Equinox 64

The 64th Semi-Annual Equinox Word Games Party took place in Berkeley on March 18, 2017.

Theme: chess

Name tags: Transgender tags by Barbara Selfridge (Banterweight): men were queens, women chose any other chess piece

Wall games:
    Acrostic by Pam Hampton
    Nation puzzles by Joshua Kosman and Henri Picciotto (Trazom and Hot)
    Cryptic crossword (anonymous!)
    Movie Remakes by Rick Rubenstein (Rubrick)
    Chess Scrabble challenge by Craig Kasper (Gabby)

Mixer: Shifting Gears by Dean Howard (Shrdlu), presented by Mariko Soto and others
Creative game: Nearly Chess by Henri Picciotto (Hot)
Pencil-paper game: Knight's Boggle, by Ann Daniels & Jon Zingman (Iolanthe and Plaid)
Paper-pencil puzzle: Acronym vs. Acronym by Austin Shapiro
Performance game: Speed Chess by NeilFred Picciotto (Renfield)
Megagame: Chessboxing by Joshua Kosman and Rick Rubenstein (Trazom and Rubrick)

Crostic

Crostic, a wall game by Pam Hampton, from Equinox 64:

Directions
Grid
Cryptic clues
Regular clues
Answers

Scrabble Chess

Scrabble Chess, a wall game by Craig Kasper (Gabby) from Equinox 64

Nearly Chess

Nearly Chess, a creative game by Henri Picciotto (Hot) from Equinox 64.

Obviously, this can be adapted to any theme by changing the list of starting words.

Knight's Boggle

A pencil-paper game from Equinox 64: Knight's Boggle, by Ann Daniels & Jon Zingman (Iolanthe and Plaid)

Acronym vs. Acronym

Acronym vs. Acronym, a paper-pencil puzzle from Equinox 64, by Austin Shapiro

Speed Chess

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 

http://files.equinoxparty.org/64-speed-chess/

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 

http://files.equinoxparty.org/64-speed-chess/guessers.html

Movie Remakes

Movie Remakes, a wall game from Equinox 64, by Rick Rubenstein (Rubrick)

Chessboxing

Chessboxing, a megagame from Equinox 64, by Joshua Kosman and Rick Rubenstein (Trazom and Rubrick)

Dates

Equinox 64 will be on March 18. 2017. Theme: chess

Equinox 65 will be on Sep 16, 2017

Mark your calendars!

Dates

Mark your calendars

Equinox 63: 17 September, 2016

Equinox 64: 18 March, 2017