All of JKR's Comments + Replies

JKR30

I think this is a fantastic idea, with a patch that is much easier than those suggested by the other responses. Simply tell everyone that for the purposes of this exercise, only that information directly presented in the example is to be considered. People sometimes overlook relevant information or clever third options, and these situations are to be judged only based on the data being considered by the hypothetical person in the given scenario.

If there is any concern about this set up encouraging people to think about things with an insufficient amount of... (read more)

JKR20

The following exercise is inspired by the game Taboo.

Pair everyone off, giving one member of the pair a card that tells them something they must describe so that the other person will guess what it is. Include a list of taboo words that prevent them from going up the lattice, forcing them to be more specific in their descriptions.

e.g. New York Yankees Taboo words: “Yankees,” “New York,” “NYC,” “Baseball,” “Sport,” “National Pastime”

The description giver has to be more specific, saying something like “a collection of athletes, including Derek Jeter and Alex... (read more)

4[anonymous]
Potential problem with this: The game will devolve into associations rather than real specificity. For example, for the phrase "New York Yankees" I might say just "Derek Jeter" and most people would be able to guess correctly, but I haven't really practiced the skill of being specific. You'd have to specifically penalize answers like that to prevent the game from devolving into Hasbro's Taboo.