Word Associations
| No. of Players: | 2+ |
| Type of Game: | spoken |
| What you need: | nothing |
Goal
To freely associate a word to a previously spoken word.
How to play
One player begins the round by saying a single word. The second player says the first word that spontaneously comes to mind as a result of the preceding word. The next player does the same with the word spoken by the second player, and so on. To ensure spontaneity, players are usually only given a few seconds to respond. The amusement of this game lies with the interesting associations people make between words, and what those associations reveal about the people who make them. To encourage the exploration of those associations, players can halt the game at any time to ask a player about his response. For added fun, one player records all the words on paper. After a certain number is reached, that player halts the game to ask if anyone can recall the list in order. While the only rule of this game is for players to freely associate, a variant asks players to deliberately make Word Disassociations.
This game is similar to Explain That and Tennis, Elbow, Foot.
Example
| Annie: | DAY |
| Brodie: | CARE |
| Chris: | LOVING |
| Diana: | GILLIGAN |
| Brodie: | Wait a minute, how do you go from LOVING to GILLIGAN? |
| Diana: | I hear 'Lovey' in LOVING, what Mr. Howell called his wife in the TV show Gilligan's Island. |
| Annie: | Great show! My turn: SKIPPER |
| Brodie: | ROCK |
And so on.
