RHYME GAME

This game is fun to play anywhere, any time with anyone willing, good with travelling companions on long car journeys or waiting in airports. Last year, a jetlagged insomniac after four long hauls in five months, I invented it as a plea to Morpheus, like counting sheep, but that idea backfired – a narcotic it is not. This addictive game kept the two players in our household awake till late and caused sleep disruption in the early hours when one or other would wake with a word to add to the joust. It had to be banned to get a peaceful night’s rest.

Maybe nature, maybe nurture, most likely a combination, whatever the reason some of us delight in playing with words from our earliest days in the same way that other children play with balls or dolls or Lego. I played with those too, but with less enthusiasm. My brothers preferred Meccano. Our home in Cambridge was above a word factory. Some kids live above their parents’ bakery or grocery; we lived in a flat above my father’s language school, our kitchen doubled as the staff canteen, and our young lives were enriched by words from all over the world. Words put food on the table. Words were not only Dad’s livelihood but also his entertainment; a master punster and rhymester, he invented bilingual and trilingual jokes, often in verse. To his credit, as well as running a business, he wrote poems, novels, short stories, articles and, before illness struck, an excellent memoir. When he was literally lost for words I read his memoir aloud and he was happy to reacquaint himself with old friends and relatives and his own words, often in song form, flooded back.

When my daughter, born in New Zealand, was eighteen months old, she scooted around the kitchen on her wooden toddler trike with a toy gorilla, Toby, bigger than her stuffed behind her back like a friend on a motorbike. One day she zoomed past a box of apricots from Central Otago and cried out in delight, ‘Lots and lots! Apricots!’ She laughed open-mouthed at her first verse; the rhyme gene was alive and kicking. Nature was greeted by nurture and together we enjoyed nursery rhymes, poems, songs, playing word games and homegrown bedtime stories. Both my kids are now Scrabble fans and read real books for fun, rare among twentysomethings.

Here’s how the game works. Any number of players. Words must rhyme. A rhyme may be repeated if used in a new phrase. Players take turns to suggest words. A player suggests the first word. The next player finds a rhyme. If the syllable count is the same all the better, but this isn’t obligatory and no extra points are given. The first player finds another rhyme. The players continue to take turns to rhyme. The player who finds the last rhyming word(s) is the winner. A final count of the number of rhymes per player is the score.

Once the game warms up my companion has a habit of shouting out four or more rhyming words one after the other like a Kalashnikov at close range. This is allowed. Then I must think up an equivalent number of rhyming words, before he can have another turn. When the heat’s on the game gets competitive. We both like to win. My companion loves to win. In his youth he ran races for a London Athletics club and got used to winning. Say no more. If only he’d say no more! He wakes up in the night shouting out a word. I wake up and shout out a word to shut him up. We go back to sleep. In the morning we both wake up with rhymes in our heads and call them out at each other as fast as possible. We lose count of our rhymes and nobody wins. We laugh. This is a happy game. Warning: don’t take it too seriously!

Here’s an example. At the time of writing we’re away in Timaru where my companion supervises distance Fine Arts students and, after an excellent curry at Little India last night (I recommend Prawn Malabari and Khumb Mattar as great words for the game, also to eat, the latter’s a delicious dish of mushrooms and green peas with garlic, cream and spices), we spent the evening, not watching Sky on the hotel TV, but reading – John Berger’s Confabulations is hard to put down – then playing the entertaining, if sleep inhibiting, Rhyme Game. See below our results. Feel free to add a word or two and win the game. I only wish I’d played this game with Dad in his last years, he’d have loved it and would have won every time. Despite dementia, he still spoke fluent French and German, recited poetry by Verlaine, Goethe and the best of the Brits and won at Scrabble. Words. Enjoy!

Timaru
Midnight blue
Special brew
Orthodox Jew
Airline crew
Right on cue
Interview
Bad review
Shiny shoe
Chimney flue
Lovely view
Viral flu
Twist and screw
Peggy Sue (song by Buddy Holly 1958)
Och aye the noo
Tickety-boo
Diddly doo (song by ?)
Vindaloo
Spanking new
Chapel pew
Multi hue
Igloo
For the few
Gunky goo
Lasso
Cry boo hoo
Portaloo
Super glue
Silly moo
She’s gonna sue
Mutton stew
Lukewarm spew
Impromptu
London Zoo
One to woo
Kangaroo
Cryptic clue
Billiard cue
Didgeridoo
Great long queue
Buckaroo
Up to you
Pink tutu
Toodle-oo (derivation: a slang version of the French à tout à
'heure = see you soon)
Walk straight through
Yoo hoo hoo
Overdue
Bills accrue
Nearly new
He withdrew
Waterloo
Nanki-Poo (Gilbert and Sullivan character in The Mikado)
Caribou
Ballyhoo
Do Kung fu
Good for you!
Bill and coo
Chop bamboo
Doctor Who
Zanadu
Atishoo!
I’m well are you?
Malibu (a beach city in Los Angeles County, California)
Fu Manchu (fictional character in novels by British author Sax
ohmer) 
After you
Bakerloo (a stop on the London Underground)
Lice shampoo
Peekaboo
Timbuktu (city in Mali)
Barbecue
Stuff you!
Stuff you too!

Coda: I had flu in Timaru. True. 

Caroline Lark is well known in Dunedin, not just for her published work, but as the leader of popular workshops on the writing of poetry, plays, and fiction.