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Rachel, in ‘Medical Malapropisms’ (Wordplay) gave me this idea for a game, if anyone would like to try.
PASS THE PARCEL (web-enabled)
1 The Starter chooses a word in (reasonably common) use in Standard English (all variants!), and privately mails it to the First Recipient.
2 The Recipient must try to surreptitiously introduce this word as many times as possible into their ordinary posts within (and only within) the Miscellaneous and Wordplay & Fun threads.
3 Others must guess the word, mailing the Starter privately with their guesses as posts build the evidence.
4 The Starter can announce a hit by the Guesser, and the score achieved by the First Recipient prior to being sussed.
5 Each Recipient will end up with their own score plus 50% of the score of their successor, to encourage the conspiracy factor!
6 The First Recipient becomes the new Starter the next day (allowing for the spread of time zones) and the successful Guesser becomes the Second Recipient…
7 The new Starter can then choose a new word, to privately mail to the Second Recipient, who tries in their turn to introduce it into their conversation…
It might be fun, an innocent background noise within the other threads of meaning – and the balance to be struck by choosing too plain a word (easy to introduce) and too strange a word (easy to spot) should be a challenge.
Question – would it be better if each new Recipient remained completely anonymous, so that the field would not know whom to even suspect? Or maybe just announce the world regional zone: “The new Mr or Ms X comes from the Antipodes…”?
Sign up here if you feel like this is worth a try – if we get a big enough nucleus starting, all others could join in or ignore as they chose.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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How clever, mav. Sign me up. But don't make me go first!
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Carpal Tunnel
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I'm game (no shower yet), sign me up.
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old hand
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old hand
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Well, if Max is playing, I'll play. 
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Carpal Tunnel
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Got me, Sweetie! (but you knew that.) This sounds like GREAT fun!  Are you going to announce the Starter?
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mav,
I'd participate, but how would anyone expiscate the selcouth in my postings?
-joe (an eldritch in a ptui) friday
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old hand
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old hand
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In reply to:
...expiscate the selcouth...
And when I run these words through Atomica (suggested in some other thread ~ don't recall where), it thinks you might mean "explicate the BellSouth".
No OED handy, but I suppose I can extrapolate from the context... 
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Anonymous
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Anonymous
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neat sign me up. bridget=) Ipsa scientia potestas est ~Bacon
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Carpal Tunnel
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The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
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Yeah, what the hell. And for what it's worth, my feeling is that the recipient should be completely anonymous - no hints of any sort, unless it proves too difficult for the participants.
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member
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Well, I'm not sure that I make enough posts at the moment to count but, seeing as though it sounds as though the whole thing is my fault ;-) you'd best count me in too!
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Anonymous
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Anonymous
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BTW, mav.... you will tell us when the game has begun, won't you?
bridget=)
Ipsa scientia potestas est ~Bacon
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journeyman
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journeyman
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What an excellent word game---even though I am new to this forum---I would like to try it---sounds like fun. enthusiast
enthusiast
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Pooh-Bah
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Ok me too, now I've read the last 300 posts!
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Carpal Tunnel
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I got lost 'round about Rule 4 ... but I would follow it with great interest ... if I knew where to go look for the "answers" as they progress ... how do we find out what the selected word was after it is guessed and when a new word is in play?  I will be sitting in the cheering section... just let me know when to Hip Hip Hurrah! wow
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Rule 4 ... OK, looks like we could give it a try. Consensus seems to be to try it completely anonymously at least to begin with. The idea of the 50% scoring thing was to deter someone from setting a word like 'aardvaark', which might be too easy to guess even in our conversations! Yes, I think the word, when guessed, would be announced here by the poser of the question, together with a tally of the number of times the candidate reckoned to have slipped it into use. Then the parcel would change hands. It might be easier if I suggested clearer names for the pair of active participants in play - say, Poser and Poster? So as each Poster is rumbled, the Poser announces the result; then the Poster becomes the new Poser, sending privately a new word to whoever had successfully guessed the last one; and announces that the parcel has been passed... then in due course, announces that someone has mailed them a private note successfully guessing the word and identity of the Poster... Clear (as mud!)? Good; I'll post a separate message to keep the active position clearly flagged.
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The fox is loose...
Don't forget: only the two sections of Misc and Wordplay are fair game!
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TEd
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old hand
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old hand
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Seems to me that you don't need to sign people up to play unless they want to be the Poster. Anyone else should just be able to jump in and guess the mystery word.
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Seems to me that you don't need to sign people up to play unless they want to be the Poster. Anyone else should just be able to jump in and guess the mystery word.
I'm sure that's true. As I understood it, maverick simply wanted to make sure that there would be enough participants to make it interesting. Surely, anyone who guessed the word would jump at the chance to set their own mystery word? In the unlikely event that my meagre wits stumbled upon the answer, I would love to set the next one, something discreet, like supercallifragilisticexpialidocious, for example.
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you don't need to sign people
This is true for the new guesser, but as Jackie pointed out it will make it infinitely harder to know who to look out for when the parcel is announced as changing hands. So to compromise I propose to post a list of current possible participants, which can be edited to be kept current, as people message me to add or delete a name. Thus anyone new can join immediately prior to offering a guess.
And at wise tsuwm's suggestion, I also propose a revision to the scoring to penalise poor guesses, in case the poor poser gets pi**ed off with problematic propositions! So how about if each wrong guess also counts as a point to the Poster?
BTW, the first fox's brush has been sighted at least 10 times in the messages bounced to my email account from yesterday, so I will now do a current check-up...
(edited in)
The result is posted under PTP Tally - I suggest we try and keep that thread purely for the tagging on of who has just been unmasked with their score, and append general ongoing messages on this thread.
BTW, to check the result, I noted the time of the private guess post sent to me, then used the Search feature to list the incidence of the target word within the target timeframe and threads. I then needed to check by opening each one that was Max's for the number of times he had fitted it in - being highlighted in bold makes this a quick job.
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Carpal Tunnel
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clarification please: does the multiple use of the "secret word" in one post count as 'one' or 'multiple' uses?
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multiple use of the "secret word" in one post
...should score 1 for each usage, I reckon, as it gives a much fatter clue for us to notice a pattern.
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Carpal Tunnel
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The gowk is on the run again. Time once more for the indomitable to pursue the ineffable, once the new Poster checks for the relevant private message.
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Thanks for giving the heads up about posting general messages here, tsuwm And heads up again peeps - Bridget has joined as a potential victim, uh, player
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
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Hang onto your hats, folks, we're off again!
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hats, we're off.. or should that be heads?! Do I sense a sentence looming, a kind of higher function metagame - or would that be Simply Improper?
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mav, I'm going to withdraw my name from consideration. personally, I'm finding it too distracting to look for repeating words along with reading for content (and puns) in the usual proliferation of posts, so I don't think I should leave my name in the mix, undoubtedly adding to the noise.
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Tsuwm, you said, "I'm going to withdraw my name from consideration".
WAIL !!
Oh, I hope to see a post that you're back in!
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I gather from Jackie that she has passed the poisoned parcel on to a new recipient - not sure if her own computer is letting her aboard properly at the moment. I assume the fox is now running with new legs, so post guesses to Jackie as you choose...
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I think this seems to have been dying a quiet death, with one poor soul left trailing a word that no-one's guessing. I suggest we read the last rites, unless anyone wants to suggest a variation that would make it faster and more interesting?
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Mav, I still like your idea. Can we try to make it easier by identifying the cluegiver?
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the cluegiver
Each cluegiver is the previous recipient, so should be known already. Perhaps it should be a phrase, say up to 3 words, to be introduced?
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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My mistake; I meant the person placing the clues to the word in the posts. Recipient, then. Should we try identifying the recipient?
And the phrase concept is a good variant. Why not designate either a word or a phrase as the parcel?
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old hand
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old hand
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Good thoughts both, Sparteye. I'd be on board with those revisions to the game.
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The phrase thing sounds okay to me. I'm not creative, so I can't think up stuff like this on my own. But I think we do need something to make the rounds go faster, and this could do it. And yet, we don't want it to be obvious.
This is a great game idea, and I really hope somebody can come up with a workable way to keep it running.
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old hand
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old hand
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Anyone thought any further on how to keep the parcel passing? I thought it had built up some real momentum there for a while, but now... I don't know where the energy diffused.
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Looks to me like PTP:RIP.
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