The Missing Link Word Association Game

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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Here’s a new game for word association gamers: The missing link game.

The rules:

Associate a word with the target word – then post a word associated with your first word. The mental sequence is: target, missing link, post. For example:

Target: Misery

Missing Link: Company

Post: Business

For added fun, the next poster should also offer a guess at what the missing link word might have been. Thus:

Poster A, associating from the target word “baseball”, thinks “bat”. S/he then thinks “belfry” and posts that.

Poster B thinks “belfy - church - pew” and posts “pew”, and guesses that the missing link was “bat”.

Sample sequence:

** Poster A ** (associating from “winter”, thinks “summer”)

New word: squash
** Poster B ** (thinks “pumpkin”)

Squash - pie

Missing link: summer?
** Poster C ** (thinks “cake”)

Pie - frosting

Missing link: pumpkin?
** Poster D ** (thinks “chocolate”)

Frosting - candy

Missing link: cake?
As Sternvogel has suggested:

So… shall we give it a try? I’ll offer a starter word:

Typos

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New word: baseball

3

Missing link: Errors?

baseball - stockings

4

Missing Link: runs?

stockings = detectives

5

Missing Link: What the…??? Ummmm… All I can think of is “shoes” and that doesn’t get me to “detectives”. :dubious: Unless you thought of the same missing link I’m using in:

detectives - rubbers

:smiley:

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HA! :smiley:
Missing Link: dick, perhaps?

rubbers = paint

fyi: stockings —> Silk Stalkings (an old USA Network detective show) —> detectives … sorry, a bit obscure unless you were into trashy B-movie TV series :stuck_out_tongue:

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Hmmmm… kinda skating on thin ice there with that link, buddy. :wink:

Nope, my Missing Link was detectives - gumshoes - rubbers.

Missing link: Latex?

paint - manure

(Gleefully anticipating the ML guesses) :stuck_out_tongue:

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latex was it.

And I’ll swear, my ML guess was completely innocent. :stuck_out_tongue: private detectives are called private dicks all the time. Honest. (yeah, she’ll believe that) My mind is never, ever, ever in the gutter. (Just dont ask the gang in the OMFG thread.) :smiley:

ML: horse? (a painting of a horse, not painting a horse)

manure = puck

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Horse it is – a Paint Horse, to be exact; it’s a breed, pretty much the same as the Quarter Horse, except for the wild splashes of white. Not to be confused with a pinto, say the purists. :wink:

Missing Link: ball? fork? hockey?

puck - rink

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Not to be confused with a pinto, because Pintos explode on impact.
No … wait … Ford didn’t make horses. Nevermind. :smiley:

hockey it was (horse manure = horse hockey).

ML: skating?

rink = glacier

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Missing Link: ice? That in fact was my ML, although skating tried to elbow it into the boards.

glacier - Swiss

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ML: Alps?

Swiss = cavities

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ML: Alps?

Your typos-errors-baseball guess was correct.

On preview, I see peritrochoid has echoed my guess, so I’ll say holes is the ML between Swiss and cavities.

cavities - ? - cream

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Right you are!

ML: cheese?

cavities* - drill

That’s really too easy, but I’m playing fair and posting my first thoughts.

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ehh … the ML was chocolate, actually. Oooh, that divine Swiss chocolate.

ML between cavities and drill: dentist?

drill = motor

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ML: drill - electric - motor?

 motor - ? - fad

As a bonus, my “cavities - ? - cream” is still in play.

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peritrochoid - okay, chocolate works very well too. Your guess at my ML is correct. My guess at your ML is electric.

Sternvogel - well, I’m gobsmacked – can’t see how you got from cavities to cream.

AH! Might the Sternvogel ML be fillings?

Okay, on preview I see that Sternvogel also guessed peritrochoid’s ML as electric.

I’ll guess the ML between motor and fad is “sports”?

fad -?- style

cream -?- cake

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Actually, electric works as nicely as my originally intended oil does for the drill-to-motor ML.

And, Sternvogel, I’m with EddyTeddyFreddy on the fillings. Or perhaps a play on words with “hole” (whole) cream?

ETF’s MLs: I’m guessing fashion for fad-to-style, and cheese for cream-to-cake. Am I close?

style —> cathedral
cake —> bean

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ML spot on for both fashion and cheese.

Hmmmm… style - Gothic - cathedral?
cake - baked - bean?

cathedral -?- flying
bean -?- Welles

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Nailed the Gothic ML, but coffee was the cake-to-bean ML. Though baked works too.

I say buttress(es) is the ML for cathedral -?- flying … (our history and theory classes make sure that is the ONLY link we architects can make there ;))

Hmm … bean -?- Welles … Orson, perhaps? (Yes, my close friend, Google, helped me with that ML. Sorry)

flying —> license
Welles —> reel