Black Hole
May contain traces of nut
The object is to create a chain of valid English words, obeying the rules of succession at each step. There are no bars to anyone joining in, although a player needs to take care that another player doesn't get a post in first and thereby invalidates his word. There are no penalties, other than having your play ruled invalid and ignored.
No editing of posts (not the game word anyway) - you don't know whether somebody is considering the next move based on what you have already posted, and it would be unfair to break the chain by altering a previous play.
There are no winners; the aim is to collectively extend the chain for as long as possible (ultimately it will not be possible to continue the chain in a valid way). There are no losers, because it is inevitable that the chain will end after maybe 12 or 16 turns. When the steam runs out in one chain, we'll just start again and see if we can make a longer chain next time.
Rules for valid succession:
No editing of posts (not the game word anyway) - you don't know whether somebody is considering the next move based on what you have already posted, and it would be unfair to break the chain by altering a previous play.
There are no winners; the aim is to collectively extend the chain for as long as possible (ultimately it will not be possible to continue the chain in a valid way). There are no losers, because it is inevitable that the chain will end after maybe 12 or 16 turns. When the steam runs out in one chain, we'll just start again and see if we can make a longer chain next time.
Rules for valid succession:
- Correctly spelt, recognised English word (not including proper nouns) - ie words that would be valid in Scrabble (but not those transliterated foreign words that appear in Scrabble dictionaries!). Note that not every word normally spelt with an initial capital is a proper noun (or not an excluded one, anyway).
- The new word may differ from the previous word to only a very limited extent:
.- The new word must contain all the letters from the previous word, plus an additional letter, in any order;
- The letters are distinguishable - eg if the previous word contains three 'A's, the new word must also contain three 'A's and possibly one more.
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- The new word must contain all the letters from the previous word, plus an additional letter, in any order;
- Any particular player may not play another word until two other words have been played. This is to prevent any one player dominating the play, or to devise a strategy. Players currently barred from playing again due to this rule are referred to as "in nib" - a tribute to the I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue game Mornington Crescent (what do you mean you've never heard of it??!).
