent game.
Thanks,
-V.
@ Bob Tholkes
Hi, Bob,
The Columbia U. Press book is the one I edited. I work for CUP. It’s a fun book. Should be available by May.
Jay Martin is a scholar and biographer. He’s written or edited twenty-one books, including authoritative biographies of Nathanael West, Henry Miller, Conrad Aiken, and John Dewey.
Just thought I’d defend Joe since everyone is giving hima hard time by saying it is pretty reasonable of him to think his friend invented the name game (or whatever you want to call it). I mean your at a party a friend says they’ve got this great game they invented, why don’t you go along with that, I mean they are a friend right, why wouldn’t you believe them. I mean sure maybe if you really thought about the game and how they came up with it you might consider it unlikely they invented it, but seriously who thinks like that. Joe was just believing his friend, no harm in that, none at all.
Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa — you know the second greatest card game ever invented, and you aren’t going to tell us how to play it?! I mean, this sounds like the type of game that lasts a lifetime: from playing with your parents to playing with college roommates late night to teaching your children — and you’re withholding it from us?! Cruel and unusual, man, cruel and unusual.
Sorry I put your instead of you’re in the post above, that really bugs me when I see other people do it. Doh!
Hi Michael, thanks for the info. Do you know how Jay Martin got interested in Cartwright?
@James– I played the Dictionary Game the same way, find a word you think no one would know, everyone writes down a definition, and the person with the dictionary writes down the real definition. That person reads them all out loud, and everyone says which one they think is the real definition. You get points for guessing right and for people picking your answer as the correct one.
They’ve actually begun producing this game as Balderdash, which is quite enjoyable– a lot of the words have kooky meanings, so you can have a lot of fun coming up with the fake definitions. Their newest version actually has five categories. One is word definitions as usual, plus Person’s Name (you write down what obscure thing they accomplished), Initials (you write down what it stands for), Movie Titles (you write down a one-sentence description of the plot), and Crazy Laws (you write down the rest of the law… i.e. “in Kansas City, ducks are not allowed to _____”). Variety is the spice of life!
When my college baseball team would travel we would play the baseball name game. I was hoping that this blog was on that.
Rules: Names can be anyone who has ever played MLB
Start with any name; ex. George Brett
The next person up has to give a name that has to start the players first name with the first letter of the previous names last name; ex. Bo Jackson
Each person has 3 strikes you get a strike if you cant think of a name or use a name that has already been used.
Double letter names ex. Barry Bonds reverses the turns. Lots of battle went on back and forth with these. Buddy Biancallana (sp) Bobby Bonds, Bobby Bonilla, Billy Butler, Brett Butler, etc. Its funny how many guys just dont know who has played in the Majors.
Any one else play this game?
@ Gate: I’ve been there a few times too…Occasionally with my wife so that’s often an uncomfortable day. She is terrible about knowing when certain holidays are…Labor Day to her is something that can just drop out of the heavens and land on a calendar on any particular month. The first Monday in September seems to be an unheard of notion…I’ve learned to adjust….
I suppose I occasionally don’t know things that most of the world takes to the bank everyday too; e.g., Steve “Carell” with one “r” is the proper spelling of the actor whom I do not particularly appreciate.
Michael in NYC-
I edit a newsletter for SABR’s committee that researches baseball origins; I’m mentioning the biographies in the January issue. A few committee members have commented on our yahoogroup that they were unaware of Jay’s credentials for poking around in baseball history.
If you wish, send info on Jay offline. I’m at robert.tholkes@target.com.
There has been research — or at least a bunch of academics thinking about — how topical jokes get around the country. Or rather, GOT around the county. Things are different with the Internet, afterall.
The answer was that these things do not actually spread that fast. Rather, they independently created (i.e. they are a little bit obvious, at least to joke writers). Over time, the best formulation sticks, but the joke appears everywhere at once, spontaneously.
Isn’t that what happened with baseball? These inventions/additions/developments happened in many places at the same time. Someone might get (too much) credit for one of them, but that doesn’t mean that s/he was the sole inventor.
I had a similar experience. I thought I had invented dom/sub office relationships until I saw “Secretary”. Color me surprised!!
Different topic. Sports Night. Pretentious show about egomaniacs. Deservedly unpopular.
Balderdash! We used to play that in college, only we called it “fictionary.” I like our name better. Great game any way you slice it.
When I was a kid, we played the “last letter of item=first letter of next item” and called it “Geography”. And, of course, as with the folks who mentioned “Halifax” and “St. Croix”, place names ending with “x” were real killers. Since I grew up in the NYC area, the most obvious one was “Bronx” (or “The Bronx”, if you’re being really picky).
Anyway, it’s kinda hard to ge to “Bronx” in the middle of the game, there being so few place names that end in “b” (are there any? I don’t remember). So, I used to mention it as the first name in the game whenever I didn’t really want to play. Invariably, we moved on to something different.
As for inventing things that were already invented, my related personal experience is with a joke. I was in the 4th grade, we were on our way to some remote location on a field trip, we passed a cemetery, and I thought it was exceedingly bright of me to come up with “Why do the put fences around cemeteries?” / “Because people are dying to get in.” For years, I thought and said that this was an original joke I created.
Turns out, as I got older, that not only had many people already heard it (long before they met me), but also that it had been printed in more than one collection of jokes. Oh, well…
Brian the OC and Paul O.,
That’s how we’ played the name game around the radio station in high school. “Hal Holbrook,” “Kevin Kline,” Edward James Olmos,” etc. You were out if you couldn’t think of one fast enough or if you used someone who was not famous enough (this was loosely and non-uniformly judged). I always created arguments because I would use semi-obscure sports figures like “Harvey Grant.” “C’mon, he’s a starter in the NBA” I would argue. Then the next time I had an H I would say “Harvey Grant” and have to explain how, “No, I didn’t use him already, that was his brother.”
My family also did it with places on long car trips. You could spend a whole car trip just on As. Alaska, Alabama, Alberta, Arizona, Asia, Africa, Argentina…seemingly endless. We had a “no X rule” or you could use the second-to-last letter if a place name ended in X. Otherwise the game would always automatically end as soon as someone could use a place that ended in X.
Oops. One of those Harveys was supposed to be Horace.
Bill C,
I think Mike Adams, who hosts a radio show here on WEEI in Boston, used to play the name game that way when his show was on cable TV on NECN back in the 90s. He’d dare people to call in and beat him in that game.
To beat him, you not only had to have the final name, but an additional name left in the tank to top it off. Otherwise, it would be a draw.
The Name Game’s a pretty simple concept – I’ve played it with friends and it didn’t strike me being overly original. I guess it’s a matter of semantics – if you come up with a concept that’s been around for a while without you knowing about it, technically you DID invent it.
I think a lot of games that seem novel have been around a lot more than one might think. My wife (originally from the southern U.S. whereas I’m from Canada) introduced me to Liar’s Dice – neither I nor any of my friends had ever played it before. I assumed it was a regional-type game until I mentioned it to my sister’s husband (who was raised in Peru) and he was familiar with it as well. There were variances between their games, but the concept was the same.
Glad someone else pointed out Balderdash – that game’s been around for over 20 years.
Mentions of other people’s “Dictionary Game,” reminded me of a game that some university friends and I dreamt up when working late nights at a campus newspaper (and, admittedly, others may have been playing this game years earlier). Now, it may technically constitute mischief, so I’m not condoning it, but the concept was that you’d get a list of three words – generally pretty uncommon/esoteric ones, at that – and then would have to call someone (we always used 24-hour businesses so as not to disturb people at home late at night) and use those three words in the phone conversation.
It made for a pretty fun time, hearing someone try to use the words fallopian, tritium and sagacious in an otherwise ordinary chat with a 24-hour towing service. Of course, you had to put the effort in to really USE the words. You couldn’t say “My name’s John Tritium and I live on Sagacious Boulevard,” for instance. And you had to at least act as though you needed the company’s services, because if you ain’t talkin’ tow truck business, the tow truck people don’t want to talk to you at all.
The rules for Red King.
GIVE.
Message two, since the first was dragging on and this one’s unrelated:
As for Steve Carell, I quite like him in the Office. I think that show’s pretty brilliant, and his deliberately cringe-worthy performance is one of the highlights for me. I suppose it helps when you’ve known people (particularly bosses) who share that same kind of self-delusion whether it’s about their sense of humour or general likeability.
Having said that, I skipped Dan in Real Life, and make a point of avoiding the glut of “it’s funny because they’re quirky” movies that have cluttered the theatres since the Royal Tenenbaums came around (and yes, I’m sure there were plenty of similarly-themed movies before then, but I see that movie – which I actually enjoyed – as having opened the floodgates.)
Admittedly, some of those movies have been okay. I enjoyed the Squid and the Whale and thought Little Miss Sunshine was all right, albeit nothing special, but I’ve seen too many Running With Scissors-es to keep going back to that well. I don’t particularly care to watch annoying, self-absorbed brats and twits whose only “redeeming” quality is their perceived quirkiness within a dysfunctional (and entire unrealistic) family.
That Larry Brown comment was classic. Thank you for that.
ceolaf,
Right, the placing of credit for any particular development is with the caveat , “that we know of”. Mostly, that means that its occurance was noted in a publication.
Advice columns are still with us here in Kansas City. The local newspaper prints several of them every day. Most prominent one is found on the sports page (of all places). I won’t mention the author’s name, but his initials are JW and his advice is generally to fire people who don’t work for newspapers. His primary target for the past few years has been the GM of the local NFL team, who resigned a few days ago. Our columnist will have to find another target, if he hasn’t already. The other columns are mostly concentrating on the local Mayor.
The game of ‘Celebrity’, ‘Celebrities’, or ‘Lunchbox’ (according to Wikipedia) has been around for some time — the Sports Night reference is nine years old, the game being used in the episode called ‘Celebrities’ and being called the same. It seems entirely possible that Mike Vaccaro came up with a rule set for the game without ever having encountered it before and without realizing that the game already existed, much as precocious grade schoolers will sometimes ‘discover’ Euclid’s fifth postulate.
It’d be interesting to see the rules for Red King, but I suspect that the game will end up being extremely similar to other invented games already out there like King Weirdo (http://www.pagat.com/invented/king_weirdo.html).
Sorry to be so pessimistic, but I’m in an Ecclesiastic mood today.
We played a version of the name game that went like this…start with the name of someone in the public arena (sports, entertainment, politics or even an historical name)…say “Abraham Lincoln”…the next person would have to come up with a name that used either “Abraham” or ‘Lincoln” as either a 1st or last name…you could use a common variant of the name so a valid response would be “Abe Gibron”…or “Lincoln Kennedy”…or “John Abraham”…or “Keith Lincoln”…continue until someone got stuck. Naturally there would be arguments when someone didn’t know the person brought up…”Who the hell is Abe Gibron?” Usually this was just to stall to provide more thinking time. Lots of fun.
Mikey- that’s exactly what I think about West Wing and whatever the dramedy-version-of-30-Rock show was called. I genuinely feel sorry for (and more than that, confused by) anyone who feels that way about Sports Night, though.
It wasn’t “unpopular,” it was “unviewed.” There’s a big difference there. You’re literally the first person I’ve ever met who had seen the show and didn’t (at least) really, really enjoy it.
They played the Geography Name Game on MASH. Hawkeye got around the “X” problem by giving BJ the name of a place in Mexico.
Looking at this website, their really shouldn’t be any problem.
http://www.fallingrain.com/world/a/X/
My friends and I have a “movie game” that works similarly to the name/geography games described here, but whose mechanics at least IMHO are more interesting than basing things on letters of the alphabet. Person #1 names a movie; Person #2 names an actor in that movie; Person #3 names a movie that that person was in; and so forth. (No reusing actors or movies. Up to you whether you want to count sequels as separate movies.)
there shouldn’t be any problem
there shouldn’t be any problem
there shouldn’t be any problem
Typed to fast for my brain. Sorry.
Seems many of you learned these games in high school or college.
I was learning drinking games.
I can still roll a quarter off my nose into a cup with my eyes closed.
What is Red King?
I was terrified for a second when you said 2 actors you like, thank God actor number 2 was not Dane Cook
Speaking of Dr. James Naismith, is it true that he’s the only head basketball coach the Kansas Jayhawks have ever had with a LOSING record?
Bill, you’re talking about Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which I agree was a train wreck.
I’ll admit to this: I had it in for Sports Night from the start. I just haaaate Keith Olbermann and I could not bear the idea of a show based largely on his job being successful. Maybe if I went back and watched it now with some distance I would feel differently, but I don’t know.
Olbermann makes me irrational. I’m a lifelong Democrat and a committed Barack Obama supporter, and there were times this year when Olbermann actually made me wish Obama would get beat. He was the worst of sports television, and now he’s the worst of political punditry too.
So consider my view of Sports Night a bit tainted.
I too have played Celebrities and Bag of Nouns. I think this has been going on for quite awhile. I’ve only been playing for the last 3 or 4 years, but I know my friends who introduced me to the game have been playing for 8 – 10 years.
Oh and I don’t know where this came up, but I love Sports Night. Amazing show. I’ve watched the entire series all the way through three or four times now.
Vardibidian:
I played it with my kids in the car. Maps of China in my house are contained in old atlases printed before the Pinying system was adopted. So until they wise up, Halifax is still a winner.
Mikey,
Thanks for the explanation. I dislike Keith Olberman too.
Actually, the character of Casey was based on Craig Kilborn, not Olberman, Just sayin’. The show has nothing to do with Olberman who, admittedly, is an insufferable bore.
Wow. Stepbaker, if that’s true, please inform Olbermann! He has taken credit many times for being the source material for the show.
Google “olbermann sports night” and check out the old ESPN Page 2 article on the show. Should be the second result in the search.
Although I do see some links confirming your point about Kilborn = Casey. Interesting.
It seems that while Kilborn was the basis for a character, Olbermann claims credit for inspiring the WHOLE SHOW, which sounds about right for him.
Someone should remind Olbermann that the show, even though it was funny, failed miserably.
Baseball is cricket, simplified (a) to eliminate the need for scarce and complicated equipment (stumps and bales) and (b) to allow play with fewer people ( by reducing the 360-degree field of play to a 90-degree field).
All other differences are consequent (or merely subsequent) minor tweaks.
Simple.
My daughter has asked me to help her with a version of the Name Game, sort of.
The rules are that each player picks 10 celebrities who, being alive at 0001 hrs CST on January 1, they think will be dead at 2359 hrs CST. Points are allocated by the formula: 100 minus age at time of death. F’rinstance, the first name that came to my mind, Fidel Castro (b Aug 13, 1926) will garner 18 points for his backers if he’s gone in the first half of the year, 17 if he makes it past his birthday, 0 if he sees the year out.
I won’t go into the full set of rules, but the winner gets the right to use the letters MCB after their name in perpetuity.
Amendment: That’s 2359 hrs CST on December 31.
Graphite,
Your example of Fidel Castro is a poor one since he has been dead for some time now. The Cuban government has yet to admit that fact but he has quite definitely ceased to be.
Phil
You may very well be correct. But I’ll quote Rule #9: The ultimate source of the truth is the Dead People Server. Castro’s still alive on their site.
For what it’s worth, we tended to go with excess weight and bad lifestyles among the young and relatively young and a gaunt and drawn look among the ancients. We’re feeling confident. Ghoulishly confident.
Joe –
I think I am my friend’s version of your friend; he hates pretty much every movie I like.
Of course, he’s a pretentious pr*ck that likes obscure “comedies,” but hey, that’s what friends are for: to make you feel like an unwashed heathen every time you mention an enjoyable, average movie.
Just consider how it feels next time you look down your nose at your friend’s taste in movies. It hurts, man!
ps
I liked Dan in Real Life!
Joe:
You and I have the same movie taste. I hated that movie and now it’s on one of our movie channels 12 times a day and my wife likes it.
Watch “Run Fatboy Run” – I expected a 1 and got a 3, so +2.
Margo might like it, too.
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