Inspired by what threatened to be, aptly enough, a hijack in the thread on rogue pilots, I thought we could have a go at Travelling Lemon. This is a game popularised by the world’s all-time best sitcom, Cabin Pressure but which I understand is played for real by pilots and cabin crews the world over, particularly on long and boring flights as a way of dealing with the inevitable monotony. If you ever find yourself on a long flight watching cabin crew, and even an occasional pilot, pass back and forth, forth and back through the cabin, even though no bell has been rung, it is likely that a game is on.
The rules of the real-life game are simple. Player 1 takes a small and incongruous object - could be anything but a lemon is traditional - and places it in plain sight somewhere in the passenger cabin. The remaining players have simply to locate it and then take their turn to re-site it for the others to find. The most sacred rule is that it must be in plain sight - this is a test of observation, not discovery.
A text based version seems implausible, but let’s give it a go. We can finesse the rules as we go, but what I’m basically thinking is that each player makes a short to medium-ish post, on any topic they like, into which they somehow weave the word “lemon”. I won’t be too prescriptive about how this is to be done, as part of the fun is discovering new ways to do it. All I ask is that we stick to the “in plain sight” principle.
For example, although word “lemon” appears, to my count, five times in this post as an ordinary written word, the finding of which denotes no particular skill, the observant may have already spotted the sixth occurrence. If so, tell us where and then hide one in your own post.
I don’t know about this thread idea, to be honest. It may work in a visual observation medium like a plane full of passengers, with many details and distractions to make the game more challenging, but simply working a word into a paragraph or two, and hoping it won’t be spotted, seems like a bit of a stretch.
Also, I think the game may work better in a situation with the ample monotony that pilots experience on regular long-haul flights-- those kinds of conditions may make the game a fun distraction, but I’m not so sure it will work in this particular medium.
Did anybody spot the lemon? I may have bent the rules a bit.
Good luck with it, not sure how it’ll work but as an aside I’ll mention that my daughter (a fan of Cabin Pressure like all sane individuals) crocheted a lemon in order for us to play it around the house. Good times
Hmm, let’s examine my options now: Should I spell the word backwards and use that ? Or could I say it another language, like Spanish? What do we think?
True! Just like in the real-life version, where as @solost says there is an entire passenger cabin full of its own visual noise to contend with, longer posts are going to be more effective. Obviously that places a certain onus on the concealer; equally obviously, a, say, 1000 word post would make the game tedious for both concealers and searchers as we cross the needle-in-a-haystack point.
The sweet spot, I suppose, is a post of sufficient length that it is not immediately obvious where to look, but is neither too onerous to compose nor to sift through. Is 200 words too few? Some say no - me (loquacious to a fault) I’m happy with posts of up to 500 words, even if that entails readers poring over them backwards and forwards.
This of course raises the question of where to place your contraband citrus. Firmly in the middle of the text? Or perhaps smuggle it in early, or leave it late in a double-bluff? In any case, the trick surely is to place it where the eye will glance over it - as Vetinari said in one of the Pratchett novels, the secret is not put it where no one will look, but where they will look but not see it.
Looks to me, given the similarity of their own construction, that the first reply probably spotted the lemon enclosed in the phrase “inevitable monotony”. Took me a short while, but as a big crossword fan it was maybe the second or third thing I looked for. Nice idea for a game and all plays so far seem valid. I’m only sorry that I still haven’t got round to listening to Cabin Pressure in full, despite previously being notified here and elsewhere how good it is.
Oh, and I found the previous lemon - well hidden, in reverse, in “no - me, loquacious”. Nice little hint later in the paragraph.
Nice game; I think we could keep this going for a while – we have a similar real-life game going around our house.
Once, my wife and I went on vacation. Our kids stashed 200 rubber ducks around the house. We’re still finding ducks, and this was two years ago.
My wife took this as a challenge, re-hiding the ducks for the kids to find, and she’s using it as an incentive. She’ll hide ducks in the holiday decorations so that they are found when the decorations are put away.
Even the cats are getting into it. I’ve found one of them lying in the sun, licking a duck. The dog, on the other hand, eats them.
Let’s see how quickly the “Lemon” is found in this post.
Summary
@Dead_Cat - Found yours; I was surprised it worked - I thought the line-length was variable depending on the browser
Let’s be honest, it’s hard to come up with new ways to hide a word. Let’s see what we can do. Every post is a chance to try something new. Maybe the next post will come up with something great. Or maybe not. Nobody knows. But let me know if you find mine. It shouldn’t be too hard, I hope.
Well, it took me 3 attempts (as evidenced by my redacted posts) - I thought the preview window would help me, but it turned out it wasn’t precise enough. In the end I used the “<br>” tag at appropriate places and it seems to have worked.
Found it - first letter of sentences 2-6.
Found the one in the video, too .
I agree it will be interesting to see how many original ways we can come up with, to be honest I’m already struggling.
Don’t be silly, that would be too easy.
I think any sort of ASCII art or emoji use is going to be too obvious as well, but feel free to prove me wrong. Ooh, I wonder if any of those Magic Eye pictures had the citrus fruit in question as the hidden image? I was never any good at those anyway - probably because my left eye myopia only needs minor correction, but I could never make them work whether wearing my glasses or not. And in any case probably violates the ‘plain sight’ rule. Ah well, I’ll come back later if I think of something.
I guess you must be on a tablet or desktop, as now I’m viewing it on a mobile and it’s hopeless! So that was lucky. I could have done it with the “preformatted text” tag as well I think, but that would have made it too obvious.
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