Mischmasch

Sorry for not posting for a while, but Steven and I have been really busy with school, so we haven’t had the time to have any cool ideas to blog about.

Mischmasch is another game proposed by our favorite Logician/Author Lewis Carroll for two (or two sets of) players. The aim of the game is to score 10 points before the other player.

To start the game, each player proposes a ‘nucleus’, that being a group of letters that are contained in a word (you don’t have to know a word that contains it, but I highly recommend that you do). The goal is for the other person to either think of a word containing that nucleus, determine that there is no such word, or give up within a set time limit.

ex. nuclei (’aj’,'ims’)
ex. answers (’major’,'himself’)

After both players are ready, they state their respective answers. Points are assigned as follows:

= Guessing a word correctly (it doesn’t have to be the same word the other player thought of) - gain 1 point

= Guessing a word incorrectly - other player gains 1 point

= Guessing ‘no word’ correctly - gain 2 points

= Guessing ‘no word’ incorrectly - other player gains 2 points

= Giving up - other player gains 1 point

If someone gives up on a nucleus, it can’t be used again during the game, though a variation can. If a player fails to answer at all during the time limit, they are not penalized, but must continue with that nucleus until they give one of the three responses. Obviously, if in a turn both players reach 10 points, the game is drawn.

This game is crazy fun! Steven and I, upon learning this game, played it for about 2 hours straight. Seemingly easy nuclei can be intensely difficult, and if one isn’t prepared for the mental load, the intellectual workout can be quite shocking. Since this is a real time game, we can’t very well play it through a blog, but I’ll leave you with a couple nuclei that stumped Steven. See if you can figure them out (and no Googling!!!!!!!).

‘rax’

‘isj’