Which game named itself?
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- Опубликовано: 5 авг 2023
- Jeremy Fielding, Estefannie and Inés Dawson face a question about a game with an identity crisis.
LATERAL is a weekly podcast about interesting questions and even more interesting answers, hosted by Tom Scott. For business enquiries, contestant appearances or question submissions, visit www.lateralcast.com
GUESTS:
Jeremy Fielding: @JeremyFieldingSr, / jeremy_fielding
Estefannie: @Estefannie, / estefanniegg
Inés Dawson: @DrawCuriosity, / ineslauradawson
HOST: Tom Scott.
QUESTION PRODUCER: David Bodycombe.
RECORDED AT: The Podcast Studios, Dublin.
EDITED BY: Julie Hassett.
GRAPHICS: Chris Hanel at Support Class. Assistant: Dillon Pentz.
MUSIC: Karl-Ola Kjellholm ('Private Detective'/'Agrumes', courtesy of epidemicsound.com).
FORMAT: Pad 26 Limited/Labyrinth Games Ltd.
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: David Bodycombe and Tom Scott.
© Pad 26 Limited (www.pad26.com) / Labyrinth Games Ltd. 2023. 
Развлечения
Tom's reaction to "witch hunting?" at 1:00 is great
That was the moment I got the answer, though for the wrong reason. I thought maybe it was named after the sound of a glass squeaking. Only later when they started talking about letters did I realise that the inventors must have asked the game what the game was called.
Yes, I immediately got it from there 😁 My first guess was scrabble as well though... Maybe throwing random letters onto the board...
POV: you're a history expert and were just asked if King Arthur came a lot
"Did I leave the cooker on?!"
At 2:06 when the question came up "So can we have a clue?", I was really hoping someone would chime in, "It's called Cluedo in Britain."
🤣
I was definitely confident in Scrabble, as the inventor's second game was titled "Albert's Other Game". However, scrabble wasn't invented until 1931.
I was thinking yahtzee! Haha
Do you mean Alfreds Other Game?
I thought it would be Boggle, because the inventor could have just thrown a few dices from the game to come-up with the name.
that was my guess too
Me too
The makers were very lucky that it didn't name itself the Zqrtwvyx board!
There's also a couple of "chinese whispers" type games that have "named themselves" via phrases generated by gameplay - "Eat Poop You Cat" and "cadavre exquis" or "Exquisite Corpse"
But, in that case, the game was named by a human, not by the game itself.
CAUTION, SPOILER AHEAD
I'd be interested to see a study where all of the participants touching the 'planchette' (as I learned it's called in the Wikipedia article) were blindfolded, and the output of the board was recorded by someone else.
This has been done many times. The result is always the same. If you blindfold the participants, the board only speaks complete gibberish. Ouija board believers either don't like to bring up this fact, or say that the spirits see out of the eyes of the participants.
Like how the ja in the name is inexplicably pronounced gee, for some reason the plan planchette seems to be said as plaank ket rather than pla shet
I was thinking Boggle, thought someone shook the box of letters and put the name that the letters happened to spell out.
"skeptics would argue it didn't name itself" gave it away for me.
As soon as you said Baltimore, I was like "Ooh! Hometown advantage! I know this one!"
I would argue nobody believes this game named itself - surely believers would say that a spirit named the game!
I was about to write that, but then remembered that they asked the board itself rather than a spirit. And we all know that all spirits are honest and don't play pranks 😅
The board itself is conscious 😮
I was expecting basketball, invented in 1891. It has a basket, it has a ball.
As was I. It fits the question perfectly. Besides, several online sources say the modern Ouija board was invented in 1890.
"Named itself" doesn't work like that. Someone has named it
I was thinking the exact same - I spent half the video stuck on "....how did a basketball name itself??" lol.
Well, by that logic nearly every -ball game would work (leaving only the date as a clue - which Tom said _wasn't_ particularly important). Football, netball, handball, pinball, paintball, etc.. They don't create words as part of the game, though, so they can't really "name themselves".
I was thinking Ping Pong. Do onomatopoeia names count? 😂
Thought I might have been onto something, but neither of my ideas of Boggle or Kerplunk worked out.
Yeah I was thinking “Jenga” cooooould be the noise of Jenga blocks falling, same vein.
You could tell a person Tom is 18-22 and they would belive you. You could tell a person Tom is 40-50 and they would believe you.
found a slight subtitles mistake at 3:50
Lines is spelt like LInés, seems like a scunthorpe mistake where someone just replaces all the ines with Inés and didn't look any further
Ah, Llinés! It's actually a village in Wales.
Thanks, now fixed.
Ohh, never heard it referred to as a Scunthorpe mistake before, that's very useful. I've encountered a few of those in my time in education and they never fail to amuse and exasperate me...
It's funny, as soon as he said "Baltimore, Maryland" I was like "basketball?"😅
that was my first thought too!
I'm from Baltimore and love my town's history, so when he mentioned that, I knew it... I would have suggested bowing out then, but first would have asked "Is this something some people wouldn't really call a game as there isn't a winner or loser?" to double check.
At first, I thought, it is "Exquisite corpse", which is also a word game, and the name of which is, allegedly, derived from the phrase that they got, when they first played the game.
But it's neither a board game, nor it was invented in 1891.
Well played, thumbnail artist, well played...
3:00 I'm listening to this and I've never heard about "Ouija board" (perhaps because I'm European), so I can confidently say Tom is wrong in this video saying that "everyone listening will pretty much know what this is".
Wow, as soon a he said "a board with letters on it" it was so obvious, lol. Especially with that "Skeptics" remark.
Tom Scott character development:
2017: Oh who bought Fluxx?? Fluxx is the worst card game!
2023: That's the game where the rules constantly change, right?
First guess was Scrabble but after Tom's clue, well, it's gotta be the Luigi board! That Mario brother has haunted many a party
Having the IQ of pond life, I suggested 'Snap' . . . : )
That was also my first thought. Hello there fellow pond life. 🙂
My guess was Boggle because the random letters could've landed with the "word" Boggle and they decided to name it that
I got this one instantly!
2:31 - It's the Oujia board isn't it?
That was the exact point I got it too.
This is the second question regarding Ouija board in two consecutive episodes and Tom Scott goes to visit that Cryogenic facility
As soon as he said 'skeptics would say..' I knew what it would be.
As soon as he said "skeptics" I got the right answer.
I got it about halfway through simply by suddenly remembering I had already heard this story...
Did it, by any chance, come up somewhere during the course of Citation Needed? Because that seems like the most likely source for me to know the story from. 😅
The Dollop had an episode about it.
@@lforlight I don't know what that is, so nope. Also I'm highly unlikely to have watched / read anything that's talking specifically about this (let alone listened to, because I'm one of those people who can't really focus on podcasts without the visuals). It was just a casually dropped piece of info in the middle of a conversation about some other topic, or a generally rambling conversation.
It was definitely on either Citation Needed or QI, though due to the heavy overlap between them, I couldn’t tell you which one.
@@ryanclark6402 I've forgotten about QI. 😅
It was definitely in QI, I don't remember it coming up in Citation Needed but I could be wrong. Could be in one of the audio episodes that I haven't listened to.
I was thinking basketball.
It was created in 1891 (close) and the net was originally a peach basket.
I was thinking of squash, because the ball makes a sound sometimes when it bounces that sounds like “squash.” But I wasn’t sure when it was invented.
my first intuition was ping pong. I think i would have started by sitting this one out and then realizing i was woefully wrong
Ouija, brought to you by Hasbro!😂😂
I was thinking Boggle and then trying to work out if it could be that old 😂
Lol I didn't get it but I feel like I was a lot closer than every one of the rest of their guesses which are clearly names given by people. I was kind of close, at first when he said AI I started thinking of games with letters as game pieces as letters then imagined the creators just threw the pieces and named it whatever letters they saw. I thought something like Boggle maybe, but Boggle is clearly a human made up word but I figured there'd be a similar game. But yeah the letters aren't peices but are on the board, if I did it the other way around I'd probably get it. But I didn't think the Ouija board was a game so that might be why I didn't think of it.
My first thought was some sort of onomaotopeia-based name, but I can't think of any good examples of physical games with onomatopoeic names (except kerplunk, which is much newer than 1891).
I'm so proud of myself for getting this immediately lmao. But I was like "well, it didn't name itself... ideomotor response did, so it can't be Ouija". 💀
My first thought was "the game" as in "you lost the game"
I was thinking OXO with the tic tac toe game of X's and O's.
I never considered it a game before so it was hard to guess
What is a Liugi-board?
Huh, guessed Sorry myself about the question. Must have been too late.
All I could think of was Kerplunk (even though I'd forgotten that was a thing for the previous 30 years or so)
Oh i totally know this one.👻
I did get this one before the contestants did.
Also, back in the late 1970s, I wrote a random name generating computer program. It seemed only appropriate to let it name itself, so I chose the first 5 letters or less name it came up with (that was the filename limit back in those days of cassette tape file storage). It called itself AMCOR
Fun fact - if you're ever strongarmed into playing with one of these things - the friend who swears up and down most loudly that they're not moving the indicator is absolutely the one moving the indicator.
First to pop to mind was a Mechanical Turk, but it's not a game by itself, it plays chess, automatically. (A bloke in a box, iirc.)
Boggle seemed so good without knowing the details. I thought it'd be later than 1891 (turns out it certainly was) and it is an English word, so that hint didn't follow unless the word came after the game. The thing Boggle really had going for it was producing a variety of options from one roll and letting the creators pick one that sounded good. Compare that to Scrabble, where you'd have to like... dump the tiles and bank on the very low chance of getting something sensible. In the end, though, I guess Ouija went closer to that route anyway.
My thought was ping pong, because that's the sound the game makes.
Before the 1891 I was thinking Subbuteo or Ludo, then my mind went to the Oiuja board
OMG FLUXX! I have an original deck that was a gift from the creators for sitting down and trying their new game at a GameCon.
I've never shouted the answer at the screen so loudly!
I got it at about 2:30 :)
Initial thoughts: Risk, Clue, Sorry, Monopoly (it was it thumbnail so I doubt it), the names of those kinds of boards were not that imaginative, nor complex. Risk, you take risks; Clue, you gather clues; Sorry, you can bump people off and, of course, stay polite; Monopoly, the goal is to build a real estate monopoly; ...
2:15 After first clue: Scrabble, Wordle, ... Doesn't seem like it would name itself. Except, maybe an early/important player almost had "Scramble", and went with it? Other "old" board games involving letters... nothing.
And a complete miss. That wouldn't have crossed my mind.
guessing right now at 3:06 after Tom said it doesn't have points or scores that it's hangman!
My brain immediately went to Horseshoes
I have to say (fully knowing this may never be read by the team) I do wish it was easier to know who the guests are. I saw a couple of these full lengths and they introduce the non-Tom Scott's in the beginning, and in none of these highlights are they saying anything about the other people, which is just too bad. I wish they'd make playlists of the highlights with the intro as one of them, or put them in order on a playlist. I clicked to the website but I don't actually want a podcast podcast, I want podcast with seeing faces and expressions when I have reason to look over at the screen, AKA video but the video isn't a million percent important. Love Lateral, these are great!
If you don't want to listen to the first 3 minutes of the audio show, you could follow the links to the guests we provide on X and in the show notes of every highlight clip.
Not the right year but Cadavre exquis would work too
"named itself" Got it within second… no, not bragging, just watched some video about the history of the Lu… just very recently.
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Luigi Board. Or, properly, Ouija board.
I got it at the exact same time Eatefannie did lol
i thoght it was going to be Boggle lol
Guessed the answer before even clicking the video, spooky.
My first guess was boggle. They shook it once and that’s a word they saw
I had it at the 2:00 minute mark.
I’m sitting out of this one .
✌️✌️
My guesses were Boggle and Beautiful Corpse
I thought of 'Slap Jack' but clueless to it's age and doubt it was considered invented once watching the video.
Didn't even get close. 🥴
I thought it was going to be boggle or something lol
When he said Baltimore, I thought the answer would be bowling or duck pin bowling
I thought it would be competitive heroin injection.
I think I got this at the ~2:25 clue
I would have guessed "Boggle"
Ouija!
huh, based on the title i woulda guessed Exquisite Corpse
in EC the words were/are supplied by a human, not by the game itself.
Yeah, I don't recommend it, but people do play it (I'm pretty agnostic about the existence of ghosts and such, so either it's a waste of time, or a bad risk).
At first I thought it was Boggle
A game that game its own name, might be a better way of putting it
I thought it was going to be BOGGLE
When I saw the title, I immediately thought to myself...Ouija. Gotta be Ouija. Because what other game has the ABILITY (i.e. selecting letters sequentially) to name itself? Haven't watched the video yet, but seriously - what else could it be? And the late Victorian period was rife with spiritualism and supernatural investigations, so Ouija could absolutely have been invented around then. The only thing I don't know about is whether I'd call Ouija a game or not. I mean, I get why it's called a game for the purposes of Lateral (as any other descriptive noun would give away the answer immediately) but I don't actually think it fits the definition of a game (as games usually have some benchmark of being played by people working against each other in some form of competition...like how Lateral is a game played by the questioner against the guessers). But that's a small quibble, Ouija is obviously the answer.
You mean the Luigi Board? /j
First thought is Snap, the card game.
EDIT: Guess not as it's a board game with letters. Not sure I'd call Ouija a board game but hey, whatever.
I thought it was a near-homophone to the verb related to acting like a witch.
Figured this out from just the thumbnail + title by the time I clicked it and the video loaded lol
Ines super smart and beautiful! wow!
oujia?
16 seconds into the video, and I bet I know the answer. Not too many games have the ability to create names, and based upon the time frame, it must be… (watch the video) Yep!
"Believe what you want about that"
Please, don't...
Ludo?
The year and place were givewaways. American mysticism and séance.
That's not a game, it's a way to scam yourself
Me screaming at the screen the whole time. Excellent clues.
Whatever, I'm ok with you saying it named itself, but it's not a game!
The Exquisite Corpse Shall Drink New Wine... not even as direct as asking so perhaps more arguable, later, and a different sort of not-a-game, but sticks in my head.
did the game itself provide those words?
@@Kyrelel The name of the game (Exquisite Corpse) is taken from the first product of playing it, which is the sentence I quoted.
And as the game involves the unwitting collaboration of the players, none of them could be said to have come up with it, and that sentence wouldn't exist without the game.
So... kinda?
I think calling Ouija Boards a "game" is a pretty misleading start to this one. Despite what Hasbro labels it you couldn't accurately call it a game.
It was regarded as a game during its invention: "...on February 10, 1891, a white-faced and visibly shaken patent officer awarded Bond a patent for his new 'toy or game.'" www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-strange-and-mysterious-history-of-the-ouija-board-5860627/
Always a little frustrating when a group of intelligent people expected to think laterally about a question just decide to randomly guess the answer instead. It doesn't happen often but rather breaks the format when it does. Maybe after a few stabs in the dark you need to insist that any future guesses are accompanied by a justification for that guess?
I thought this too. They just took it at face value and barely asked any deep questions to find out more information.
The what? Never heard of it.
I feel guests are now making too much questions, I used to like the straight to thinking dynamic and now they directly start asking