The Official Wedding Credential Party Game
Graciously contributed by Morgan Campbell (Thanks Morgan!)Morgan writes: Here is how the game was played: I read a word and asked my friends to guess a context in which the word might have occurred in one of the most recent 3,910 New York Times wedding announcements. Whoever guessed a context that resembled most closely the context in which the word was actually used earned a point. If I play the game again, I will use rules resembling the rules of the game Balderdash (Power Games Inc.). In this version of the game, one player (the "dasher") will read a word from my list and write the actual context in which it was used on a card. All of the other players will write sentences using the word which sound convincingly like an actual sentence from the New York Times wedding announcement page. The dasher then will collect all of the cards, shuffle them (along with the card containing the correct definition), and read them. Players will be awarded two points if they guess the correct context sentence. Players will be awarded one point for each other player who incorrectly chooses the fake sentence they wrote. The dasher will be awarded three points if no one guesses the correct sentence.
Morgan's list:
Ugly: His poetry has been published in the Ugly Duckling Presse, Aufgabe and Drunken Boat.
Drunk:Mr. McBarnet, acting the part of a drunken pirate (a performance perhaps enhanced by his English accent)...
Strip Club: As it happened, Ms. Sussman was planning to go to New York the following weekend to visit her sister and see a friend's band. She decided to invite Mr. Oakman, despite a potentially embarrassing detail: the band was performing at a strip club.
Flea: Mr. Gertsacov is the owner of the Acme Miniature Flea Circus.
Promiscuous: Actually, male lobsters in particular are rather promiscuous.
Tattoo: About 50 guests, many covered in tattoos and at least one wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet, watched, riveted...
Punk: The Hungry March Band, a hip-hop, punk and Latin influenced marching band from Brooklyn, led the couple down the block to a reception...
Eurotrash: They had their first date two weeks later, at which point Ms. Lichterman remembered thinking, “I'd spend my life with him,” she said. This despite the fact that he was a banker who drove a Porsche (a questionable “Eurotrash” category in Ms. Lichterman's mind).
Racist: On many of their dates they examined movies, advertising and songs together, searching for racist messages “hidden like camouflaged lizards in the leaves,” Ms. Jacobs said.
premarital: where his parents ran a premarital counseling program for Catholic couples,
air force: Before entering Harvard he served in the Air Force and was discharged with the rank of captain.
smelling: “He was this gray-haired man, smelling like a dirty hippie with his patchouli oil and kitchen grease,” Ms. Babcock said.
prisoners: His parents had been prisoners in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany...
Narcissistic: Ms. Lowery met Dr. Rosenbaum on a blind date set up by mutual friends in July 2008.Their first date was to be a ballroom dancing class, but she was so nervous about the date that she showed up when the class was half over. He, although annoyed, was still there. "Showing up late is narcissistic,” Dr. Rosenbaum said. “It's a red flag.”
Nazi: His father retired as a professor of foreign languages and comparative literature at Trinity University in San Antonio. A Holocaust survivor, he is the author of “Warning and Hope: The Nazi Murder of European Jewry,” “One Bridge to Life” and “Beyond Anger.”
Sanitation worker: The bride's father retired as a New York City sanitation worker. Her mother was the payroll clerk at Mamaroneck High School in Mamaroneck, N.Y.
White collar: She specializes in white collar criminal defense. She received a law degree cum laude from Duke...
Unemployed: Impact Services Corporation, a nonprofit organization in Philadelphia that tries to find work for unemployed veterans. His mother is an office manager for an endodontist in Philadelphia...
Tacky: Still, grooms are a tricky lot. Most seem to be unaware of even the basic traditions of formal attire, let alone that it is considered tacky to wear a tuxedo before 6 p.m.
Failure: Only a couple of months later she suffered a severe repetitive stress injury from typing. Her wrists were put in plastic casts, and she needed Mr. Staw's assistance with dressing and other basic daily functions.... “Jonah was freaking out about what he got himself into,” Ms. Emerson said... “My first instinct was flight,” Mr. Staw conceded. “I was scared and uncomfortable, but I'm stubborn and strong-willed, too.” So he wasn't going to give up on someone he realized he loved. “I would have been the ultimate failure if I had run away.”
Auto mechanic: His father retired as an auto mechanic at B & L Toyota...
Prosthetic: Their wackiness was resplendently on display. Ms. Evans wore a gold lamé Grecian toga designed by Mr. Robinson. He sported a silver silk suit with a duster topcoat that skimmed the floor, and a ghoulish tie tack he had made from a prosthetic eyeball.
Arkansas: She was a producer of “The Lord God Bird,” about reports of the rediscovery in Arkansas of the ivory billed woodpecker, which was thought to be extinct.
Carpenter: His stepfather is the head house carpenter for the Belasco Theater in New York. [Note: Master carpenters associated major theater companies are involved in set design and commonly earn half a million dollars per year.]
Nanny: He is a son of Risa Pogoda Brooks and Charles Jay Brooks of Acton, Mass. His mother owns Nanny's House, a child-care center in Acton.
Combat: He served with the Navy in San Diego as a combat search-and-rescue pilot...
Guns: I never met anybody that could be a female version of me,” he said. “She's a tiny little thing but she's rough and tough and she shoots guns.
Chainsaw: At the time, Ms. Roter was behind on the deadline for her second book, “Camp Rules” (Dutton, 2007) and not exactly flush with funds. Nevertheless, she took a plane to Austin, Tex., to visit her friend Jordana Brewster, an actress who was filming “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning.”
Grits: During their courtship, Ms. Blitzer and Mr. Wolkstein traveled extensively, dining on curried lamb in the Maldives and tabbouleh in Dubai. They broke their Yom Kippur fast in Ferriday, La., with bacon, grits and collard greens at the home of Polly's former nanny, Beatrice Gage.
Underwear: Is a retail analyst for the sleepwear and underwear division of Nautica, a sportswear company; she works in Manhattan.
Abortion: Naral Pro-Choice America, the abortion rights advocacy organization
Porn: money to start a company called Erotigo, to bring pornography to hand-held computers. It was featured in BusinessWeek, but after Sept. 11 she failed
Tribal: She led multitribal projects for the National Institutes of Health and testified before Congress...
Artificial: Her mother fits and fabricates artificial eyes for Midwest Eye Laboratories in Eau Claire, Wis.