This is a brief introduction to the game I call
Locutio.
Locutio comes from the Latin and means: speech, act of speaking; style
of speaking; phrase/expression; pronunciation. To be good at this
game you will need to be good at both locution and elocution. Here is
how it works:
Before you start playing, you will need to choose teams. You will
need at least four players, two for each team. You may have up to
four teams, and you may have as many players per team as you like, but
the number of players on each team should be the same.
The player who starts will choose a category. Once the category is
chosen, he can press the start/stop button and a phrase will appear on
his screen. It is his job to get one of his teammates to say the
phrase exactly. He must give clues about the phrase, but must NOT use
any significant part of the phrase (article, conjuctions, prepositions
are okay so long as the speaker does not say something like "The first
word is THE"); Though you would be free to say "The first word is the
definite article", even though you have use the work "the" twice. You
may also not use "sounds like" or "rhymes with" kind of clues. Pretty
much anything else is fair game. Lets look at an example:
The phrase given is: "In for a penny, in for a pound" could go like this:
Speaker: An eight word phrase. The first word is the opposite of out.
Teammate: In
Speaker: Yes. The second word is the number after three.
Teammate: Four
Speaker: Yes. Third work is the indefinate artticle.
Teammate: The
Speaker: No, not the definite article, the indefinate article.
Teammate: a
Speaker: Yes. The next word is the smallest unit of currency in the USA.
Teammate: Dollar
Speaker: The smallest coin!
Teammate: Dime!
Speaker: Not the smallest physically, but the smallest in value.
Teammate: Penny
Other teammate: In for a penny, in for a pound
Speaker: YES! (presses Next)
As you can see, you may try to guess the entire phrase at
anytime. If you guess it correctly, the speaker presses the giant red
"NEXT" button that is on his screen. At this point a new phrase is
selected (in the same category) and a member of another team will see
it pop up on their screen. Also the phrase that was just guessed
appears on everyone else's screen so that they can verify that the
teammate on the previous team did correctly say the phrase.
The next speaker now proceeds, and gives clues about his phrase. He
will notice a rotating spiral and a blinking green/yellow/red button
on his screen, and well as a clicking noise. As time runs out, the
blinking button will change from green to yellow to red. The amount
of time it spends in each state is random, but taken from decreasing
range, so you had better get moving. It is against to rules to
PURPOSEFULLY run down the time on the next team and then give good
clues after the button turns red. When time runs out, all the other
teams gets one point. Additionally each team get one guess as to the
actual phrase, in rotation order. The first team to correctly guess
the phase gets an additional point.
This completes one round of play. The person who ran out of time will
now get to choose the next category and proceed. The first team to
seven points wins the game. Even though this games works best if
everyone is in the same room, it can be played with remote players if
everyone has access to video or even just audio communication.
You will need to contact the other people you want to play with on
your own, (Email, telephone, messaging app) and tell them to go to the
URL you see above. Once everyone is there, one of you can press the
Start Game button and proceed to play. The reason I ask you to
log in is so that I can keep track of which phrases you have already
seen. That way, you will never see a phrase you have seen before, at
least not for the next twenty thousand phrases. More detailed help is
available by clicking on the
Help button above. Have Fun!
It is quite possible that more than one player will select the
same user name. We have displayed everything we know about the
users that match your name above. If none of them is you, click
on the "None of the above" button and we will create another
player with this user name.
Sometimes people accidentally close their browser window while
playing. This causes them to lose their connection to the game.
If this happens, do not panic. Tell you fellow players to wait
for you, and go ahead and log in again with the exact same user
name. The game will move ahead to the next question, but the
score will be preserved and you can continue playing.