Telegrams
A word is handed out letter by letter, and each becomes the start of a word in a telegram.
Any word is taken — say, FORK — and a telegram written in which the first word begins with F, the second with O, the third with R and so to the end:
FORK → Found otter. Repairs kayak. Fisherman
The restriction is simple and bites hard: the letters come in the order given, and any of them can strand you. Especially the ones little begins with — while the message has to stay a message, that is, to have a sender, a sense and a reason.
It is played without hurry and usually without a score: what matters is not who was quicker but what each got out of the same letters.
Rules of Telegrams
The source word
The group picks one for everybody. Five to seven letters is enough; a long word turns a telegram into an essay.
Writing
Each player writes a telegram whose words follow the letters of the source word: the first word starts with the first letter, the second with the second, and so on.
The order of the letters may not be changed and none may be skipped. The telegram has as many words as the source word has letters.
Reading
The finished telegrams are read aloud. As in a real telegram, anything that makes it look like a message is welcome: an address, a signature, urgency.
The next round
A new source word is taken.
Playing by genres
Several genres are named in advance — a business telegram, a birthday one, a love letter, an alarming one — and each player writes one of every genre from the same word.
The comparison is better that way: the letters are identical for everybody and the texts diverge further.
Worth knowing
A winner is usually not settled at all — the telegrams are simply read aloud. Where a score is wanted, the best is voted for, but no rule covers it. The time for a round and the length of the source word are likewise entirely up to the group.
Glossary of terms
- The source word
- The word whose letters start the words of the telegram. Its order of letters is the order of the words.