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Square Theory

aaronson.org

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Re: Square Theory

#21

Post by kelseyfrog »

cooperaustinj wrote: post #19
kelseyfrog wrote: post #15

I'm a big fan of killing time on long drives with friendly word games. One of my favorites is a mix between rhyming and square theory. Here's how it works: one player picks two words that rhyme perfectly. Then, for each of those words, they choose a clue word, usually a synonym, but any kind of related word is fair game. They say those two clue words out loud, and the other players have to guess the original rhyming…

Do you know any unfriendly word games I can try?

You could add the additional constraint that the words have to insult the guesser based on their unique psychological vulnerabilities. Hope that helps!

Re: Square Theory

#23

Post by AaronAPU »

jakupovic wrote: post #5

This is pretty cool. I wonder what logic/math describes it?

Semantic Bayesian hyper-graphs where each of the percepts have strong correlation between each other.

I’d argue you could bind them tighter by giving the corners strong relationships to each other as well.

We find these sorts of dense correlations pleasing because it’s the natural way we discover meaning. Even though in this case the meaning is fairly superficial.

Re: Square Theory

#24

Post by [deleted] »

cooperaustinj wrote: post #19
kelseyfrog wrote: post #15

I'm a big fan of killing time on long drives with friendly word games. One of my favorites is a mix between rhyming and square theory. Here's how it works: one player picks two words that rhyme perfectly. Then, for each of those words, they choose a clue word, usually a synonym, but any kind of related word is fair game. They say those two clue words out loud, and the other players have to guess the original rhyming…

Do you know any unfriendly word games I can try?

[deleted]

Re: Square Theory

#25

Post by Someone »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #15

I'm a big fan of killing time on long drives with friendly word games. One of my favorites is a mix between rhyming and square theory. Here's how it works: one player picks two words that rhyme perfectly. Then, for each of those words, they choose a clue word, usually a synonym, but any kind of related word is fair game. They say those two clue words out loud, and the other players have to guess the original rhyming…

Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyming_slang: “The construction of rhyming slang involves replacing a common word with a phrase of two or more words, the last of which rhymes with the original word; then, in almost all cases, omitting, from the end of the phrase, the secondary rhyming word (which is thereafter implied)”

Re: Square Theory

#27

Post by varjag »

Leibnitz once famously said, "Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting". Perhaps solving crosswords is the pleasure mind experiences from doing group theory.

Re: Square Theory

#29

Post by cdkmoose »

joshhug wrote: post #16

The part about dad joke square theory got me thinking about this classic scarecrow joke, which feels like an example from some higher order version of square theory: "Why was the scarecrow given an award?" "He was out standing in his field." The fact that a scarecrow's job is to be "out standing in his field", and that excelling at one's job can be phrased as being "outstanding in his field" is an incredible linguist…

Also, My friend accidentally drank a bottle of invisible ink... she's at the hospital now, waiting to be seen.

"Waiting to be seen" having slightly different meaning with respect to hospitals and invisible ink.

Re: Square Theory

#30

Post by finnh »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #15

I'm a big fan of killing time on long drives with friendly word games. One of my favorites is a mix between rhyming and square theory. Here's how it works: one player picks two words that rhyme perfectly. Then, for each of those words, they choose a clue word, usually a synonym, but any kind of related word is fair game. They say those two clue words out loud, and the other players have to guess the original rhyming…

My family calls that game "pink mink"!
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