Get three or four people sitting together. Place a large group of different items (30-50 small cheap plastic toys of the sort readily available in bulk from Oriental Trading Company, for instance) in the center of the group.
The exercise is to narrow down to a single toy by adding one detail at a time to a description. The description begins with the word “thingy,” “toy,” or a similarly vague word. Players take turns adding a single detail to the description, repeating it each time. (A detail is usually a single word, but a short phrase such as “with wheels” or “with spots” counts as one detail. However, “with yellow spots” would be two details — spots and yellow.) As an additional restriction, superlatives such as “biggest” or “greenest” are not allowed, because these implicitly compare each item to each other item.
Example:
A: Give me the thingy. B. Give me the red thingy. C: Give me the red thingy with wheels. A: Give me the red and yellow thingy with wheels. B: Give me the big red and yellow thingy with wheels.
A variation:
Again, a large group of different items (I was thinking abstract images of colors and shapes, but toys is a good idea too) is visible to the group. One of the objects is selected and then each person writes a description that selects that object alone out of the set. The goal is to write the shortest description that can pick that particular object. Once everyone is done, answers are compared, and violations are sought: if one of the other objects fulfills all the requirements of someone’s description, they are disqualified. Whoever has the shortest description that describes the chosen object and only the chosen object wins a point, and the game is repeated with another object.
This adds a competitive/fun element (looking for violations in other descriptions), may widen ideas on how to describe something, and trains conciseness as well as specificity.
A second variation: Once again, a large group of different items is the set. Half the group leaves the room, and the other half selects one of the items. Each person left in the room writes the shortest description of the chosen item that selects it out of the group. The other members come back in and are each given one of the written descriptions and a stopwatch. They read the descriptions and then try to visually find the chosen item without giving obvious indications to the other searchers. Once a searcher thinks he knows which item is being described, he stops his stopwatch to indicate how long it took him. After every searcher believes they have found the correct item, the written descriptions and stopwatch times can be compared as above.
This has the added bonus of providing information on what kind of descriptions are the most helpful in finding things.
Exercise—refining descriptions.
Get three or four people sitting together. Place a large group of different items (30-50 small cheap plastic toys of the sort readily available in bulk from Oriental Trading Company, for instance) in the center of the group.
The exercise is to narrow down to a single toy by adding one detail at a time to a description. The description begins with the word “thingy,” “toy,” or a similarly vague word. Players take turns adding a single detail to the description, repeating it each time. (A detail is usually a single word, but a short phrase such as “with wheels” or “with spots” counts as one detail. However, “with yellow spots” would be two details — spots and yellow.) As an additional restriction, superlatives such as “biggest” or “greenest” are not allowed, because these implicitly compare each item to each other item.
Example:
A: Give me the thingy.
B. Give me the red thingy.
C: Give me the red thingy with wheels.
A: Give me the red and yellow thingy with wheels.
B: Give me the big red and yellow thingy with wheels.
A variation: Again, a large group of different items (I was thinking abstract images of colors and shapes, but toys is a good idea too) is visible to the group. One of the objects is selected and then each person writes a description that selects that object alone out of the set. The goal is to write the shortest description that can pick that particular object. Once everyone is done, answers are compared, and violations are sought: if one of the other objects fulfills all the requirements of someone’s description, they are disqualified. Whoever has the shortest description that describes the chosen object and only the chosen object wins a point, and the game is repeated with another object.
This adds a competitive/fun element (looking for violations in other descriptions), may widen ideas on how to describe something, and trains conciseness as well as specificity.
(I like the idea, but I think the last few paragraphs could do with some editing: your meaning has been obscured :( )
Good grief, what happened to my post? Thanks for the heads up.
A second variation: Once again, a large group of different items is the set. Half the group leaves the room, and the other half selects one of the items. Each person left in the room writes the shortest description of the chosen item that selects it out of the group. The other members come back in and are each given one of the written descriptions and a stopwatch. They read the descriptions and then try to visually find the chosen item without giving obvious indications to the other searchers. Once a searcher thinks he knows which item is being described, he stops his stopwatch to indicate how long it took him. After every searcher believes they have found the correct item, the written descriptions and stopwatch times can be compared as above.
This has the added bonus of providing information on what kind of descriptions are the most helpful in finding things.