Sunday, June 01, 2008

"verbosity - it's common sense" but I beg to differ...

In my last post I mentioned Games With A Purpose. It's a website where you can play a few different games that have a purpose. For example, one of the games is basically designed to tag pictures. You and your partner are shown the same picture and you have to use "ESP" to determine what your partner types based on the picture. For example, if the picture is of a yellow puppy with a red collar sitting in the green grass, you might type "dog" and your partner might type "green". You keep describing the picture until you and your partner have at some point used the same word. Oh yeah, you play for about four minutes and earn points for every match.

Another game is called "verbosity - it's common sense." In this game, you and your random partner take turns giving clues for the other to guess a "secret word". There are preformatted phrases that the clue giver has to use to plug in up to two words to form the clue. There are about six of these phrases, like "it is the opposite of" or "it is related to" or "it has" or "it is". For example, if the secret word is NEST, as the clue giver I might use the "it is" and fill in BIRD HOME. Hopefully my partner will understand and guess NEST.

"Verbosity - it's common sense" is kind of a bold statement. I've played this game a lot over the past week and sometimes I've been frustrated by the lack of common sense that I've encountered. Let me give you an example.

For the secret word in question, my partner's clue was "it is a kind of" SHEEP FUR.
I guessed FLEECE, which wasn't right immediately followed by WOOL which also wasn't correct.
My partner said "it is a type of" SWEATER MATERIAL
I guessed CASHMERE which wasn't correct, then YARN which also wasn't correct.
My partner said "it looks like" FOOL
I guessed WOOL again thinking that maybe I misspelled it or it didn't transmit (this is an internet game after all). What more could I guess?
My partner passed and we finished playing. After you play a four minute round you can review the game. It shows the clues given and the guesses and the secret word.
Guess what the secret word was that dealt with SHEEP FUR, SWEATER MATERIAL and looks like FOOL?
It was WOOD.
It's common sense but I beg to differ.