Ghost (game)

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Ghost is a word game in which players take turns adding letters to a growing word fragment, trying not to be the one to complete a valid word. The one that does loses that round of the game starts the new round. Each fragment must be the beginning of an actual word. Usually some minimum is set on the length of a word that counts, such as three or four letters.

Contents 1 Game play 2 Winning strategy 3 Variants 4 References

[edit] Game play

The player whose turn it is may challenge the previous player to prove that the current fragment is actually the beginning of some word by saying "I challenge you", simply "challenge", or "ghost" (called "ghosting" someone, or "calling ghost"). If the challenged player can name such a word, the challenger loses the round; otherwise the challenged player loses. In various computerized variants, the computer names words instead of the challenged player. Bluffing is not uncommon, though it's rare for it to work in the way planned. It is best to bluff when you are near the end of a word and you pretend to add a suffix to a word that actually doesn't exist or go with that word. Many players will go with it and continue the non-existent word. If any player challenges using a dictionary, that person is liable to receive a letter if they are wrong.

Game-play generally passes to the left (clockwise). The player selecting the starting letter for the first round is chosen at random. In subsequent rounds, the player to the immediate left of the previous round's loser selects the starting letter for that round.

If any score is kept at all, the traditional method uses the letters of the word "Ghost", in the same fashion as the basketball game Horse. The loser of the first round gets a G, the loser of two rounds gets a GH, and so on. The first person to lose five rounds gets GHOST, and has thereby lost the game.

Ghost can be played by two or more players of any age, although the game is less enjoyable if the players don't have a comparable vocabulary. No equipment is required, not even pencil and paper. Use of dictionaries or word lists is considered cheating.

In some versions of the game, players that obtain all the letters of ghosts continue to participate by trying to distract other players and turn them into ghosts. If a player does not have all the letters of the word "ghost" and he or she talks to an existing ghost, they immediately become a ghost (that is, they lose the game). This rule serves to accelerate games of Ghost with many players. This is also a rule in the games of Llama and Llano.

Although primarily a game played between people, there have also been computer variants. ^[1]

[edit] Winning strategy

Since the game tree of Ghost can be derived from the list of combinations of letters that are considered to be words, the game (as played by two players) can be easily "solved" by a computer, or even a patient person scanning through the dictionary, to find a winning strategy for one player.

Alan Frank constructed a sample winning strategy in 1987, based on the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary.^[2]

Randall Munroe posted a sample winning strategy in 2007 on the news page of his webcomic, xkcd. He based his solution on the Ubuntu dictionary. Randall's Solution

[edit] Variants

Superghost (also known as Lexicant or Llano) is played by choosing either the beginning or end of the growing word fragment and adding a letter there. For example, given the fragment ERA, a player might offer BERA or ERAD. This version was played by James Thurber and his circle of friends.^[3]

Superduperghost is played by deciding whether to reverse the letters of the word fragment before adding a letter to the fragment's beginning or end. For example, given the fragment ERA, a player might offer BERA, ERAD, NARE, or AREN. This variant was first broadly adopted at the 1978 World Science Fiction Convention in Phoenix, Arizona (IguanaCon) and is credited to Cary Hammer and Mark Malamud.^{[citation needed]}

Xghost (sometimes also known as Superduperghost or Llama) is played by adding a letter anywhere in the growing word fragment, including between letters. For example, given the fragment ERA, a player might offer BERA, ERAD, EBRA, or ERMA. This version was invented by Daniel Asimov around 1970. Originally and still often known as Superduperghost, it was played by his circle of mathematics grad student friends at U.C. Berkeley.^{[citation needed]}

Spook is played by adding letters to a "pool" in which no fixed order is assumed. In this game, one's objective is to avoid completing a letter pool which can be ordered to form a word. For example, given the pool {A,B,F,L,S,U}, a player would be unwise to add H, which would form the word BASHFUL. However, he or she might add B, and cite the word FLASHBULB if challenged.

These variants usually require much more effort and time to play than the conventional game, and as such are lesser-known and less popular.

Cheddar Gorge is played by adding a word to the end of a growing sentence fragment, and avoiding the completion of a sentence. This variant was popularized on the BBC Radio show I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue^[4]

[edit] References