My kids love Ellen’s Game of Games.
My kids love the mini-game Danger Word. The premise is for one player to get their teammate to guess a word. The wrinkle is that the winning word (sofa, ocean, etc.) is similar to the danger word (couch, sea, so-on). If a guesser says the danger word, they get smothered and covered. If a guessers says the winning word, the other team gets hit with it.
It’s an interesting game because the best clues have multiple levels. They give information about both the danger word and the desired word. One winning moment was when a woman gave the clue ‘otter’ and her partner guessed ‘sea’. It was a winning clue that also avoided the danger word of ocean.
Knowing something is this, and not that, will become more important as things move from single-issue-tangible to many-copies-digital.
- YouTube is an amazing resource but the search options are mostly by name. The most challenging queries are for people who share names with pastors. One side effect from weekly sermons is regular content and what better way to reach the flock than via YouTube.
- Websites used to have a .gov, .org, .com structure that hinted something was this and not that. In some recent research I found a dot-org domain that looked pretty legitimate. However, going to the About page showed that it wasn’t what it appeared to be.
- Visual evidence used to be clear. Screens though are shaded windows. Rather than asking is something manipulated, the default is now to ask how something is manipulated.
In Ellen’s game, the goal is to give a precise clue.
In YouTube searches, the goal is to search a precise query.
In website scours, the goal is to find truthful facts.
As more information goes online there will be more, not less, statements about being at war with EastAsia. The skill we’ll all need, my daughters included, is separating one category from another. Danger words from winning words, helpful queries from unhelpful ones, real from fantasy.
The Waiter's Pad 