The Lost Parlor Game

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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When I was a kid my family often found itself crammed in a car for cross country trips. We had the usual activities to keep ourselves busy, like playing car bingo, looking for Mustangs, and avoiding crushings, foot choppings, and drownings (hands on the roof when you go under an overpass, lift your feet when you go over train tracks, and hold your breath when you go over a bridge.) One trip my father introduced us to a word game called *Ghost * which soon became our favorite in or out of the car. I have never met anyone who remembers this game which was once a popular parlor game.

Then one day I was reading a piece by James Thurber and he was talking about Ghost! I was so excited that one of my favorite writers used to sit around with his friends and enjoy the same activity. Thurber wrote the piece to explain a version of the game they created called *Superghosts * (they played ‘ghosts’ plural instead of ‘ghost’) where you could add to either end of the current letter group.

The game (just plain Ghost) is played by a group of people in rotation. The first player names a letter. The second adds a letter to it, and so on. The object is to avoid completing a word (of at least four letters.) But, you always have to know a word that starts with those letters. The three-letter exception allows you to complete a short word without being called on it, for example you can start a game with A… then AN…, then ANT…, but if someone added ‘S’ it would spell a word of four letters (ANTS) and the player would lose that round. Each loss of a round gives the loser a letter of the word ‘ghost.’ And when you spell ‘ghost’ you are out of the game.

Now, if someone adds a letter so that there is a series of letters you don’t recognize as the beginning of a word, you have two options. 1. You can challenge the previous player to announce the word he has in mind. If he has a valid word you lose the round. If he doesn’t have a word (because of misspelling or bluffing) he loses the round.
2. You can bluff and hope that the next player believes you and plays his own bluff.

The game is played in the head (the mind, not the bathroom) without pencil or paper (although you may play that way if you like) and can be played anywhere. I would suggest, however, that you play in the vicinity of a good dictionary.

This is my bit to revive a lost game. If anyone has ever played this I would enjoy hearing about it.

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Ghost is great fun in the car. Most people, I’ve found, think it’s too much work. Those who like it really like it. Superghost sounds awe-inspiring. Thanks for sharing.

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My dad taught me this – he and I used to play it when we went on walks. Good memories, thanks.

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I guess it goes without saying that I enjoyed that game, too. Superghosts sounds like a neat game to play at the beach, maybe during putt-putt. :cool:

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I used to play Ghost, then Superghost although I thought I invented it and never gave it a name. (It isn’t a huge leap to think of adding letters to both ends of the word in progress. In fact, I would assume that thousands of others “invented” also inveneted Superghost.

So, either version was always good fun, but…

I found Dictionary (or Lexicon?) even better, especially with imaginative folks.

When it’s your turn, you go to a dictionary and pull out a word which you hope will be unknown to everyone in the game and announce it, spell it, if necessary.

Then everyone (you, too) writes down his/her definition of the word. The idea is to write a bogus, but extremely convincing definition, which will force your fellow players to bite.

Since you’re “IT”," you write the true definition, but in a way that doesn’t sound like it came out of the dictionary.

You collect the papers, mix 'em up, and proceed to read the definitions. Then you all vote for the most convincing definition. A player gets a point for each vote she gets - true or bogus.

When the round is over, another player becomes “IT” and off you go again.

Make the “game” score - 20 points, 30 points - whatever you choose.

Sounds tame, but when you get a bunch of smart people together, the definitions are often intriguing and uproarious.

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Oh Antiochus, you have no idea…

I was holding the description of the dictionary game in reserve, but you have just described my all-time favorite game. My father also introduced us to this game, but many years after we learned Ghost. This superseded Ghost as our favorite word game.

The way we score it is 1 point if you choose the right definition, 1 point for you for every person who guesses your fake definition.

It is amazing how much strategy can go into this game.

I play with some clever and witty people and you are right about it being uproarious. Sometimes you find yourself with your hands up in the air after hearing five or six perfectly plausible definitions. But every now and then someone can’t resist a joke definition. One time the word was galyak (a fur made from the pelt of a stillborn lamb or kid.) But one of my brothers couldn’t resist defining it as “the female yak.”

We weren’t really sure what to call the game, we just called it “the dictionary game.” I suggested to my sister that we call it “Gardyloo.” This has a humorous connotation for us since it was the biggest laugh in the first game we played years ago. Someone found this word in the old dictionary at the beach house we shared. It sounded so absurd that the definitions were off the wall.

Do you want to know what “gardyloo” means? I’ll keep you in suspense until the next post.

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How delighted I am to find you loved the dictionary game!! (That was one of our names for it, as well)

Your scoring is the way we did it, too, now that you mention it.

Once, a physicist friend of ours, concluded his somewhat technical definition of a word with with “See diagram.” It was so clever, I felt comelled to for his definition even though I knew it to be false.

In the hands of word lovers, Dictionary is a a marvelous game.

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Dear Ex Machina,

How delighted I am to find you love the dictionary game!! (That was one of our names for it, as well)

Your scoring is precisely the way we did it, too, now that you mention it.

Once, a physicist friend of ours, concluded his somewhat technical definition of a word with with “See diagram.” It was so clever, I was compelled to for his definition even though I knew it to be false.

In the hands of word lovers, Dictionary is a a marvelous game.

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This is what ‘gardyloo’ means: www.gardyloo.com

Can you imagine someone dipping into the dictionary and coming up with this gem? We immediately accused him of making the word up, of course.

One game, a brother of mine pulled off something devious. When he found a word he would write the definition, but he would also find other definitions on the same page and write them on other pieces of paper. Then he submitted those definitions for other words as if he made them up. Several people complimented him on his well constructed bluffs. He realized what a serious breach of the spirit of the game he had committed so he leaned over to me and confessed. (He was either confessing or bragging, it was actually hard to tell.) I want to emphasize that this was CHEATING. Please think of this as a warning and not a suggestion.

My father’s pet ruse was to start a fake definition with the words “of or pertaining to…” He passed away several months ago but I’m sure that phrase will always get a laugh when it crops up.