Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you know any unfriendly word games I can try?
Freestyle rap battles
You're right, that's the canonical unfriendly word game!
Square Theory
101–110 of 144 posts
Re: Square Theory
#102I'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…
A few years ago I did something similar in a group chat with some friends. No rhyme, but video game titles reworded using rough synonyms.
Here are some examples with answers in rot13:
Strange, this reunion = Zntvp gur Tngurevat
Boat pork refuge = Nexunz Nflyhz
Donkeybutt taverns gospel = Nffnffvaf Perrq
Caring for the elderly = QBGN
Belongs to me create = Zvarpensg
Superclock = Birejngpu
Top Stories = Ncrk Yrtraqf
Skyline no morning = Ubevmba Mreb Qnja
Re: Square Theory
#103My favorite example, which was an honest translation error from a non-native speaker friend: Hand job (he meant to say manual labor)
Something similar once famously happened with a Japanese vtuber: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeQ5K5DQiDI
To save everyone a click .. it was 'handjob' for 'handwriting'
Re: Square Theory
#104Leibnitz 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.
In "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat," there's a chapter where Oliver Sacks makes a similar argument about music stemming from the case of two autistic twins who couldn't do arithmetic but played a game with each other where they named increasingly large primes. Basically says that music/harmony is a kind of innate appreciation of the numerical relationship between sounds, much like naming primes is an appreciation of the _lack_ of a numerical relationship between numbers. The experience of a resonance between two different things (frequencies, numbers, and in this blog's case words) can exist extremely strongly outside of the ability to operate on those things in the first place. Interesting read.
Re: Square Theory
#105If any good frontend/mobile devs here like crosswords, I need a good frontend for picture crossword designer/generator https://crosswordcomputer.com
Re: Square Theory
#106Wordcels discover category theory lol
Category theory has always been a wordcel concept.
Re: Square Theory
#107Definitely gonna be mentally yelling "THAT'S A SQUARE" every time I see a clever pun or a satisfyingly constructed theme from now on
Re: Square Theory
#108I'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…
That game sounds like a total brain teaser in the best way
Re: Square Theory
#109The 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…
Square theory might call it a diagonal overlay
Re: Square Theory
#110Leibnitz 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.
There's something deeply satisfying about making all the pieces fit under a hidden set of rules