Trigram
| No. of Players: | 1+ |
| Type of Game: | written |
| What you need: | pen and paper |
Goal
To think of words containing three consecutive letters.
How to play
The gamemaster calls out three letters and the other players list as many words as they can that contain these letters within a set time. The letters must appear consecutively in the word, and in the order that they were spoken by the gamemaster. Players agree that these letters can appear anywhere within the word, or anywhere except the start and/or the end of words, or some other rule as desired. Players are awarded one point for every word, two points for every word not appearing on other players' lists, three points for words that contain more than one instance of these letters, and four points for the longest list. The player with the highest score becomes the gamemaster for the next round. The scoring system can be adjusted as desired, as well as whether proper nouns are permitted. This game can also be played alone.
A variation of this game that uses two letters is called Bigram.
Example
Antonio calls out the letters V, E, and R and tells players they have two minutes to list words that contain these letters. He tells them that words with the same root are eliminated, and no proper nouns or foreign words are permitted. One point is awarded for every word not appearing on other lists, and the player with the highest points wins.
Beth's list:
VERY
EVER
VERB
OVER
FEVER
EVERY
OVERDID
MOVER
TAVERN
Chrissy's list:
LIVER
VERY
LOVER
VERGE
EVERY
RIVER
VERB
Beth and Chrissy share three words, so no points are awarded for them. Beth also has two words in her list that have the same root (OVER and OVERDID), so she only gets one point for them. However, she still beats Chrissy 5 to 4 to become gamemaster in the next round.
Did you know?
Your family may call her grandma, granny, or gram. But these nicknames are relatively recent, historically speaking. The full word 'grandmother' actually dates back to 1375–1425. It derives from the Old English ealde mōdor, literally meaning 'old mother.'
The origin of 'great-grandmother' (þridde mōdor, or 'third mother') is slightly more recent. It was first recorded around 1520–30. Incidently, the prefix grand- is used to refer to a person who is one generation removed, and the prefix great- indicates yet another generation.
Following this convention, 'great-great-grandmother' would be fēowerþe mōdor (fourth mother) and great-great-great-grandmother would be fīfte mōdor (fifth mother). Given that the average person lived just 35 years in the Early Middle Ages when Old English was spoken, few people back then would have had use for these terms. Other than speaking of mothers who were long since gone, of course.
However, that is not true today. There have been a few cases of single families with six generations alive at the same time. And even one family with seven. This occurred with the birth of Christopher John Bollig on January 21, 1989, which made Augusta Bunge Pagel a very-much-alive sixte mōdor – that is, a great-great-great-great-grandmother!
According to Guinness World Records, Augusta was born on October 13, 1879 in Tonawanda, New York. This made her 109 years, 3 months, and 8 days old at the time. Followed by her daughter Ella Sabin (aged 89), her granddaughter Anna Wendlandt (70), her great-granddaughter Betty Wolter (52), her great-great-granddaughter Debra Bollig (33), her great-great-great-granddaughter Lori Bollig (15), and her great-great-great-great-grandson Christopher.
Augusta died on May 18, 1989 in Medford, Wisconsin – no doubt quite proud of her amazing family!
In case you're wondering, the images under the title of this word game form a rebus puzzle:
T + R + I + GRAM = TRIGRAM
