Does anyone know why for the word game “Ghost” (G-H-O-S-T) specifically that 5 letter word was chosen?
I suppose the loser wasn’t killed and turned into one…
I don’t know this game of which you speak… ghost, you say?
Can you describe it? Maybe I know it by a different name…
I know of a word game called ghost, but I’m not sure it’s the same one. First player picks a letter, second player adds a letter to the beginning or end, third player adds another letter, etc… The first person who forms an actual word is out. A person who has just added a letter can be challenged to produce a word that contains the sequence. If he can’t produce such a word, he is out. For example, the progression might go l, il, ili, iliw, ailiw, ailiwi, ailiwic, ailiwick, ailiwicks. At this point there is no letter that can be added to form a sequence that is part of a word but which is not itself a word. The person who added the last letter wins. The word in this example is “bailiwicks”, by the way. It need not have progressed toward “bailiwicks” though. At the “ili” stage, the next person could have made it oili (for boiling, oiling, etc.).
Is this the game you’re thinking of?
I found some rules online here. This appears to be a children’s game, but I never played ghost as a child.
In this version, you have to start at the beginning of the word and add letters to the end of the sequence. In the version I’ve played, you can start anywhwere in the word and add letters to either end. From those rules, I can’t tell if completing a word is a good thing or a bad thing. In this version you get a letter for each word you complete, g for the first, h for the second, then o, s, t. In the version I played, you just start over after a round is finished, and don’t worry too much about who’s ahead.
That’s the game. For some reason, in my wife’s family they call it “four fourths of a ghost”.
I actually remember a different variety of ghost growing up, which I’ve heard called “Geography Ghost”. This game is played by one person saying some geographical location, and the next player has to say another place that begins with the last letter of the previous word. If he can’t come up with a place, he gets a letter (g, then h, etc.) This game usually ends up in a chain of “A’s”, as so many places begin and end with the letter “A” (America, Asia, Africa, Alabama, Austria, etc.)
Back to my OP, anyone have a guess to the origin?