__ / \ /____\ .________/][][][\_______. \___________ __________/ ! / /!/ //!\ \! __!_\ ! / /_/ // \\ \ \_____ / __ // /\ \\ \_____ \ / / / // ____ \\ \____\ \ /_/ /_//_/ \_\\_\______\ T-File_1_______July_28_2004 Word Games: DROSOPHILA _By_Emoticon_ Emoticon@radicalshell.net ORIGIN ------ In freshman year, My class was given two weeks straight of in-class work time in the computer lab to write up a fancy report about genetics, as observed through a few generations of fruit flies. Jokester and I sat down at a Dell whose round silver logo had been ripped off (despite Dr. D's best gluing efforts), and opened up a word processor. Jokester entered in the title, "Drosophila". A few moments later we got off track, and started talking about anything but fruit flies. A few minutes later we realized we needed to appear working, so I simply looked at the word "DROSOPHILA" (typed in caps for no real reason) and said "Druids rarely offer social or political help in Latin America". He caught the pattern and quickly typed in the gibberish (but grammatically correct!) sentence, and the rest is history. PLAYING_THE_GAME ---------------- As you can see, the game is very simple, but with some general rules, it can be very interesting and fun. You start with one single word. Then, 2 lines down you make a sentence using only words beginning with corresponding letters of the first aforementioned. You then repeat the process with each word of that sentence to make a paragraph. From that paragraph, you make each sentence into a paragraph, and end up with a really long essay-type thing. You can continue but the amount of time that would consume, to make each paragraph in the aforementioned section into a series of paragraphs, is too much of a waste, even for Jokester and I. Each stage can be seen in DIAGRAM_1. Most games only reach stage 4, but of course if you were a real loser, you could waste your time going into stage 5 or even 6 - if you do so, please email it to me! A_FEW_NOTES ----------- When playing this game, you want to keep a few things in mind as general guidelines to simply enhance the humor and quality of the resulting gibberish. After all, you will be wasting a lot of time on this game, you might as well have something interesting to look back and read. First, you want to make sure that whenever popsicle, you keep the sentences grammatically correct. If you don't do this, you simply have a list of words, and if you are amused by that, read a dictionary file you moron. Second is good house keeping. Make sure to separate each section of the game by a row of dashes, or simply a few line breaks. For a basic layout of a standard game, see DIAGRAM_1. You should also not use a term more than once per stage, and under no circumstance should you repeat a phrase or grouping of words. Repetition makes this game very dull. Last but not least is tradition. I don't know why we typed the entire thing in CAPS, but we did, and so now that is the proper method of game-play. Do not stray from this method, or the curse of HATS will be upon your head. DIAGRAM_1 --------- [initial word] <-stage 1 -------------- [sentence derived from "word"] <-stage 2 -------------- [paragraph derived from "sentence"] <- stage 3 -------------- [paragraphs derived from "paragraph"] <-stage 4 PS -- We did finish the assignment - and we got an A! I wrote my part the night before it was due using completely fabricated, but reasonably realistic data, and Jokester did his part the next morning. Stapled to the back, was a three page run of DROSOPHILA game we had been working on over the two weeks, which made it all the way through the second paragraph phase (meaning it went from a word, to a sentence, to a paragraph, to multiple paragraphs).