/define-your-way

A Dictionary Game - invent definitions for words that are convincing and creative.

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Define Your Way

A Dictionary Game - invent definitions for words that are convincing and creative. This is similar to the old-fashioned game where someone flips through a dictionary, and picks a word. He or she writes down the word and the real definition. Friends write down the word and made-up definitions. The person-with-dictionary reads all the definitions in a random order. People vote which one they think is the real one. Scoring is complicated. Points are awarded for guessing the right answer, and for having other people guess that yours is correct, with a bonus for picking a word that no one ends up guessing correctly.

Scoring in this version is even more complicated. But this site does all the hard work! In this version of the game, scoring is represented on a chessboard. Players have pieces on the bottom-left most square. Players score points for creativity as well as accuracy (where accuracy means the traditional way of scoring points). Each round, all players except the person-with-dictionary vote on which definition they think is the most creative. Creative points are marked along the vertical axis and accuracy points along the horizontal. A player wins when he or she either lands on the upper-right most square or overshoots the upper-right most square.

What is Overshooting? (for those who love details)

For simplicity, let's say a player wins on the very first round. To do this, he or she would have receive at least 7 creativity points and at least 7 accuracy points. So, 7C+8A (7 creativity and 8 accuracy) would be a winning score. But a player receiving 6C+8A would wrap around the board the horizontal way, and end up as if she had not scored any accuracy points at all -- we call this the Pac Man™ rule. A player can overshoot like this and wrap around the board accuracy/horizontally or creative/vertically, sometimes multiple times per game.