Speed Chess, a performance game from Equinox 64, by NeilFred Picciotto (Renfield)
Play
requires a computer with a screen that can be seen by all; we used a
projector. The game is available on a web page (linked below), but once
the page has loaded in your browser, the game can be played while
offline – no further internet access is required.
In
each round, there are two cluers and two guessers, one each for each of
the two teams (Blue and Red). The guessers stand with their backs to
the screen; the cluers and the audience can see the screen.
Each
round has nine answer words (or phrases with dictionary nature). All
answer words fit some constraint on their letters – the constraint
varies from round to round. The title of the round (shown at the top)
has some letters in boldface type, that are suggestive of the
constraint. The game leader may wish to look at the answer words in
advance to understand each round's constraint. Generally they take one
of three forms:
- A specified sequence of letters appearing consecutively.
-
Specified consonants that appear in the given order, not consecutively,
sometimes anchored to the beginning or end of the word.
-
Specified vowels that appear with precisely indicated counts, in any
order (e.g. "exactly three E's and one U, in any order, and no other
vowels").
Each cluer starts with 30 seconds on
their clock, and when their guesser gets a word or they decide to pass,
they hit a button to stop their own clock and start the other team's
clock – just like a chess clock. The team that will clue first is
indicated on screen; the game leader begins the round, revealing the
nine answer words and starting the first team's clock.
The
cluer from the Red team, say, picks one of the nine words and gives a
clue for it. The clue must not contain any of the answer words or
alternate forms of them, or "rhymes with", etc. If the Red guesser gets
the word (or indeed, any of the current answer words, whether intended
for the clue given or not), then the Red cluer hits their button to flip
the timer to the Blue team. The game leader marks the
correctly-guessed word in red.
If the Red
team's timer runs out, then the Blue team has their remaining time to
clue and guess as many of the remaining words as they can until their
time runs out or all nine words are guessed. Then new cluers and
guessers step up, the game leader advances to the next round, and it all
begins again.
Round 0 is intended as a
sample round, used to explain the mechanics; it only has three answer
words instead of nine. Then there are 15 real rounds that can be
played.
Additional notes for the game leader
Whenever
the background is grey, no timer is running; pressing "space" will give
play to the indicated team and start their timer. When the background
is blue or red, that team is cluing and their timer is going. Pressing
"space" again will pause the timer (and go back to grey backgound) –
though in practice that shouldn't be needed as normally play will go
directly from one team to the other.
The Blue
team's clock button is the letter "Z", the Red team's clock button is
"/", the "slash" character – at opposite sides of the bottom row of the
keyboard. Alternatively, the game leader can use the letter "B" (in the
middle of the bottom row) to flip to the other team at any time.
Clicking
a word while the background is red or blue will award that word to the
other team – normally done immediately after that other team has flipped
the clock. In case you accidentally award a word to the wrong team or
award the wrong word or whatever, clicking the same word again will
cycle through red, blue, white (still available to be guessed) or grey
(disqualified, e.g. the cluer used a part of the word in their clue) –
so just keep clicking until you get what you need.
Pressing left- and right-arrow (cursor keys on the keyboard) will move back and forward through rounds 0 through 15.
Pressing
plus and minus before beginning a round will increase and decrease the
timer time limit. 30 seconds seemed perhaps too short – we only had all
nine words successfully clued/guessed in one of the fifteen rounds, so
maybe try longer. Also note that if you press command-plus and
command-minus to adjust the font size (which may be necessary depending
on projector resolution), then the time limit will adjust as well; just
press minus or plus to get it back to where you want.
Links
The game can be played at
Optionally,
you can setup a second screen that's visible to the guessers, showing
only the round title, without the answer words of course. Again, left-
and right-arrow keys move forward and back through the rounds. The
guessers' screen is at
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