Articulate [Matthew's Journal]

We have a house rule that you can't just say the word in a foreign language. I can't decide if giving chemical formulas for things is "using a foriegn language", or just "using an English synonym" (which is after all an entirely valid strategy)

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At work I treat formulae as English synonyms.

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Our rule is you can't say any part of the word[*] (which would rule out "backWARD" and "girlFRIEND"), and you can't say an acronym for its expansion or vice versa. My instinct when filling out the poll was that the chemical formulae count as acronyms, but thinking about it more I guess they don't.

[*]Morpheme, or something. Obviously I don't mean you can't use any of the letters in it. Although that would be an interesting and challenging game in its own right...

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Those are pretty much the stipulations to which I try to play.

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I'd think along the same lines but be more inclined to allow 'backward' than 'girlfriend' because the subsidiary part of the latter is a full word.

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I don't know the rules (I think we may have played it once at Bro's). But if you can say "yellow flower, popular in Wales" for daffodil, I don't see any problem with the first two. Not really sure about chemical symbols, but if you know them, why not?

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My instinct for words that partially share etymology is to say that it's against the rules, but often isn't actually how the person guesses the answer, if they know them as opposites regardless of whether they're related or not. And if the person giving the clue hasn't realised, or forgot, but just thought of them as opposites, then it's ok, but not allow it again.

But then, I tend to be generous: I tend to see games where forfeits are part of the game (like drinking games, where you're expected to slip up eventually) as different from games where forfeits are necessary to enforce the rules, but not themselves part of the game (like football). That's partly because I'm bad at getting little details right under pressure, so I don't like having to do that as part of the game, unless it is the game. And I see articulate as the "not part of the game sort" and "just for fun", so I'm inclined to let mistakes go unless they actually let the guesser guess, and not penalise just for consistency. But I know friends who take the opposite view, and that the rules are the rules, and ought to be enforced from the beginning, and any "which rules are REALLY part of the game" ought to be done at the rule-deciding stage.

Similarly, I think CO2 is against the rules (as C and O come from Carbon and Oxygen) but NH4 is ok, as the words are unrelated except by meaning (which is sort of the point of the game). But I might let it go if everyone else did.

I also note that such edge cases are inevitable: every group develops unwritten (or written) house rules to cover the sort of thing which isn't entirely clear. So you have to make a decision one way or the other as sensibly as you can (which you're doing here) but avoid implying that people who make the opposite assumption are reading the rules wrong (which I assume you do, but seems worth stating).

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I'd rule out case #2 as you're effectively saying most of the word, but it's been a while since I've actually read the rules of Articulate so I don't have any support for my opinion!

Chemical formulae: my instinct is to say they shouldn't be allowed, because I see it as just another way of writing the word (albeit one that requires more background knowledge to interpret). Thus I see using them is equivalent to spelling out the word, which is against the rules.

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I don't know the printed rules of the game but all of these sound like cheating.
If the rules state you can't use any part of the word and no acronyms, then they are definitely cheating.

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I'd accept CO₂ as different from carbon dioxide. In my job I treat CO₂ and carbon dioxide as synonyms, just like acetone and propanone, or carbon tetrachloride and tetrachloromethane, or adrenaline and epinephrine.

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All of them are borderline. I'm most certain that you shouldn't say CO₂ for carbon dioxide, because that's not a synonym, that's literally another way of saying carbon dioxide. I think I was influenced by that for my answer to Ammonium; if I'd seen NH₄ on its own I might have thought it was ok. The first two seemed ok to me, but having read the comments I can see that it makes sense in general to ban words that have significant morphological elements in common with the target word.

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'that's not a synonym, that's literally another way of saying carbon dioxide'

What on earth do you think a synonym is? Would you allow 'equilateral rectangle' for 'square'?

As for the questionable calls, I'd allow every single one of those, because the point of the game is to score points and have fun, not to punish people. What value is served by disallowing any of them? It'd be like playing Just a Minute and buzzing for repetition of 'the' if it wasn't on the card. It's just legalism making the game less fun.

But then on the few occasions I unwisely played Mao all my new rules were designed to make the game more fun by introducing extra ways that people could lay down cards if they worked out the rule, not to punish people by disallowing the basic ways of card-laying. Whereas other people seem to delight in making games less fun and more about punishment for not strictly following the rules.

S.

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I take your point; I don't quite have the words for what I mean by saying CO₂ is not a synonym. I think the point is that C is literally the same thing as carbon, and O₂ is literally the same thing as dioxide, it's a difference in notation, not a synonym. It's like "deux" isn't a synonym for "two", it's the same word in a different language. But I'm struggling to find a way to express how that relationship is different from a synonym.

Where I do disagree is that excluding ways of defining the word that are too obvious punishes people and makes the game less fun. I mean, for me, the game is no fun at all if you define each word by, say, spelling it out, rather than having to think of something clever. And I think giving the chemical formula for a compound whose common name happens to be the systematic one is about equivalent to that.

If someone did use one of the examples in a game I was playing, I wouldn't "punish" them, I'd probably let it slide, because I agree, Articulate is more fun if you're not legalistic about it. But if they kept on playing in ways that seem to violate the spirit of the rules, I would conclude they cared more about winning than having fun and I wouldn't be bothered to play with them any more. Of course, deciding on exactly what's in the spirit of the rules is not always a trivial thing, which is why we're having this discussion here.

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O₂ is literally the same thing as dioxide

Not so; not everything with exactly two oxygen atoms is a dioxide. KNO₂ (potassium nitrite) would never naturally be described as a dioxide by a chemist. CH₃CO₂H (acetic acid) is definitely not a dioxide; the two oxygen atoms in that formula play quite distinct roles. Molecular oxygen, O₂ itself, is not a dioxide, it's dioxygen.

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Ah! I did wonder what you mean, but I think that gets it. It would be somewhere on a continuum between writing the word in a different script or saying it in a different language (which most people seem to consider just "saying the word" and hence disallowed[1]) or using a synonym (either exact synonym, which is very rare, or normal synonym) which is ok. However, I would say the problem with C is that it's the initial letter of Carbon: I wouldn't rule out using a different chemical name for the same chemical (either giving the formula or another standard name with no etymological overlap). If that makes things easy for people who know chemistry, well, that's your reward for being knowledgeable about stuff! If it makes it too easy, you can rule it out then, but I don't think it's clearly ruled out in advance.

[1] Although, ironically, if the foreign word is adopted into English, it may become a synonym and then ok.

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Would Na be OK for sodium?

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What about it? When I saw the question, I seemed to remember that "Na" came from a word, the latter half of which had an etymological connection to sodium, and I was all set to say that was really clever. (And, by the guidelines I outlined, would be ok, since you have to know the words at both stages to make the connection, as there's no overlap between the two halves except in the word you don't say. Although I stress again, that those are suggested guidelines, not fixed rules.)

But now, it looks like according to the internet, my memory was completely wrong, so why ask about sodium? It seems to fall into my category of "using a different chemical name for the same chemical (either giving the formula or another standard name with no etymological overlap)", which was ok.

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Na, though, is an abbreviation for Natrium, which is Latin (well, new Latin) for sodium. If you disallow abbreviations and disallow translations (and treat "C" as a mere abbreviation of carbon), is it OK to allow abbreviations of translations?

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Ah, of course. Good question. I think my guidelines were -- unsurprisingly -- inconsistent. I think that if everyone is equally fluent in two languages, you obviously need to treat all translated words as if they were the same word, or there's be no game (except when the words happened also to be etymologically related).

But my instinct is that otherwise the double-hoop of an acronym and a translation both together is sufficient barrier that it's a fair clue. (A rule of thumb would be, do I go through the intermediate word to get the answer? In fact, I know "Na" means "Sodium" and "SNCF" means "French railway" more than I know the literal translation.) But I agree that's all just vague.

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Surely the 'cheating' or 'not-cheating' is defined by the other people playing? If they say you're cheating, then that's that.

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Just realised that my answers were predicated on Tabu not Articulate! I was going to say unless it's forbidden on the card it's ok but then realised that was the wrong game!

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I'd treat none of these as cheating according to the base rules.

That said, I don't rate Articulate particularly highly as a game, because it's too easy to describe things without naming the object - the communications channel is too wide.

Now the version where you can only describe the item using words beginning with one letter ... there things start becoming interesting.

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~~Surely all words begin with one letter, with the possible exception of "ægis"~~ Oh, that does sound entertaining. I should try that.

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I like the three-round Hat Game, myself.

S.

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I don't rate Articulate particularly highly as a game, because it's too easy to describe things without naming the object

That just means you get more cards in the time limit, surely? The skill becomes about doing it quickly, rather than doing it at all.

You saying it's "too easy" makes me want to challenge you to a game :)

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The difficulty is the competition (in fact, there are so many situations where that applies, I'd love for that to be a stock phrase that people use all the time).

I do find with Articulate it's a bit more weighted towards being quick and efficient and picking the right approach first time, whereas with Taboo I feel there's more creative thinking involved. I can see why some people would find the difficulty in Taboo more interesting than the difficulty in Articulate.

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Articulate does have the all-play round, which is untimed and very much about creative thinking (if you know your team-mates).

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Matthew's Journal

Articulate

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