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FuchsiaGame

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F-U-C-bugger

An antechamber game, and source of the name for the antemailinglist? cthfuchsia. Synonomous with "magenta", from the colour of the popular flower (see also WikiPedia?:Fuchsia).

Objective

To force another player to complete a word.

Corollary: Don't choose a word that'll come back to bite you in the ass.

Rules

• Players sit in a closed ring. (e.g. sprawled around an antechamber or CafeNescafeCafe? table)
• The first player calls out a letter.
• The second player thinks of a word beginning with that letter. She calls out the next letter.
• The third player thinks of a word beginning with that pair. He calls out the next letter.
• The fourth player thinks of a word beginning with that triple and calls out the next letter. However, you must avoid completing a word or the round ends.
• Following players continue adding letters until someone is forced to end the word, or concedes (cannot think of a letter to follow with).
• The conceding player begins the next round.

Same rules as Scrabble regarding proper nouns?

Length

Three letter words do not count (D-O-G-), but must still form the start of a longer word (D-O-G-M-A), or they can be challenged.

There is no time limit but the other players will begin to heckle loudly if you don't call a letter or concede quickly.

Bluffing

Bluffing is allowed and encouraged. This includes calling any old letter (and not having a word in mind), and ending a word and hoping the next player doesn't notice.

Challenges

Similarly, you can challenge the previous player. If you challenge successfully they must start the next round. If you challenge unsuccessfully, you have conceded and must begin the next round. (It is the responsibility of the about-to-caller to challenge, although others may get exesperated and do so themselves.)

Adjudication is by group shouting and consensus. (Or a reference if someone has dragged one along. Permissiveness is encouraged, especially roleplaying and fantasy terms that everyone should know.)

IRC variant rules

• Start a new #fuchsia channel to avoid hogging #CLAWs?
• Use the alphabetical list of nicks as the order of the ring (or the reverse order)
• Spell out the word so far (rather than just your letter) for easy reading
• more?
• there has been promise of a fuchsia chanbot - some kind of pass or timeout would be required - ooh, or a playing chanbot (rather than just adjudicating)

So why is it called Fuchsia?

Because the popular/obvious start is F-U-C-, which used to end in "bugger" until our vocabulary expanded. And F-U-C-H-S-I-bugger sounds silly.

Origins (by SchpatOhEight)

One day we were sitting arround in the antechamber, as lackless layabouts so often do, and we were totally bored, as lackless layabouts so often are, so we started playing word games. After a particularly rousing bout of word-association-tennis between Adriaan and Alex got very boring, especially for me because it's impossible to play word-association-tennis with three players, I remembered a game played by Jason Priestley in a rather crap movie called Calendar Girl.

The plot of Calendar Girl, as stated by IMDB is:

"Three young men go on an end of the summer trip to Hollywood, CA. Their quest: to fulfill the fantasy of meeting Marilyn Monroe." - As I remember the movie, their fantasy wasn't just to "meet" Marilyn Monroe, but I digress.

Anyway, the Jason Priestley character was always starting this game with his two friends, and he always started with the same letter... "F". His like minded friend would then go "U" and the Smart Guy (tm) would go "C" at wich point Jason Priestley would go "I don't want to play anymore!". The Smart Guy (tm) was the narrator and his joke was that the game always played out the same way because his friend never learnt to spell Fuchsia. (I'd also like to point out that we could never agree how to spell it until someone actually brought in a dictionary)

Anyway, I explained the game to Alex and Ardi and also the advantages of a three player game and they were quickly convinced. I think the next person to get in on the action was Darren Menachemson (weird-ass yiddish names!) and then possibly Robbie van Dierman. Soon a three player game became an as-many-people-as-we-can-fit-in-the-antechamber game! The game was a hit!

From that point on the serious competitors generally started a game at the begining of Lunch (yes I said lunch not "Meridian", I'm old school) and played for hours. This behaviour continued for weeks, if not months, a surprisingly long period if you consider the attention span of the average lackless layabout!

heh :) thank you for finding the name of that movie. i remember watching it the night before we first played (so i think we were finalising/formulating rules rather than explaining). i just could never remember then name of it and when "calander girls" came out i kept thinking çalander girls... nah that's not it, thats the movie about the nekkid british slapper-grannies. i think we tried multiple variations on the "short words shouldn't count" problem ranging from 2-5 letters. maybe we should have it as a tourney event at dragonfires. - ZenStar

Comments

clawtable games will be initiated soon, dammit - was there ever the option to pass rather than concede? - d@vid sep 13 2004

Nope, passing was never part of the game. Deciding you absolutely had to leave the antechamber because the hamster you smuggled to varsity that day had suddenly disappeared, was a recognised tactic however. Some older members insisted that three-letter words do count -- GnomeThing sep 13 2004

Whenever I played, 3 letter words counted, you were only safe on one and two iirc -- SynKronos

not that i recall ever having played with either of you, but i remember it being four letters and up - three letter words tending to end rounds prematurely -- nhb.

For a while, I kept track of the really long words we came up with. I've since lost that record (along with the PDA it was on), but I still remember the longest being "Interorganisational". Yes, it really happened. Sounds like something an MBA cooked up, but it's out there... -- GnomeThing 14 sep 2004

And nobody noticed that inter is actually a word (meaning to bury)? By the way, there is exactly one play from FUCHSI...* that doesn't complete a word. -- TheosThree *Sep 17 2004

good point, that man - although I find two plays, one which leads to one of two 14 letter words describing avid players of the game - d@vid sep 17 2004

Guess we should also mention a few other favourites that came up: the syz-, wyv- and dh- root words and all the STDs? we could think of... -- GnomeThing 17 sep 2004