Archive for January 18, 2011


Here’s a petty game which needs nothing but a working internet
connection (say, a notebook or cell phone), and Google.com’s web
search. The goal is to create the longest phrase that Google can find by
alternately adding one word to the end of the other player’s search
phrase. Say, the first person starts with “Feelings”. Now the second
person adds a word, “are”, so we get “Feelings are”... (Note the use of
quotation marks in the search query.)
Now every time a word is added, the phrase is searched for in Google,
and the resulting page count is announced to the group. The one
person who creates a sentence with zero results in Google loses and has
to do something silly (or if you want to play with points, he loses a
point, and the last person who created a sentence with results in Google
will win a point). To prevent cheating, the one whose turn is next is not
allowed to look at any search result snippet.
Let’s take our sample, and see what we get:
Saan: “Feelings” (53,200,000 results in Google)
Carla: “Feelings are” (2,100,000 results)
Ane: “Feelings are nothing” (1,090 results)
 Continue reading