Word Substitution
| No. of Players: | 1+ |
| Type of Game: | written |
| What you need: | pen, paper, dictionary |
Goal
To replace the nouns in a piece of writing with other nouns from a dictionary.
How to play
Players entertain themselves or others by replacing every noun in a piece of prose writing with another noun from a dictionary. To help ensure randomness, players specify the method of choosing the new noun in advance. For instance, they may choose to always select the tenth noun entry following the original noun entry in the dictionary. So "The ball was in the yard" might now read as "The ballerina was in the yarn."
This game is similar to Semantic Poetry.
Example
Andy selects the following passage from Ernest Hemingway's short story "Big Two-Hearted River, Part I."
He poured on some tomato catchup. He knew the beans and spaghetti were still too hot. He looked at the fire, then at the tent, he was not going to spoil it all by burning his tongue. For years he had never enjoyed fried bananas because he had never been able to wait for them to cool. His tongue was very sensitive. He was very hungry. Across the river in the swamp, in the almost dark, he saw a mist rising. He looked at the tent once more. All right. He took a full spoonful from the plate.
Andy chooses to substitute every noun in this passage with the sixth noun entry following the original noun entry in his dictionary. Here is the result:
He poured on some tomato catechism. He knew the beard and spangle were still too hot. He looked at the firebug, then at the tepee, he was not going to spoil it all by burning his tonic. For yeasts he had never enjoyed fried bandages because he had never been able to wait for them to cool. His tonic was very sensitive. He was very hungry. Across the Riviera in the swannery, in the almost dark, he saw a mistletoe rising. He looked at the tepee once more. All right. He took a full spore from the platform.
