How to Play The Name Game

S P E C I A L B O N U S !
How to Play the Name Game!

Okay, now the first letter of the name? You treat it like it wasn't there. No, no, no, not that name game! That's "The Name Game," the 1965 hit song by Shirley Ellis. This is some other name game.

STEP ONE: Have too much free time, time that needs to be wasted, killed or otherwise whiled away. Driving twelve hours to New Orleans is the recommended method. Now having the time, have some friends, enemies or neutrals in the same predicament.

STEP TWO: Think of a famous person's name, real or fictional. Say it out loud. Now it is the next person's turn to think of another celebrity's name whose first name begins with the same letter as the last name of the first celebrity. Sample dialogue:

PERSON A: Robert Oppenheimer
PERSON BETA: Oliver North
PERSON TRES: Neville Chamberlain
PERSON IV: Carl Lewis

And repeat ad nauseam.

STEP THREE: How to screw someone over. If you think of a name where the first and last names both start with the same letter, the direction the order was going in then reverses. Forcing the guy who just thought of the name to now think of another name. If you think of a one named celebrity, the same thing happens. Sample dialogue:

PERSON A: Robert Oppenheimer
PERSON BETA: Oliver Twist
PERSON TRES: Thomas Mann
PERSON IV: Mickey Mantle
PERSON TRES: Um, Michael Jackson
PERSON BETA: Jean-Paul Marat
PERSON A: Madonna
PERSON BETA: Marilyn Monroe
PERSON A: Mickey Mouse
PERSON BETA: Minnie Mouse!
PERSON A: Oh yeah? Macbeth!
PERSON BETA: Hah! Marcello Malpighi!
PERSON A: Who?
PERSON BETA: The Italian physiologist. The founder of microscopic anatomy? Hello?
PERSON IV: When do I get to play again?

And et cetera...

STEP FOUR: The game ends when everyone gets sick of it. And not before. Or you want to take the coward's way out, you can put a time limit on how long you have to think of a name, and then eliminate people if they can't do it in the time allotted. Last person in the game wins!

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