Last night I played a game called “Ito,” which means “thread” or “string.” The idea of the game is pretty simple: you have to play numbers face-down in ascending order, and you do that by using a subjective scale.
So, for example, the second round we played last night was “Popular Candy,” with 1 being very unpopular and 100 being the most popular candy ever. I played my card and said “Twix,” letting everyone know that I was playing a card I thought was a high number. The next player put down their card, higher in the line than mine, and said “Peanut butter cups,” which are a very, very popular choice, and then the next put their card below mine and said “Black liquorice,” implying a less popular choice.
And so on. The core of the game is trying to decide what other people feel about a topic, and how they would rate whatever they said. The threads that link which cards are played and where create a really interesting glimpse into how other people view very subjective things.
For example, one of the rounds was “Hard things to endure.” A one on that scale would be the easiest thing to do ever (“Sex with an attractive person” for example) and 100 would be the most difficult thing you could think of (“Dentistry with rusty tools, no anesthetic, and an untrained dentist”). Almost all the clues given that round were about work… long meetings, correcting your boss, having to work on a Friday, and so on. It turns out that everyone had pretty low numbers (the “Work on a Friday” was a 30), but there was a lot of uncertainty because some of my friends really hate their jobs, and some of us really love our work.
I mean my writing work, of course. My current day-job is fine. Good boss, great coworkers, but stressful a lot of the time and retail is draining at the best of times. But writing is a dream.
Anyway. I just found it interesting that we could all agree about so many things (like what candy is better, or who is the strongest person in movies), but when it came to work we were all over the board… the lineup wasn’t even close to correct.
The game was a lot of fun, and I highly recommend it to anyone familiar with “The Mind” or “Wavelength” since I think it’s as strong as those, and pretty dang cheap.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!