Hasbro’s Taboo Is Serious Business, and Mr. Rogers Was in Porn
I am an argument for gun control: heavily influenced by Westerns in my childhood, I firmly believe that the appropriate response to a cheatin’ varmint is to pull out your six-shooter and plug him full of lead. This would be a problem in modern society because modern society is mostly made up of cheatin’ varmints, and I’m not just talking about Goldman-Sachs (although they count too). No, this is a story about cheatin’ varmints at a game of Taboo.
Serious Business
Without going into too much detail, it was made clear by the cheatin’ varmints team that the upholders of nobility team had not properly scored a point when they managed to guess “The Joker” for a card with the clue “joke.” It was argued — to no avail — that the word was contained in the shouted phrase, and therefore had been said. No point was scored.
Fast forward several points, and another representative of Team Uprightness and Honor described “sandal” as “a piece of footwear, on the beach, for sand.” It was pointed out that “sand” was part of “sandal,” and therefore the team had fouled and lost a point.
THEN THERE WAS A FIREFIGHT
Well, all right, not a firefight. But the two arguments were one and the same, and people were not shy in arguing that either part of a word counted as saying the word — in which case the point for “joke” stood — or it did not, in which case “sand” was not a foul. Words were exchanged. Feelings were hurt. Taboo is serious business.
I bring this up for you my loyal readers mostly because I like to humiliate my friends publicly, but also because I think there is an important lesson here for writers with a desire to be clever. Words that contain other, unrelated words are literary landmines — always effective, but often unintentionally so, so be careful where you set them. It’s a safe bet that William Faulkner’s protagonist Joe Christmas had something to do with Jesus Christ; it is less certain that Mr. Rogers was actually a sex fiend. But that hasn’t stopped porn stars from alluding to him*.
The moral here is really very simple: words matter, even when they have nothing to do with the word you used outside of a few shared syllables. Go back through your manuscript. Look for really awkward coincidences. Then write them down for when you want to make people feel really awkward at a party, and cut them out of the manuscript. But remember them for your next game of Taboo.
You cheatin’ varmints.
* EDITOR’S NOTE: “Roger” is slang for intercourse, and yes, there is a porno. I’d have linked to it, but the movie starts playing immediately and I didn’t think everyone needed to see that. Google “Mr. Rogers Porn name” if you really need to know. I won’t judge you.
The point could be made that “the answer is what’s on the card”. In many guessing games it is essential to get the phrasing precisely. Which frankly isn’t that hard:
Drunk dude 1: Why so serious?
Drunk dude chorus: Joker!
Drunk dude 1: Ok shorter form of that word
Drunk dude chorus: Joke!
As a second point, official taboo rules state:
• No form or part of ANY word printed on the card may be given as a clue. Examples: If the Guess word is PAYMENT, “pay” cannot be given as a clue. If DRINK is a Taboo word, “drunk” cannot be given as a clue. If
SPACESHIP is the Guess word, you can’t use “space” or “ship” as a clue.
Now you will notice that this is explicitly stated as a rule for what kind of clues may be given rather than criteria for what counts as a win. The fact that you can’t conjugate or shorten taboo words does not in anyway negate that the answer is what’s printed on the card.
One could argue these points, however with the amount of wine consumed at our gatherings it seems to me that the point could be made that we are lucky people are still speaking English and points should be awarded accordingly.
As I said: Serious Business.
I definitely Googled this Mr. Rogers information because seriously, how can you not *have* to know something like that.
This post was the top result.
… I think we’ve been had.
Another thing I’m famous for, go me. But it’s there, I swear!