Thursday, April 19, 2012

A to Z: Questions

Questions is a game from the movie Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, 1990.

The movie is one of my favorites, with great dialogue and amusing scenes. It follows two minor characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet and sees what they do when the play doesn't have them in it. There are moments in the movie where they are suddenly 'in' Hamlet as seen in the play, but when they leave the play the film follows them, as they try to figure out who they are, where they are and just what is going on.

On of my favorite parts of the movie is the Game of Questions.

Rosencrantz (Gary Oldman) and Guildenstern (Tim Roth)  -though it may be that they are each other..
it isn't 100% clear which of them is which, not even to themselves, start up a game of Questions in the palace tennis court.


How to Play Questions:

The game is played until someone gets to three points.
You score a point when the other player makes a foul: failing to return your question with a valid question.

The rules are pretty straight forward, any of these will count as a foul against you:

1.  Statement. If you say something that isn't a Question that is a foul.
2.  Hesitation.  How fast?  More than a solid second or so is a clear hesitation.
3.  Repetition. You can not ask the same question that you or your opponent has already asked
4.  Synonym. You can not rephrase a previously asked question:
         example: "is your meal not hot?" is the same as "is your dinner cold?"
5.  Non Sequitur. The Question must have some connection to the question your opponent asked.
         example: If you follow "Don't you love your dog?" with "Is your father a birthday clown?"
         that's a non-sequitur.
6.  Rhetoric.  This is the hardest rule to define.
         No questions which are haughty or overly philosophical in nature.
         example: If your opponent serves "Do you always have to be right?" and you come back with
         "isn't it the nature of all mankind to strive to be right?" then you've just fouled out with rhetoric.

A great game of mental agility.  Give it a go!

If you've never seen the movie, do yourself a favor and watch it!  Great fun.

Here are R & G playing the game:

____________________________________________________________________
This has been an A-Z Challenge post. 
For the month of April there will be an update for each letter within the theme of: Things that influence and inspire me, or the converse: things which I find distressing or make me want to rail at the world.
Some of these will pertain to the miniatures hobby, but many will venture off to atypical territory for the duration of the challenge, then it will be back to normal with mostly minis and an occasional blithering.
You can find out more about the A-Z challenge my clicking the logo at the top left of the page. 

8 comments:

Amanda Heitler said...

I'd forgotten how much I love the performances in this. Questions is a staple car journey game for us. As is "Dog" when the objective is simply to say "dog" if you see one. Seems easy enough, but you lose points if the dog in question turns out to be something else. In the excitement of dog spotting, it's surprisingly easy to mistake bin bags, push chairs and low flying handbags for dogs.

The Angry Lurker said...

It's been a while but I remember this movie being a laugh and great performances from the two boys!

Spacejacker said...

As a teen, my friends and I religously played "Ad game" during the advertisments at the cinema. The object is to state the product the ad concerns first, with the following condition: you may only make 1 guess per ad.

This means you must always trade off speed with accuracy. For example, blurting "coke" will lose out if your opponent takes his time and more accurately states "new diet coke".

The two best parts of the game are not knowing when the ads will end and the trailers begin, and the tradition of starting the game without warning. Eg "coke, 1 nil." which is how 90% of matches have begun since around 1990.

Paul O'G said...

I've never heard of this - awesome!

I am so going to introduce this for family meal times!

S. L. Hennessy said...

The questions game is a great one. And I love the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

Michael Awdry said...

You've picked a winner here; one of my favourite films of all time! Enjoyable on some many levels and genuinely funny, it showcases the English language beautifully.

Britney Gulbrandsen said...

I must play this game with my hubby!

Alfrik said...

Properly prepared, taste just like "chicken"

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