In Which I Am Treesong

[tablesaw]

One of the most popular after-hours games at con this year was "Exquisite Fruit," a game received by tmcay in a dream, as befits any pastime of the surrealist vein. One person writes down an answer to be guessed, then seven people collaborate to form a clue for that answer in the style of Exquisite Corpse. The first person writes three words, then folds the paper so that the next person can see only the last word and the answer. The second player writes down two words and folds, and so on until the last person adds a single word and asks the question to the person next to them.

There'd been a massive game of Pyramid on Saturday night, and I hadn't thought to collect the categories for posterity. So I decided to grab the clues from a Sunday-night game of Exquisite Fruit when the opportunity arose. Players included Artistry, rubrick, toonhead_npl, jeffurrynpl, Eddy, /Jabberwock, Wraavr, hahathor, cramerica, tmcay and probably someone I'm forgetting. Some higlights:

• What Kubrick film starring Malcolm McDowell singing in the Nadsat slang like "horrorshow" movie?
• What Depression housing Green Acres pig Dahling presidential administration caused homeless in Annie Warbucks?
• What tacky tartan man skirt has many male skirt Scottish Batman was from Scotland?
• What porcine cocktail do goys drink tref and shaken not stirred not fried shaken?
• What jagged building stepped pyramid in middle of Q-Bert’s block pyrmaid but low-resolution Jews?
• What horror face-off between extraterrestrial against queen creature ultimate face-off between two creatures?
• What underwater weapon energy based illogical Captain Skywalker used in Klingon killing weapon explodes?
• What borough in Welcome Back in New York borough Welcome Back from Manhattan neighbor?
• What snackalicious treat like tollhouse recipe is sweet black sweet drops with brown morsels?
• Jerry Lewis’s partner nutty Jerry Lewis often sings "That's Amore" alcoholic not "G-schploing!" smarmy?

More clues with answers here

Always carry an exquisitefruit.

Comments

[paulobrian.livejournal.com]

WOW that was fun. Thanks.

Paul O'Brian

[elusis]

I got most of those, but who on earth associated "Skywalker" with that answer???

Would you recommend a particular number of people for this game?

Did you find it took some "training" to get people to do things like include verbs and conjunctions?

Now I'm trying to remember a game I played on a plane with two friends once - it involved alternating writing and drawing, folded back and forth in Exquisite Corpse manner, but I can't remember the rules or the goal. But it was playable with 3 of us.

[tablesaw]

When we played, we had two columns and seven rows for fourteen words. That takes seven people to write the clue, one person to write the answer, and another person to be asked the question. So nine minimum with that setup. You could probably shave off a few words in the clue, but 14 seems to work well.

The clues above were chosen for their readability. When the clues are read out loud, it adds a patina of sense where there is none, but they don't always look so good in plain text. I think it might help to remind people to attempt to make a grammatically correct question, as much as one can.

The other game sounds like what we call telephone pictionary. There's not really a goal, though we usually play with a larger number than three.